SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Sermon at St Thomas

by Lynn Cunningham

March 5, 2006

Lent I

1.                Heading into the inward, spiritual journey of Lent, it may help to clarify something about the Holy One Who is seeking us and Whom we are seeking to know and understand better.  Today, I am going to suggest how you might use the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity as a kind of road map through this welter of images of the Holy in scripture and elsewhere.

2.               The lessons today are shot through with images of divine action.  There are so many of these images that they can be confusing.

3.               Yahweh God in Genesis has sent the great flood to punish the wickedness of Human beings, and now enters into a convenant with Noah and the surviving humans and their descendants that he will not send a flood again to destroy the world.

a.               Here is a God acting in the world directly.

4.               Peter in his first letter states that Christ has suffered once for the sins of all.  Jesus Christ acted in the world to bring all human beings to God.  Peter says that Jesus Christ has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, and authorities, and powers made subject to him.

a.               Here is Jesus acting in the world on God’s behalf, or as God, and then returning to sit at the right hand of God.

5.               Finally, the Gospel story from Mark tells of Jesus baptism.  The story includes Jesus himself, the Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven, presumably, the voice of God, saying, “you are my son, my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  What is going on with Mark’s account of these different actors and voices in this story?

6.               So these lessons, similar to many passages in the new testament, and some passages in the Hebrew Bible, have a seemingly confusing swirl of images and words for God acting in the world.  How to sort all this out?

7.               The ancient Doctrine of the Trinity can actually be a help here.  The Doctrine of the Trinity pulls together Christians’ somewhat confusing claim that we are monotheists, believers in one God, while at the same time claiming that Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is also God.  

8.               This sermon grew out of my conversations with the confirmation class, whose members kept pressing me to explain just who is the Holy Spirit?  Why do Christians talk about the Trinity, and at the same time say that we are monotheists?

9.               In short, I now view the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to be a very elegant solution to a problem that arises with any religion that claims to be in any sense monotheistic, whether it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or some eastern religions.¹  Theologian Paul Tillich uses this phrase, the problem of monotheism.

a.               How can the Supreme Being, the sovereign ruler of the universe be both completely beyond the world, and yet take action in the world? If our notion of God is that he is so unlimited and perhaps remote from the world, how can God take action in the world to benefit us as human beings?

b.               Or stated another way, how can human beings who think and reason by means of language and images, know anything about God who is basically unknowable, and who cannot be captured in any human image.  The mysterious infinite power and sovereignty of God would seem to put such a God beyond human knowing.

10.            In my talking with many of you, I think you know what I am referring too.  You have probably  experienced an infinite, powerful Holy presence that is both deeply intimate to you, and yet beyond all your comprehension and description.  In Christian terms your sense of this Presence that is unknowable is often identified with the First Person of the Trinity, The Ground of all Being, or God the Father.

11.             Again, the problem for us human beings is how can God be seen to play any role in the world, if God is an unexpressible mystery?  Or, to put this somewhat crassly, what kind of religion would we have, if there were nothing to say about God’s role in my life?  Even if God is the ground of all being, if I cannot communicate in some way with this God, something very important would be missing from life.

12.            Reading the Hebrew Bible carefully suggests that Judaism solves this problem in several ways.  First, the Book of Genesis teaches that the entire world that human beings live in was created by God, who calls all of creation good.  Human beings know something of God just by living in God’s world.  Second, the Book of Exodus teaches that Yahweh God intervened in human history and led Moses to lead the Chosen People of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land.  Third, Yahweh God provided sacred law, the Torah, including the Ten Commandments, to show the people how to live holy and righteous lives.  Later God sent the prophets to speak God’s words of justice and righteousness to the people.  For example, last Sunday, Sylvia told in her sermon the story of God’s prophet Elijah striving to bring Israel back to true worship of God and to end the use of the false Baal gods.

13.            For Judaism, God is accessible for people through the wonders of creation, the knowledge of the Torah, and the history of God’s action to save the people from slavery and exile. Could someone say that Judaism understands God as a kind of Trinity? Probably not.  But God’s realities has been shown to human beings in these several ways.  Judaism is a monotheism, but paradoxically God makes God’s presence known through human agents, and through divine action in the world.

14.            For Islam, there is a similar paradox.  Islam strongly affirms that there is only one God, called in Arabic, Allah.  Allah has one main prophet, Mohammed, who clearly is a human being and not a divine figure in Islamic teaching.  But Mohammed is almost always mentioned in the same prayers with Allah.  And Muslims believe that they learn much about God by reading God’s holy word written down in the Koran by Mohammed for human beings to read and understand and cherish.   The unknowable God is made known to the world, according to Islam, through the Koran.  Could someone say that Islam understands God as a kind of Trinity? Probably not. 

15.            But both Judaism and Islam can be said to solve the problem that pure monotheism presents for how to know an unknowable God, by believing that God has taken action in the world through human beings, human beings acting in the world, through human beings writing down revelations from God, and through human beings seeing the world which we do experience as created by God.

16.            You can probably see where I am going by now in calling the Trinity a kind of a road map through the many images and ideas that we have of God.  The early Christian church read and studied and prayed on the stories that came down to them about Jesus in the Gospels and in Paul’s letters.  They read the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.  They began to reflect on this wide array of stories and images such as we have in today’s lessons. 

a.               God creating the world.

b.               God intervening in human history in the Flood and with Noah.

c.               Paul’s teachings about Christ’s death and resurrection to sit on the right hand of God.

d.               Mark’s story of the baptism of Jesus, where the Holy Spirit descends like a dove to rest upon Jesus, and the words coming from heaven to proclaim Jesus to be God’s well beloved Son.  

e.               The stories in the Book of Acts about the gift of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and other stories and teachings about the Holy Spirit. 

17.            Over decades and centuries of reflection on these stories and teachings, the early church slowly came to draw a kind of road map through all the images and stories to the heart of the divine mystery.  The early church road map began to affirm, yes, there is one God, the God who is unknowable, who is the ground of all being, God the Father.

a.                But that God also paradoxically and mysteriously came in the human person of Jesus to reveal important information about God. 

b.               And mysteriously that God continues to be actively present to Christians living in the current time as the Holy Spirit. 

c.               The Doctrine of the Trinity is the early church’s effort to express in just a few words, such as in the Nicene Creed, several realities that on their face contradict each other but that, paradoxically, are all true at the same time.  First the reality that God cannot be known in human terms. Second, that God chose to make God’s self known in terms that people can understand through Jesus Christ.  Third, that God continues to make God’s self known to people today in the Holy Spirit.

18.            The Doctrine of the Trinity then is a very elegant solution to the problem that is presented by any form of monotheism.  Judaism and Islam present different solutions.  The Doctrine of the Trinity give believers like you and me a kind of a road map for connecting our own current impressions of God in our present lives with the images and stories and theologies that come down to us from the history of our church.

19.            Lent is a time for awakening and deepening awareness to the mystery of God’s loving power in our lives.  Lent is a special time for making a conscious effort to open up our spirits so that God can come more powerfully into our consciousness and prayer life.

20.           I have tried today to suggest a way of using the Doctrine of the Trinity to sort out the many images and stories that come down to us in the Bible and in Christian tradition.

21.            As you sort through your own impressions, and stories about the sacred in your life....  If you find yourself wondering where do I fit into all this....  Let your thinking on these things be guided by this very useful doctrine. Let it be your friend, not just a confusing mishmash of one god in three persons. 

22.           God the Father.  Beneath, and behind, and overarching all reality is someone who is beyond all our human understanding, knowing, and expressing, but someone who is there, powerfully there. As your mind wanders towards that aspect of God, let the Doctrine be a guide.

23.           God the Son.  Jesus. Teacher, friend, healer, brother, the Word, a very concrete, knowable person in history from the God that otherwise cannot be known. As your mind wanders towards that aspect of God found in the Gospels, let the Doctrine again be a guide.

24.           God the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is how you and I can sense the presence now this morning and every day of that God who always loves us.  As your mind wanders towards that aspect of God found in your current daily living, let the Doctrine once again be a guide, a guide that connects all three while affirming that they are One.

25.           I strongly urge you to undertake a Lenten discipline this year of reading at least one of the three assigned lessons for the coming Sunday during the preceding week, and try to connect the dots between what you see in these passages with what you are experiencing in your own lives.  Connect your own experiences of the Holy in your own life, with what the bible passages give.  And use the roadmap of the three persons of the trinity in one God to help guide your thinking and prayers.

26.            In Jesus name, Amen