Sermon

Knowing God vs. Knowing God

Scripture Text:

Genesis 1

Sermon:

Knowing God vs. Knowing God
I’d like to thank Rev. Heidi for allowing me to preach again. She asked me a few weeks ago, and I’ve since found out that statistically, Trinity Sunday is the number one, most popular day that clergy invite others to preach! Why should that be? Well, the subject matter probably has something to do with it; the incomprehensible mystery we call the Trinity. Since no one can claim authority on it, it opens itself to reflection and contemplation by any of us.
I’d like to start this morning by going back and reviewing some language contained in the Nicene Creed, which we just finished reading, and which of course, we read every week. The Creed spells out distinctly what each of the three magnificent facets of God does for us. Though we actually celebrate the Trinity every Sunday, Trinity Sunday is the feast day that caps the High Holy season of the Church year that starts with Christmas and the Epiphany, and then Eastertide and Pentecost. This is the day that celebrates God as the three in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not one God doing three jobs, or wearing three hats, but three separate persons.
We can’t let the word “person” fool us here as it comes from a Greek word meaning “that which stands on its own”. Using the word “persons” only helps assist our brains in contemplating these three separate and distinct entities. Unlike all other feasts in our Church year, it does not celebrate an individual, or an event, but a doctrine, and not just any doctrine, but the very nucleus of our faith.
Here are the key words in the creed I like to focus on this morning:
We believe in one God…
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…
True God from true God…
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…

Especially when we isolate those words, we start to see the unanswerable mystery.
And then also recall our Baptismal Covenant which we renewed again just last week. There, the first three questions request our affirmation again, of our belief in the Holy Trinity.
Earlier, I used the word “facet”. I like it not only for the practicality of one of its definitions, which is “any of the definable aspects that make up a subject or an object”, but also in the more illustrative meaning in which I visualize the facets of a gemstone, one with its own internal light, amplifying and radiating that light in all directions. But here in the words of the Creed and the Covenant, we see very clearly, the three manifestations of God interwoven in a totality of purpose that they have for us. In the three, we have the creator, the redeemer, and the sustainer. All working to assure the faithful, very simply, of life: both mortal and eternal.
When I reviewed all of the scripture in our readings today, it didn’t take too long to find that our Church scholars had done their proper work in selecting the appropriate liturgy for this day. At least for two of them, it’s fairly obvious.
In this morning’s Epistle, Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, and in the last verse he wishes them “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. “ Beautiful words to be sure, but Paul is also expressing the roles the three have in our salvation.
And in our Gospel message from Matthew today, Jesus tells his disciples “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
These are powerful words that impress upon us once more, the three facets, but it is in our first reading where I find the words that move me the most. But they are much more subtle. Here, in the first chapter of Genesis, we have the beginning of creation, the bible chapter which for many of us is maybe the first we remember hearing. In Sunday school, maybe five or six years old, I remember the big illustrated bible, with God the Father standing in flowing robes and a long white beard in the middle of paradise. Right there at creation, in the first chapter, God has spent the first five days shaping the entire planet, separating light from dark, and water from sky; God, in whatever image you have of Him, has been hard at work raising up mountains, filling the skies with birds and the ground with creeping things, and now He gets down to we humans, and all of the sudden, something else has come into the words that the author, traditionally Moses, has chosen. Again, it doesn’t jump out at us, but I found it, and I had never noted it before in all of the times I’ve read, or heard this chapter. Up until verse 26, it’s been “God saw this…..and God said that…and He was pleased…, and so on.
But now, It’s not just God anymore, and least not “a” God, because the words here are, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…”! Let me read that again with a little more emphasis: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…”! Now that is something to ponder! Nothing more is mentioned in the book of Genesis about who “us” is, and right after the creation of man, it’s just God the Father again taking His rest on that seventh day. It is clear that this is the Three, yet one, all taking part in the creation of human life.
So this is Genesis, it’s just the beginning, and it’s the beginning of the mystery of God in three parts that we then find throughout the Bible, and we cannot understand it nor offer any explanation, so we shouldn’t be surprised that this concept can become a real target for others that don’t share our faith: atheists of course, who will not have any of it, but other religions, and even a very small part of Christianity, who can’t accept the impossible riddle of three in one; separate yet the same.
I like to compare the mystery of the Trinity to some of the largest and most complex questions of the modern scientific theories of the universe and physics. Many of the most intelligent brains God has ever created are at work today on supercomputers like IBM’s “Big Blue”, trying to understand the expansion of the universe, the super-particles of quantum mechanics and the twisted laws of physics that exist in other dimensions, and in the sub-atomic world. All of these questions being wrung through incredibly complicated mathematical computer models . Scientists, most of whom, sadly, scoff at any idea of an intelligent creator, let alone three in one, begin to claim knowledge of some of these mysteries through the deductions of their supercomputers.
We don’t, and cannot, claim such knowledge about our mystery. Our supercomputer is called the Bible, and there is a different definition of the word “knowing” when it comes to their mysteries and ours.
“Knowing”, as in having something understood, is not our realm for the Trinity. Ours is “knowing” as in a loving relationship you have with someone, where you can truly and faithfully say that you “know” that person. That is the place we want to get to, with God. That is where God wants to be with us. All three of God. He, in all three persons knows us; Loves us; Saves us.
We need to know all three of him, and we do so through faith, and our experience in that faith…and with each other.
Creator, redeemer, sustainer.
Imagine yourself a carpenter for a minute. (That’s actually kind of appropriate for today!) Build a stool with just one leg and then try to sit; won’t work. Build it with two and try to sit. Even then you will fall. But build it with three legs and there is balance and foundation.
Trinity Sunday has not always been observed after Pentecost. At different times, it was a feast day on the last Sunday before Advent, at the very beginning of the Church year. Then it was more about creation and the coming of all things, as in our reflection on Genesis. Nowadays, it follows the ascension of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit. Either time is appropriate because of all these things, because it is about a relationship between the three; “Love” as the apostle John defined it, and that same loving relationship shared with us and for us.
We will never know the ‘how”, but we can experience the “why” of God in three persons, by the way He is revealed to us, loving, just, intimate, powerful, wrathful, forgiving, and much more. That is who we celebrate, and upon which all is built.
Let us pray,
O, Father, our hope;
O Son, our refuge:
O Holy Spirit, our protection,
O Holy Trinity, glory to you.
Amen!

Uploaded on June 19, 2011 in by Joel Wegman

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