Three of a Kind

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, September 7, 2014.  The Bible verses used are John 14:15-31.

            Well, the kids have gone back to school, and we’ve started our church school program and our confirmation class, so I thought it was time for all of us to go back to school.  Today we start a sermon series called, “Theology 101”.  We’re going to look at some of the basic theological concepts that we claim to believe as Christians.

            Now, don’t let the name scare you.  “Theology” is really just the study of God.  And you already know some things about God.  After all, God is who we claim to worship.  We’re just going to look a little bit deeper at who God is and what God does and what that means for us, not just as Christians but as human beings.

            As we do that, understand that you are not going to hear “the answer”.  When it comes to theology, there’s often no such thing as “the answer”.  We will always be able to ask more questions about God than we’ll be able to come up with answers for.  That was true in Biblical times, it’s true now, and if the world is still around two thousand years from now it’ll be true then, too.  No matter how much we know, we will always have the ability to ask questions we cannot answer.  But there’s nothing wrong with wanting to know more.  And that’s all the study of theology is:  wanting to know more.

            One of the ways we use to describe God is to describe God as “the trinity”:  the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  We use that all the time.  When we baptize someone, we say we’re baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  In the Apostles’ Creed, the earliest statement of faith of the church, we say that we believe in God the Father, that we believe in Jesus Christ the Son, and that we believe in the Holy Spirit.  When we sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” this morning, we sang “God in three persons, blessed trinity.”

            We’ll be looking at the individual persons that make up the trinity in the next few weeks.  But today, I want to look at the trinity as a whole.  What does we really mean when we talk about the trinity?  We say God in three persons, and yet we say there is only one God.  How’s that work?

            Well, first of all, there is only one God.  God is God.  That’s it.  We do not worship three Gods.  We worship one God.

            And yet, we do say “God in three persons”.  We believe in God the Father.  We also believe in God the Son, Jesus.  And we also believe in God the Holy Spirit.  They are three, and yet they are one.

            And it’s not like each person of the trinity is one-third God, either.  Each of them is fully God.  God the Father is fully God.  God the Son is fully God.  God the Holy Spirit is fully God.  And yet, it takes all three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to be fully God.

            And at this point, you’re probably thinking that I’m talking in circles.  And maybe I am.  Because this is not easy to explain.  When I was in seminary, I read a book by Saint Augustine, one of the greatest of the early church fathers, called The Trinity.  It’s about an inch thick, and it has pretty small print.  Four hundred thirty-seven pages of small print.  And you get through all those four hundred thirty-seven pages, and at the end Saint Augustine says, in effect, “You know, we really can’t explain it.”  We can label the persons of God, we can try to describe them, but we really cannot explain them or how they relate to each other.  We really cannot explain how it all works.

            To give old Saint Augustine credit, though, he did come up with the best analogy to it that I’ve heard.  He said, think about the sun.  We have the light of the sun, we have the warmth of the sun, and we have the sun itself.  The sun cannot exist unless all three are there.  We cannot have the sun without the warmth of the sun and the light of the sun.  We cannot have the warmth of the sun without the sun itself and without the light of the sun.  And we cannot have the light of the sun without the sun itself and the warmth of the sun.  And yet, there are not three suns in the sky.  There’s only one sun.  And we cannot separate that sun into three parts.  The sun is one unified whole.

            In the same way, Augustine said, we cannot have God the Father without God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  We cannot have God the Son without God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.  We cannot have God the Holy Spirit without God the Father and God the Son.  And yet, there are not three gods.  There’s only one God.  And we cannot separate God into three parts.  God is one unified whole.

            So, is that what the trinity is like?  Well, no.  But if it works for you, then yes.  Because, as we said earlier, there really is no good way to explain the trinity.  If thinking of the trinity in this way helps you understand it, then great.  But the fact is that how the trinity works is beyond our understanding.  “God in three persons” sounds great in a song, but when we come to actually describe how that works in God’s divine world, we cannot do it.  It’s one of those things that we just have to take on faith.  

            And for some people, that‘s a big stumbling block.  They ask, “How can you believe in something you cannot explain?  How can you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the trinity, the three in one, if you don’t understand what you’re saying when you say that?  How can you believe in something you don’t understand?”

            And it’s a good question.  But on the other hand, we believe in all kinds of things we don’t understand, don’t we?  I wrote this message on a computer.  I have no idea how a computer works.  But I believe that it does.  I have no idea how my car works, either.  When I take it to the repair shop, for all I know they may recite a magic incantation and wave a magic wand over it.  I don’t know how it works.  But I believe that it does.

            You say, well, but that’s different.  You have experience with that.  You know it works, even if you don’t know how.  Well, I have experience with God, too, but let’s take a different approach.  The nearest star, other than the sun, is Alpha Centauri.  According to Wikipedia, it’s 4.37 light years away from the sun.  Now, do I know that’s true?  No.  If the article had said 5.23 or 3.1416, I would not know the difference.  But I believe it.  I accept it.  I take it on faith that the person who wrote that knew what they were talking about.

            We do that all the time, and with things that are much more important to our daily lives than how far Alpha Centauri is.  I go to the doctor and he writes a prescription for medicine.  Do I know what that medicine is?  No.  Do I understand how it works?  No.  Do I believe it works?  Yes, because I trust the doctor.  There are all sorts of things that we do and use and experience every day of our lives that we don’t understand.  But we trust that they’re true.  We take them on faith.

            And when it comes to how God works, well, how could we possibly expect to understand how God works?  The definition of God is “the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.”  You and I cannot expect to fully understand the one Supreme Being.  If we could understand God, God would not be the one Supreme Being.  A Supreme Being, pretty much by definition, is one who is beyond our ability to understand.

            When you think about it, it’s really only out of love for us that God allows us to understand anything at all about the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit.  It’s only out of love that we know anything about God at all.  God could simply rule us through divine power, ignoring our prayers, acting in whatever way God chose to act, having people live or die or suffer or be blessed simply on a whim, without any regard for us at all.  When we think of the vastness of the universe, and then we think of what it means to be the Supreme Being who created and rules over the universe, and then we think of all the power it would take to do that, and then we think of how weak and small and puny we are in comparison to that, it’s amazing that God takes any notice of us at all.  In the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah says we’re like grasshoppers compared to God.  Grasshoppers are pests.  God is so great, and we are so small, that it would be perfectly understandable if God thought of us that way, as pests.

            And yet, God does not think of us that way.  God calls us children.  And God loves us, the way good parents love their children.  And God helps us, and encourages us, and supports us, and guides us, and helps us through life.  No matter how disobedient we are, no matter how many dumb things we do, no matter how many times we ignore God, God never gives up on us.  And when we do those things, all we need to do is sincerely ask for forgiveness and God will forgive us.  Time after time after time.

            We’ll talk about the individual persons of the trinity over the next few weeks.  But if you don’t understand how it all works, that’s okay.  God does not say we have to understand.  In fact, God knows we cannot understand.  So, God simply asks that we trust.  God simply asks that we have faith.  God simply asks that we believe.

            We accept mundane things on faith all the time.  Don’t be afraid to accept God.  Because, after all, God has accepted you.