Trinity Sunday (A) Created in His Image
Trinity Sunday (A) Created in His Image
I wonder how many people have said to me, “Well, you know Father, when it all comes out in the wash – in the end – we all believe in the same God.” So, they say, “There is no need to get all hot and bothered about our religious differences. We’re all going to end up in the same place anyway.”
And with that simple, broad, general statement, they are comforted…. that everyone, including themselves, will somehow fit into God’s ultimate, loving scheme of things. “Frankly Father,” they would say, “The way I see it, we are all headed for the same place.”
My guess is that most of us usually don’t bite on a statement like that. We back off because we suspect that the discussion will get all mired down in our stumbling religious vocabulary, and we will end up loosing a potential friend arguing about a loving God. So, we respond with something like, “Let’s hope the place we are all going to end up is heaven, and let’s hope you are right.”
The trouble with this often-repeated misleading scenario is that it reveals a lack of confidence in ourselves to “talk theology.” In a recent survey, 90% of those asked said they believed in God. it would have been interesting if the next question would have been, “Tell me what your God is like?”
What is God like from the Christian perspective? Where can we find words that will help us picture God in our minds. I’m glad you ask, especially since this is Trinity Sunday. The doctrine of the Trinity was invented to give us a way to talk about the mysteries of an infinite God with words that have some relationship with our Human experience. Frist, we have to admit that, any language that attempts to fathom the mystery of God will have some obscurities. With that handicap understood, we can say with some confidence that the doctrine of the trinity is rooted in the community’s experience of God’s approach to man.
When God became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ, the church fathers agreed that we Christians could no longer think of ourselves as monotheistic: in the sense that we believed in a God that was utterly transcendent and sovereign. Nor could we think of ourselves as pantheistic: believing in a God that was entirely universal and immanent. Nor could we consider ourselves pluralistic, having many Gods and many Lords.
God, from the Christian perspective, is both transcendent and immanent, embraces diversity in unity, is dynamic, and yet has stability. God is all things.
Our God is a God of the universe…He is transcendent. He can handle whatever…. Yet at the same time He cares about each of His creations personally…He is immanent. (We have tired to mark this characteristic of God by facing the congregation in Holy Communion).
God is diverse…. able to express Himself to many different people, and in many times and places, yet all the while maintaining a unity. As a child I used to wonder how the same God could be in New York and Chicago and San Francisco, all at the same time. yet, now I think nothing of sitting at the travel agency where a computer links up to a central computer, and tells me if I can have a seat next to a window, on a flight from New York to Chicago on July 27th.
God is not locked into time and space. God is dynamic, yet He has stability. At times He may express Himself in unexpected forceful ways – send demons into pigs, who then flew off a cliff into the sea – drive money-changers out of the Temple. Yet, behind all of those actions, there is a being of trustworthy stability. His ultimate purpose is to enjoy His children eternally.
The word trinity comes from the two words, tri and unity, which means, ‘three united’ or ‘three in one,’ and has to do with the being or essential nature of God the Father, Jesus Christ the son, and the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the trinity teaches us that God is one being, but that there are three essential distinctions of His being. This does not mean that there are three Gods, but that one God reveals Himself in three different modes.
We have experienced God as creator…. the ultimate energy of letting be. when Moses asked God for His name, God said, “I am. I am who I am. I am what I am, and I will let be what I will let be.”
Then we have experienced God, as an expressive being with the ultimate expression of His being in Christ. God’s love, which would otherwise be eternally hidden, flows out through expressive being in Christ to find its expression in the world of beings. (That’s where we come in).
God knows this is a risk because we may choose to turn from God’s being towards nothing, or not being. It’s at the point that God’s plan is interrupted, deterred…delayed…or even thwarted in this world. We can flat out refuse to be an expression of God’s “love Being” and that, turning away from God and refusing, we call sin. How can we be lovers if we don’t know what it means to be loved?
A third mode of God is His unitive being. God’s being longs to be at one with our being, and it is the Spirit’s job to restore our being with God’s being. As we know, all to well, our unity with God is constantly threatened.
Now, tell me what your God is like? He is the ultimate creative energy of letting be:
All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All tings wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all.
He expresses His love for His creation in the person of Jesus Christ…...personally!
Jesus loves me this I know
For the bible tells me so.
And finally, Christian experience tells me so because His spirit is in His family and the Spirit’s job is to bring our finite beings together with God’s infinite being.
By faith in this wonderful triune God, I can say to you with Paul, in total confidence, that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with you now and always.
Comments
Post a Comment