Canterbury United Methodist Church
New Traditions
June 15, 2014 (Father’s Day & Trinity Sunday)
Texts: Psalm 8, 2nd Corinthians 13:11-13
Focus: After a contentious letter to a contentious fledging church in Corinth, Paul uses
three concluding sentences to urge peace and unity within the church there. He speaks of
ways to unify the church, but then concludes with a familiar liturgical pronouncement: The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit be with
you all. Such words have closed countless thousands Christian services of worship down
through the millennia.
Function: Paul uses the Trinitarian concept of God to urge peace and unity to the church at
Corinth, before such concept was actually recognized. The three-part nature of God mirrors
the language used in Christian baptism, and aligns with the Great Commission from
Matthew 28 to “Go therefore and make disciple of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” It is this unity that we look to to guide
our lives on this day.
Prayer: Great and gracious God, source of all life and maker of all creation, redeemer of
your children, and the presence of your ongoing spirit in our lives, we pause this morning
think about your greatness and your goodness and your grace toward us. Forgive us our
arrogance for assuming that we could ever fully comprehend You with our feeble minds or
describe you with our puny words. Instead, we worship you with trust and faith, following
your son, Jesus, and listening for your spirit in our lives. Open our hearts…God who
creates, redeems, and sustains our lives…for we pray in the name of your Son, our Saviour,
Jesus the Christ…amen.
On Fathers and Describing the Indescribable
Today is Father’s Day, and this is a special day for me. This is my first Father’s
Day since becoming a grandfather…have I told you before that I have a
granddaughter? As it turns out, my oldest son, Wilson, is out of the country so
on Friday when Ann Harper’s pre-school honored their dads with special day
called Donuts for Dad, I got to stand in his place, and remember back to the
day when our boys were young and what it felt like to be a young father. This
was a great gift to me, but an even better one happened yesterday. For a little
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while, it was my sole responsibility to care for Anne Harper…the first time
that’s ever happened and I remembered some of the anxiety of wondering
whether I could really take care of this tiny bundle properly by myself. Ann
Harper responded by promptly falling asleep on my shoulder, which was
absolutely the best Father’s Day present she could have given me.
This is also the first Father’s Day since my own dad passed from this life and
joined the communion of the saints. I have a whole string of voice mail
messages from him on my phone that I can’t bear to erase. I feel his absence
today and I miss him.
In the great church all over the world, today is also Trinity Sunday. It always
falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost, and many preachers dread this day
because they know they will have to stand in their pulpits again and try to
explain what is basically unexplainable…what God’s nature is and how it shows
up in three parts in our lives. Let me say that I approach this topic with a great
deal of humility, because I feel very unqualified and insufficient to explain all
this fully to you, so I can only try to share with you how I think about this.
But let me let you in on a secret…those other preachers preaching about the
Trinity…they don’t understand this fully either. Oh, it’s not that they haven’t
studied it in seminary…and written papers on the consubstantial nature of the
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Godhead, listened to endless lectures on why the Greek term homoousios
(which means to be of one substance) how that defines the central character of
God’s nature. Hang on now…we’re going to the deep end of the pool!
There’s a lot of history behind this God in three persons business. It started in
the first century, in the 28th chapter of Matthew, just before he ascends to
heaven, Jesus tells his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
We still use that language in our baptismal liturgy today.
It continued with the early church in the second and third centuries. Names
like Theophilus of Antioch, who first used the word to describe God’s role in
creation. He first defined the Trinity as God, His Word (Logos), and His
wisdom (Sophia). Later, Tertullian, Athaniasius, and Gregory of Nyssa, who
were early church fathers, all contributed their thought and ideas. More
conversation and debate ensued until the Fourth Lateran Council finally
declared that “it is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the
Holy Spirit who proceeds, and in their relations with one another, they are “one
in all else, co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial,” and that “each is God,
whole and entire.” There…that certainly clears things up, doesn’t it! But the
arguments and debate about the Trinity didn’t stop there…the Great
East/West split in the church, where the Roman Catholic church divided itself
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from the Eastern Orthodox church, basically was over how the Spirit relates to
the Father and the Son. What does all that mean?
And with all that history, it’s a pretty important concept today too…the
concept of God as three persons is foundational and unique to our faith…it is
part of makes us Christians. We consider ourselves to be a monotheistic
faith…followers of one God, like our Jewish and Muslim friends are, but they
look at us and wonder how we can be when it looks like to them that we
worship three Gods…instead of one.
If you are a little confused about all this, consider yourself to be in good
company! Stepping back from all this history, my somewhat cynical view is
that a lot of humans have spent a lot of time trying to describe something that
is essentially indescribable. Why? In the scope of all creation and the great
span of time since it began, we are but tiny specks of dust. We like to think
that we are hugely important and that we are great thinkers, but in reality, we
are tiny specks of dust…here only for a short time. And with that humbling
thought, my thought is that we have tiny pea brains (in relation to God) and a
limited language with which to think and speak of God. The reality of this
goes so far beyond our capabilities to understand. When we speak of the
Trinity, we are trying to speak the unspeakable and comprehend the
uncomprehendable.
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So, in all humility, here is how I understand this with my little pea brain: God
the Father is the face of God that created our world and gave us life. As you
look around at the natural beauty of the planet on which we live, and encounter
all living things that inhabit it, God is the origin of all that. I understand God
the Son to be the incarnate human being, Jesus, who even being the timeless
second person of the Trinity, walked the earth in the first century, who lived,
died from crucifixion by the Romans, and was resurrected on the third day. It
is through Jesus’ life and teaching that we have our clearest picture of who God
is. God the Holy Spirit is the part of God which is active and sustaining in the
world and in our hearts today. The word used for God’s spirit is the Greek
word pneuma, which means breath. Think of that…God’s spirit is God’s
breath…in the creation story, God’s spirit moved upon the great waters,
breathing life into creation…Jesus breathed into his disciples his Spirit, the
spirit of Jesus…could it be that our breath is part of God’s Spirit…that the
very process of breathing in and breathing out is part of the life sustaining
nature of the Holy Spirit? My little pea brain thinks of God as being so big,
that these three terms (Father/Son/Spirit) are simply ways that we can begin to
boil all this down and comprehend how God relates to us and to our world.
Now understand, that just because we think of it this way with our pea brains
doesn’t mean that makes it the way it actually is! Our words and thoughts
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don’t constitute reality for God…our words and thoughts don’t change God’s
nature…we don’t constrain God with the way we understand our faith. The
whole process works the other way around. Sometimes we forget this, I think.
Here’s another analogy that kind of makes sense to me, and I will share this as
long as you understand that I am not comparing myself to God: I am one
human being…of one nature, one personality, one fundamental character. I
was a son to Henry, who is now with his Father in heaven. I am a brother to
Rick, who relates to me as a sibling. I am a father to Wilson and Graham and
Dixon, who see me in a totally different light and with varying types of
baggage, I might add. And I am a grandfather to Ann Harper, who really
doesn’t know what to think about me yet, but we both love to make motorboat
noises with our mouths when we are together! I am the same person, yet I
interact in the lives of these different people differently…I play a different role
with each of them. And maybe in a far more complex and magnificent way,
God interacts differently in all of our lives, even as we draw our next breath.
Paul used this language to give the fractious church at Corinth an example of
what unity looks like. Because God’s essential nature for love and good is
revealed in multiple ways, we humans have a better chance to understand what
our God is really all about, we have a heads up to watch for God’s presence in
the world, and we have a better chance to understand God’s image that is
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implanted in each of us. Thought of in that way, today is truly a happy day of
our Father.
May God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sustainer be with you
and walk beside you all the days of your life.
Amen and amen.
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