Tonight we are walking into a mystery. We are exploring something that can’t really dissected or even comprehended with human minds. But it’s something that has been affirmed by the church for 2000 years.
Tonight we are talking about the Trinity: that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God: three persons.
I have to confess that sometimes the idea of the Trinity makes my brain hurt. And I don’t think I’m the only one. As much as I try to make it fit, the Trinity defies what I learned in grade one math. One apple just can’t equal three apples. Simple as that.
This problem didn’t escape the early church. But before we go to the early church, I feel I need to set a certain record straight. In The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown writes that the Trinity was a later development of the church brought on by Constantine to unify the Empire.
He writes that up to that point the followers of Jesus just thought he was a moral prophet. That there was a vote of his divinity, and that the vote was very close.
Not the case. The earliest council – which Constantine really had no part of – the council of Nicea voted 316-2 in favor of the doctrine of the Trinity. And the two that opposed the doctrine were denying Christ’s humanity, not his divinity. They were denying his human side.
The idea of the Trinity is not a later development of the church. It comes from the basic data of scripture and the fundamental experiences of the early church. But this doesn’t solve the problem of one being three and three being one.
For centuries Christians have been trying to find ways to describe the Trinity. Early Theologians came up with illustrations…
One illustration was to use an egg. Shell, White and Yoke: one egg three parts. But this illustration is flawed, because these are parts of the egg but not the egg itself. Whereas the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not parts of God. Each one of them is God.
So we move to the water illustration, which is better. Water can take on 3 forms: Liquid, Vapor and Ice all the time remaining H2O. Three forms, one substance. But this is also flawed because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not forms of God. They are God.
I think the best illustration is found in music. Three notes, independent in tone and pitch come together at one place and time to make a single chord. Three notes become one: in harmony. Musical community.
Truth is, I don’t think there is an adequate or watertight way to explain the Trinity.
Illustrations may help, but they are suggestive rather than conclusive. They are kind of like the Star of Bethlehem. Three astrologers from the East look up and see a star that is curious enough to follow … in a sense to guide.
The star is nothing like the event, but it’s the thing that brings them to the event.
An illustration can act as a guide, but it’s not the thing you are looking for.
But take heart…
Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Trinity I can experience the Trinity.
Three experiences…
It’s like an experience I had in 1987. There were 30,000 of us waiting in anticipation. The lights were out in the area. Then the organ started playing the notes that we knew so well and we waited for the guitar to kick in…
I was trying to explain the opening to my then-girlfriend now wife Marcy, and there was a certain disconnect. I couldn’t find words to capture the experience in a satisfactory way.
However, I was on the bus the next day going up Burnaby mountain, wearing my U2 T-shirt, and another guy wearing the same shirt. He had been at the concert. We made eye contact. He looked at me and said, “Ya bro”.
Now you are saying, all you two shared was a massive emotional group experience. Doesn’t really mean a thing. It wasn’t a real experience. Doesn’t really say anything about God.
All true. Although, for some of us, seeing Bono is pretty close… The point is: it was a shared experience that we couldn’t easily describe.
I’ll move to a more personal, I’ll even say ‘private’ experience.
When I was growing up, my parents tortured me. Every time my Auntie Jean came over we would run and hide, but my mom would find us. And make us watch the dreaded slide-show. Auntie Jean had traveled the globe on bus tour. And she’d taken pictures of everything … everything. And she would describe in great detail every picture … forever.
Then I remember taking a course in grade 12 called Western Civilization. I thought it would be an easy 3 credits. It turned out to be a video series with this guy named Kenneth Clark who just talked about art for two hours.
Fast forward 10 years and Randy is in Florence stumbling out onto the street and into the Academy Gallery and there I saw it: Michelangelo’s David. Auntie Jean had shown me a million photos of it. Kenneth Clark had talked about it for what felt like a million hours. But there it was. Magic. How could a massive piece of marble evoke such a response?
Now you are saying, well that was a deeply personal experience. But hardly an experience of God. True. But like God, it was experience that to this day I can’t easily comprehend only apprehend. And it was something that I shared with my Auntie Jean.
Or take the romantic kiss. Deconstruct it and describe it in sheer physical terms.
Two people press their moist, creased facial orifices together, clinch tight the sphincter muscles to draw flesh around the orifices into a fleshy mound and exchange saliva, breath, occasionally allowing tongue muscle to touch and wrestle.
Is that erotic enough for you? Sounds downright repulsive.
The point is this: sometimes when we analyze and deconstruct the Trinity we come up with something that sounds clumsy. Kind of like my first kiss. But to experience the kiss is so much more. It’s erotic, relational, intimate.
At some point we have to say that God is not just some abstract idea that we can kick around, but someone we experience and encounter. He is a person: a living reality who enters into our experience and transforms it.
Now the personal way Christians have believed that God has related to us is by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not three individual gods, but one God whom we experience and encounter in this mysterious three-fold manner.
Father
Again, sometime this notion that God is Father gets a reaction … and for all the wrong reasons. When Jesus revealed that God was like a Father he was wanting to convey a gentle intimacy.
But these days, the analogy has frequently been turned on its head. A lot of it has to do with the experience of many of us had with our fathers. The unfortunate reality is that fathers are frequently absent. And another reality is that some are abusive.
So, if you think of God as Father, and this is your point of reference. Then you project that God is either distant, or vengeful. This is not what Jesus had in mind.
Seeing God as Father implies that he is a creator with a natural love for his creation. When my kids were born they were completely unable to love me, but in that moment when they first came out … I couldn’t speak. I remember when I was growing up … PAINTING.
I love my kids, not because of my achievements, but because they are mine. I have their best interests in mind.
I am, by no means, the perfect father. But it’s important that we don’t mistake the model with what it is modeling. Analogies are helpful, providing we remember that every analogy breaks down at some point.
The strongly patriarchical structure of society at the time meant that emphasis was placed upon God as father. There are several passages that encourage us to think of God as our mother (Deuteronomy 32:18)
Son
We have spent a great deal of time talking about Jesus already. In Jesus we have the self-portrait of God. As the only member of the Trinity who became incarnate, he is the only member of the Trinity that can be properly pictured.
It is impossible to make any sense of him if we treat him as a solitary individual whose significance was in himself. From first to last, from the 12-year-old boy in the temple, all the way to the night of his crucifixion he is going about his father’s business and committing himself into his father’s hands.
And what does he reveal about God? Love. Forgiveness. Friendship. Identification. And by being an example, he showed us how to live. In unity with the Father. Living for the sake of others.
Spirit
The word for ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew (ruach) literally means “wind” or “breath”. The word in the Greek (paraklet) means “the one who comes along side of”.
He is life and source and power. That being said, The Holy Spirit is also a counselor and comforter. He has been described as a still small voice.
The Holy Spirit is the presence of God here and now. And He is active. He prompts us towards Jesus. In fact, He may be the one that has been hounding you for years.
He never condemns “You dumb shit”, but always convicts “You know, you were pretty calloused towards your wife today.” … “Why don’t you help your neighbour with his bad back rake his leaves … he looks like he is struggling.”
It’s the Spirit that invites us into the dance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fact, I would argue that some of you who think you are on the outside have heard the song and are beginning to dance already.
Enough … I’m beginning to sound like an evangelist.
Questions.
Have you had an experience that you couldn’t completely describe or explain? If so, be bold and share.
To quote myself …
“Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend the Trinity.”
Do you think Randy is just looking for a loophole, or do you think there are truths out there that just can’t be completely explained?
If you don’t like the idea of God being described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then how then do you perceive God (Him, Her, It, Them)?
Cross yourself.
Verbal pictures, while never adequately conveying glory, majesty and beauty of God, can give us an inkling of what he is like.
We can see the trinity work in our prayers. To the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
CROSS YOURSELF…
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in you and around you right now. You are not alone. You are never alone. You never will be alone.
So talk to God with reckless abandon. Enter the circle of their friendship. They are inviting you into their most intimate interactions. They want you there. You've got an invitation to intimacy with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus prayed this about us in John 17,
"My prayer is that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
When we begin to enjoy our relationship with the Trinity the world can't help but sit up and take notice. They will see the Father, Son and Holy Spirit's power, love and grace unleashed through these jars of clay!
So take some Advil. Take three if you need it. The Trinity may make our brains hurt, but it should make our hearts sing!
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All three persons of the trinity are incomprehensible, and our knowledge of the trinity in not exhaustive and there are no completely adequate illustrations in the world.
It is not the doctrine of the trinity that underlies the Christian faith, but the living God whom we encounter through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit – the God who is the trinity.
Thus when we think of God, we don’t think of three individual gods, but of one God whom we experience and encounter in the three-fold manner.
Not three individuals, but three personal self-distinctions within one divine essence.
Unity and diversity.
We know that God can, in fact be love. If God were a single person he could love but he wouldn’t be love. God, in essence, is love and community.
To quote …
“Although there’s no way I can completely comprehend the Trinity I can apprehend the Trinity.”
If you don’t like the idea of God being described as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then how then do you perceive God (Him, Her, It, Them)?
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