THE TRINITY: ITS MYSTERY AND MEANING

Genesis 1: 26-31; 1 John 5: 1-12

Perhaps you’ve heard of the widow who outlived three husbands and was about to wed her fourth. When asked about her many husbands and their occupations, she answered that her first husband was a banker who took care of her, and she loved him very much. Her second husband, oddly enough, was a magician, and he delighted her; she loved him very much as well. Her third husband, it turned out, was a pastor, and he taught her much about Jesus. She also loved him very much. “And now,” the person who was just meeting her commented, “You’re marrying a funeral director! What do you think attracted you to men with such different professions?” To which the lady replied, “Well,” she said, “As I look back, I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go.”

Some people in our world move from false god to false god like serial marriages, trying to get one thing out of one, and another thing out of another. God, even our God in three persons, is still one God, but ever present, something very different from the dispenser gods people want, when they put their money in a plate, or a slot, or on a convenience store counter, or on a high rollers green felt table top, and pray that they get a desired result. Today we will look not at many gods, not even at three, but at one. How would one begin to describe the Trinity: our God in three persons?

Let’s begin with a concept with which many of you are familiar: when I was a teenager visiting my grandmother’s house in Georgia with my parents, I watched the three of them, plus my aunt, play Bridge at long sittings, not taking their focus off of their cards. I learned about the order of cards: clubs are considered the lowest suit, then next highest is diamonds, then hearts, then spades are the highest. I learned that any of them could be made into trump cards in Bridge, and that to be able to trump was a good and winning thing. Now take that concept and move it to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Long ago, in the first century to be exact, John (in his gospel and also in his letters) made the idea of “the Trinity” the trump card of all belief systems. “Do you have a powerful God?” some one could ask. All religions could answer, “Yes, we have a powerful god;” some actually had many gods. “Do you have someone who is both god and man?” another could ask. “Yes” said some in the Roman Empire “Caesar claims to be that!” In Greek mythology experts described beings that were half man and half beast. But when they were asked, “Do you have one God in three persons?” that was Christianity’s trump card; no one had a God quite like ours: one go-to God who deserved all glory and praise. So God the Lord trumped, in a matter of speaking, all the other talk of gods.

“Trinity” is a major Christian Doctrine, though, curiously, the word never appears in the Bible. But the idea does appear and it is clearly found in John’s writings. John 1 connects with Genesis 1 most readily when we hear John pronounce: “In the Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” And the Spirit mention in John 14 is the same breath, (as Cara said last week) that breathed life into creation in Genesis 1. There is a three-in-one God in Christian theology and in the Bible. Today, however, we get another form of trinity that some scholars call “metonymy,” which words terms that stand for something else. When John, who describes Jesus as the master of speaking of spiritual things while listeners are thinking on human terms (as when Nicodemus asks how a man can go back into his mother’s womb when Jesus says “you must be born again” and is talking about spiritual rebirth), John says “There are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.” (1 John 5: 8) Some have said that water is a reference to our baptism, blood to communion, and Spirit as the day you were, in colloquial terms, “born again.” But others have suggested that the three testify to the God whose mighty breath made waves across the earth’s oceans in Genesis 1; the God who was truly present in Christ with nails and spear-pierced flesh, who bled and died to take away our sin; and the Spirit who remains on earth when the other person’s of God are elsewhere. To some this sounds like one of those shell games performed by con artists, making us try to follow which shell the ball is under. Is the Trinity like a shell game? Is it a slippery slope that uses theological language to describe a manufactured doctrine? Is it an idea that has fantasy taking the place of faith? No this is no shell game, nor is it a fantasy; nor is it a game of saying that God is 1/3 present in the Father, 1/3 in the Son, and 1/3 in the Holy Spirit. Nor do we have a case of serial gods, where the Father had power in one dispensation, the Son in another, and the Spirit in the last. Presbyterians call such thinking “Heresy,” or “wrong belief. So why did God reveal Godself in so many forms to John for him to record in his Gospel and his Letters? This is less of a puzzle and more of a blessing as we untie the bow on the Trinity. What will we find if we accept this precious gift from God?

Looking in the Old Testament, God refused to be tied to a certain location, or to a certain look (other than the words in Genesis 1 that humans were made in God’s image,) God’s will in times of tragedy was also hard to pin down. It still is for many. Also, even today, don’t you wonder what God looks like? A teacher once was confronted with that thought as she was going around her Sunday School class looking at the colored pictures that her children drew. “Who is that?” she asked of one little boy, pointing to a drawing of what looked like a person. “That’s God,” the boy replied. The teacher, trying to be helpful said, “Oh Johnny, no one knows what God looks like,” to which the boy, without hesitation said, “They will now.” And so for people like that teacher, and perhaps for you and me, God came down to earth in the person of Jesus, grew up, and told Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Be careful here! Remember, John always records Jesus talking in spiritual terms, while people tend to think in physical terms. So even now, we cannot claim to know where God is or what God looks like. The Lord Jesus ascended into Heaven and left God in a frustratingly intangible, invisible, and omnipresent form on earth. A child in Guam is taught that God is with him, just as a dying woman in Halifax Hospital is taught that God is with her. A youth at a Pentecostal church that lifts up the Holy Ghost is taught that God is powerfully there, healing and speaking. A Baptist Church that is praising Jesus in Mississippi with his name repeated over and over today feels Jesus as close as the one standing next to them today. A Presbyterian Church in Korea that lifts up the Sovereignty and mystery of God sings “Holy, Holy, Holy though the darkness hides thee” in Korean, affirming the very same mystery of God that we have affirmed in our praise today. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who “treads on the high places of the earth” according to the prophet Amos, is the same God who walks in the darkest valleys with David in the most beloved of Psalms. As it is recorded in 2 Chronicles, in a verse that even personifies God’s all-seeing nature, “The eyes of the Lord run two and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself to be strong, to those whose hearts are true to him.”

So dear friends, the good news of the Trinity is that God sees all, knows, all and is present in all places. The troubling news is that God doesn’t miss a thing! Sounds rather daunting to have God seeing you in the darkest nights of vice, as well as being on the brightest days of virtue! If you trust in the Lord Jesus and seek to follow his example, then these words may reassure you. But if you are trying to get away with something or hide your shadowed side from God, it is a foolish waste of effort. Even human beings have found ways to have cameras record our actions at stop lights, in discount stores, on nanny cams, and even at car washes. Can you imagine all the ways that God can see, and be present, with Heaven’s resources? Find comfort … and a call to righteous living, with the holy surveillance described by the doctrine of the Trinity. God is with us; we are not alone. How will you live differently knowing that?

Jeffrey A. Sumner March 9, 2008