Holy Trinity - June 03

Do you know what déjà vu is?  It’s that feeling of having been somewhere, or done something before. In fact, it’s that feeling of reading the 3^rd chapter of John’s gospel for the 3^rd time in 12 weeks.  I’m almost at the point that, when I die and go to heaven and meet Nicodemus, I’m going to kick him in the shins.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Nicodemus, and certainly, John 3:16 speaks as clearly to my own heart as it does to that of any other Christian believer.  But it’s not all there is in the gospel.  Not by a long shot.  It’s a beautiful synopsis; a clear snapshot of the gospel in a few words.  If it is all you have to guide your faith by, you will find little better.  But the fact of the matter is that Christians have more – much more – revelation and Scripture to use to guide their faith that just John 3:16.

A while ago, two airline pilots were disciplined when their airliner was found to be 150 miles off course. The pilots blamed a faulty guidance system; the airliner accused the pilots of being asleep.  The actually cause is probably somewhere in the middle: both bodies could have, and should have, been more responsible for their own actions.

I know that many of you remember the story of the Gimli Glider, a Boeing 767 enroute from Montreal to Edmonton that ran out of fuel and was forced to glide to a landing at the thriving metropolis of Gimli, Manitoba.  The cause?  Fuel in the aircraft had been calculated using the relatively new metric system, but recorded in the traditional manner of gallons and pounds.  There had been a fundamental shift in the way that airlines and air travel operated, but the individuals involved still clung to their previous ways of doing things.

It’s kind of like distilling the entire bible down into John 3:16, and then decided that one verse is all you ever need.  As good as it is, if you build a theology around just one verse of Scripture, you will miss countless others that will break you down, and build you back up again.  Because just one verse of Scripture can’t stand alone out of the thousands that are contained in the Bible; there are many verse that seem contradictory, confusing, consanguineous or corrupt.

As a result, the church through time has developed doctrines that help define or bear witness to a traditional understanding of theological things; since today is Holy Trinity Sunday, in a practice first set aside in the 10^th century we celebrate the only festival day that commemorates a doctrine of the church.

And yes, the Holy Trinity is quite possibly the most confusing doctrine of the church. Far more learned scholars than myself have gone on record to say that there is no rational, static, definition that describe the Holy Trinity without confessing some very old heresies.  It is best describing using language that is active, relational, and dynamic – in short, using language that speak of God being, rather than God doing.

That is to say then, that we need to re-orient ourselves out of the traditional Lutheran practice of believing doctrine for doctrine’s sake, and into the experience of God made manifest and visible to us through the written Word, the Word proclaimed in the church, and the Living Word of Jesus Christ.

So, perhaps John 3:16 is kind of a magnetic north, that can keep us oriented in our lives; but what the Holy Trinity then supplies is not something as antiquated as a road map or as direct as a GPS; but rather the guarantee, and promise, of companionship on our journey.  If we simply fix our sight on that magnetic north and strive for it (as many polar explorers have throughout our own history), we will leave our path strewn with broken relationships, bodies, and become even more alone and isolated than we thought possible.

So, think for a minute about what it might mean to truly experience God.  To be close.  There’s a whole heap of devotional literature that longs to describe it; God as a gentle, loving Father; God as the righteous judge; God as one’s best friend.

And turn to Isaiah, and see what Isaiah saw.  Isaiah 6 is a vision; it’s a dream, or an oracle, and Isaiah describes actually experiencing God.  And it is terrifying for him.  Isaiah is standing in the Temple, where God lives; God's presence is so large, that the hem of the Lord's robe alone fills the temple space. This is vastness. Strange and wonderful creatures envelop the throne. Smoke obscures the whole scene. We are used to the images of fire and smoke, cloud and height being associated with God. It is all here. And, in comparison with that grandeur, we see ourselves, along with the narrator, as puny and inadequate.  In some classical artwork of this scene, and along with some commentary on this lesson, people have captured the expression on the faces of those seraphs not as ecstasy, but agony at being so close to the pure, unadulterated holiness of God.

But God's power to cleanse and make whole is ready to do its work.  It not something that Isaiah does for himself; instead, recognizing that his is unclean and powerless in the presence of God he is overcome with guilt, and one of those seraphs – itself a servant of the Lord – comes and bear God’s redeeming power in the form of a burning coal.  As he is made clean, Isaiah joins the hosts around God’s throne, and as a cleansed servant of God is sent out again to bear the word of God’s own work: that Israel can be saved.

But of course, Israel doesn’t listen.  Instead of coming together in the promise of God (who promises to all people), they remain fragmented and aloof, trusting in foreign powers and the rich and mighty of their own society and ignoring the few and needy among them as unworthy and untouchable.

All this happens before the revelation of God made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. On the other side, is Paul, writing to the fledgling church in Rome, itself fragmented and conflicted.  The church was struggling with relationships both within its own walls and with the culture that surrounded it – as was every church then, and now.  Paul’s response was to write to them, and remind them that their faith looked very different from the faith that centred around the Temple and it’s actions.

What Paul did was to describe that the relationship between believers mirrored the relationship that God has with God’s own self: it is the Holy Spirit that leads us to recognize that we are children of God the Father, and sisters and brothers with Christ, the Son.  The Spirit that we receive – the same one given on Pentecost, received at our baptism – is a Spirit that should lead us out of fear and into freedom.

Being oriented to fear leads us to curve inwards, putting our own needs and desires ahead of others.  Fear – fear of death, fear of the unknown – is what drives us to consume and define ourselves by what we have, or what we can get.  It’s the “he who dies with the most toys” mindset; the same one that equates our self worth with our net worth.  Paul knows what he’s saying when he points out that way leads to death.

It’s fear that drives us to define ourselves over and against another group – and fear that divides us.  The greatest moral challenge of the Lutheran church in the 20^th century was when it began to form ecumenical agreements with other Christian bodies and participate in ecumenical ministries – instead of sitting back and refusing to engage with others until they agreed we were ‘right’, the bodies that became the ELCIC began to see that if, indeed we had received a Spirit of adoption, then we can remain ourselves and still be in relationship with others in our community.  That, in fact, unity did not mean or require uniformity.

They re-oriented themselves so that, rather than their own (obviously) correct orthodoxy at the centre, the Trinity became that centre and their own relationships – flawed though they were – modelled after the God who called them, gathered them, and enlightened them, just as every Christian has been called, gathered, and enlightened by the power of the Holy Spirit working in the world.

And perhaps, beloved, that is the biggest thing to learn from a doctrine of the church.  That doctrine does not save us, but is meant to satisfy us to some extent that God is indeed active and working in our lives.  The Holy Trinity – an ancient doctrine of the church that bears witness to God who exists in unity and in community, in turns bears witness to us that we are called into modelling that relationship with others – orients us to understand that in the relationships in our community that we bear witness to our own adoption, and our own salvation.

Bearing witness to the fact that, indeed, God did so love the world that God redeemed it, cleansed it, called it, and sent it out as the body of Christ in that same much-loved world.

Be that body, beloved.  Your souls are won.  In your baptism you are adopted into the family of God and become beloved children.  Live in that family.  Love each other.  And make it your priority to enlarge that family – multiply our smiles here, beloved, because God smiles on us.