Good Morning Friends,
I figure that people go to Church to experience God. Some think they get it through fellowship. Some think they get it through music. Some think they get it through the sharing of the Word and sacraments. Some think they can find salvation by being part of Holy History in the witness of a miracle. But it is all that and much more. You see we all desire an encounter with God, but it is a relationship modeled after the accord of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit…a mystery based on a word not even found in the Bible that requires our faith and works to improve and restore us. This approach is central to the Christian faith. And frankly if we believe the Athanasian Creed, the thought of its implications should bring us to our knees in the wisdom of the knowledge that the only thing that saves us is being in unanimity about this three-part harmony. Friends, we are to worship one God in three persons in perfect agreement. And getting to this point is not easy. If you know anything about the early history of the Church, you probably know the struggles people had with believing Jesus was the Son of God and fully God. That is why we say, in the Nicene Creed, “being of one substance with the Father,” “very God of very God.” This three-in-one approach is not just for our belief but also for our adoption in the Holy Spirit of a transformative reality. Maybe we do not learn it exactly but somehow are claimed by this mystery instead. So, Do you Know How The Trinity Works In Unity For Our Redemption?
Scripture: For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of heaven to the other: has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of? Has any people ever heard the voice of a god speaking out of a fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by terrifying displays of power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? So acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. Keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am commanding you today for your own well-being and that of your descendants after you, so that you may long remain in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.
Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40 (NRSV)
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Romans 8:14-17 (NRSV)
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:16-20 (NRSV)
“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, 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. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
John 17:20-26 (NRSV)
Message: Today is Trinity Sunday and the term is actually never used in the Bible, it was established at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 as they formed the Creeds we say on Sundays. So as we honestly attempt to answer today’s question we may well say, “Not really.” There have been many attempts to try to bring this mystery to our level of understanding and all the words just seem to fall short. Some have said that the Trinity is like water in its three phases: steam, liquid, and ice. That is nice but misses the mark. Others have said that the Trinity is like the same person with three different titles, such as a woman could be a mother, sister, and daughter all at the same time or a physical book, the author and the story. Others have compared the Trinity to an apple or apple pie which is cut into three distinct pieces yet the filling in the middle all runs together as one. With all things considered, none of these analogies or metaphors or even the symbols we use give an accurate illustration. The Trinity is three distinct Persons in One God. All three — Father, Son, Holy Spirit and this complex God has been around for all eternity. All three co-exist so that all can be apparent at the same place at the same time, as we see in our mind’s eye with Jesus’ Baptism. Here God the Father is speaking, God the Son being Baptized in the Jordan River, and the Holy Spirit descending upon Him. Each of the Three can talk to each other as distinct Persons like when God the Son prayed to God the Father. Also, the presence of One can be emphasized over the other, which we tend to do in our liturgical year, focusing on the incarnation of God in Jesus from Christmas to Easter and the Holy Spirit from Easter to Pentecost and the Father in the time in-between. But today as for each day we it would be wise to focus on the Trinity in Unity at work. And it is hard because Christ speaks to his disciples, telling them that he is going away, going to the Father, from where he will send the Spirit, the Helper, to be with them. “We worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in unity,” says the Athanasius Creed. “Three Persons and One God.” But what does that mean for our redemption, beyond total bewilderment? St. Augustine provides some help. He asks us to consider the life of the human soul, God’s image in us when we think about this topic. The soul remembers, it knows, it loves. These are three activities, and yet they are the activity of one soul. In us, these personal activities are an imperfect unity–our reason and our love do not simply coincide. God however is the perfect unity of personal activity. God is, God knows, God loves and these three are one. Father, Word and Spirit, three persons and one God, all equally divine, all absolutely God, one nature, one reality…one God. And we too need to be one. I hope you get the idea. A complex God cannot be easily described. Each of the three persons of our one God has different attributes yet the three work together as one to give perspective and strength and direction. Friends, not too long ago we were focusing on the topic of unity. We saw unity through the commandment of Christ that we love one another and in John 17:20-26 too. Then we saw the unity we have in that we are many being made into one called out assembly of God…one church. But we are most often examples of a human unity, and many times an imperfect unity. The Trinity, however, is a divine unity, the one and only perfect unity. Friends, the Trinity is one of the hardest things to explain and understand in Christian Doctrine, even though we recite the creed every week. But the one thing we certainly can say, and do, is to Praise God, even when we do not understand Him.
Pray we realize that if we try to understand the doctrine of the trinity, we may lose our minds, but if we deny it, we may very well lose our souls. Praywe realize that we cannot neatly divide the work of God between the three persons of the Trinity, giving a specific part to each. Pray still, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, set up a divine kingdom in our midst. Pray the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God rule with mercy on all us sinners in the continuing work of God’s creation. Pray the Holy Spirit, breath of the living God, renew each of us and in turn transform all the world. Pray, even as we pray in this way that we realize that in the mystery of it all, creation is not the Father’s alone. Pray we realize that redemption is not limited to the work of the Son. Pray we realize that regeneration does not belong to the Holy Spirit alone. Pray we realize that the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts when each part is infinite but in our finite minds our encounter with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is made greater because of their unity given we are made in this image. Pray therefore we imitate Jesus praying to the Father for the Holy Spirit to indwell with believers in the unity of love. Pray we live a life as a divine baptism of Jesus with the Father’s blessing and the Holy Spirit’s power redeeming us. Pray we find hope in The Holy Trinity. Pray we find redemption in a divine relationship that makes us whole.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 