Trinity Sunday June 16, 2019
Lectionary LinkPerhaps you remember the apocryphal story of Isaac Newton and the law of gravity. Newton was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell and hit him on the head, thus inspiring his famous theory and law of gravity. And he got credit for the law law of gravity even though Aristotle and Hindu philosophers wrote in other ways about this obvious force of Nature long before Newton.
Did gravity exist before the Newton wrote his law of gravity? Of course it did. And Einstein and the Quantum Physicists have come to write theories of gravity different from Isaac Newton's theory.
Today, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the Christian understanding of God as One God, in Trinity of Persons. And the events of understanding God as Trinity; did these events make the Trinity exists or did the Trinity always exists? And the Trinity would not be God, if the Trinity did not always exist so such a question is obviously, rhetorical.
Did Jesus create the Trinity? Before Jesus how could we have known that God had a Son? The only direct son of God before Jesus would have been first son, Adam. We can say that the Trinity became revealed in time and space history in a particular way with the appearance of Jesus, but the New Testament writers wondered if the Nature of Jesus had existence before the conception of Jesus in the Virgin Mary.
Probably, the most Trinitarian Gospel is the Gospel of John, the last Gospel and one with clear evidence of the oracle of Jesus alive and well in the early church.
John's Gospel, rewrote the beginning in a way different than the book of Genesis. The Book of Genesis begins: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word, the word was with God and the world was God. All things came into being through the Word.
Why do you think the writer of John's Gospel seems to rewrite the beginning? Was God in the beginning or was Word in the beginning? Or both?
Could it be that the writer of John's Gospel was trying to indicate how the eternal Christ was One with God from the Beginning?
How does the Genesis writing explain creation? God spoke and said, let there be light and there was light. The Genesis writer also wrote that along with God speaking and ordering creation, the divine wind or breath or spirit of God moved over the chaos and brought what was created into being. God the Father spoke, what he spoke was Christ the creating word and the Spirit executed the Word which made creation, in all of its array.
Even as we can understand that gravity existed long before Newton wrote his law of gravity; so too the nature of God as Trinity was retroactively shown to be long before it became to be revealed in the way it was revealed in the life of Jesus Christ.
Christians have been disagreeing about the Trinity for many years. When disagreements threatened the unity of the church and the Empire, the Emperor got the bishops of the church to meet in council to try to standardize a teaching and a doctrine about the Trinity and place it in a Creed so that it could be promulgated and taught in a singular way throughout the known Christian world. But it took more than a century for the teachings of the Nicaean Council to gain general acceptance, and those who were declared to be heretics were not insincere people of faith. There are insights to be found in heresies, even as they could not become the general doctrine of the church.
You and I may not identify with all of the politics of the theological disagreements in the church. In fact there is good statistical evidence today that lots of people are staying from church attendance because of how all of the church disagreements get publicly aired.
You and I probably want something more than the politics of the Trinity. How do we get beyond the politics of the Trinity?
First, we acknowledge that the Trinity, like God and like lots of things, is a mystery. We live and move and have our being in the Triune God who is much bigger than we are. God, who is much bigger than we are, is a mystery. We can come to honest humility to be able to say "I don't really know the intricate details of how God is a Trinity of Equal Persons, because anything that is truly great is never finished in being further revealed and understood." The Trinity has been revealed but the understanding of it has not been exhausted; therefore the Trinity still has future Epiphany events for you and me and for this world. The Trinity is open to a future because being everlasting, means always being open to a further future.
Another way to get beyond the politics of the Trinity is to return to the clearest insight given to us about the Trinity. The Trinity is essentially the relationship that Jesus had with his Father and the Holy Spirit, and he shared his dynamic relationship with his friends.
And what did he shared? He shared that each of us could be born of the Spirit of God and that we can know ourselves to be sons and daughters of God. Jesus understood himself as God's Son, and he became the chief sibling who taught us how we can be his brothers and sisters with God as our Father.
Perhaps we can see now the importance of the baptismal formula. "I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." This is the ultimate invitation to each of us. At the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him and the heavenly voice of God the Father, said, this is my beloved Son; with him I am well pleased.
The best way for us to understand the Trinity is to understand the meaning of our baptism. The Holy Spirit has become known inside of us and given birth within us of the life of Christ. And in this event we experience our adoption as God's children, children with whom God is well pleased. We have become God's children with rights to be downright familiar with God and call God, "Daddy, or Abba."
Today, let us not complicate the Trinity; let us return to our baptism and remember that we are born by water and the Holy Spirit, the life of Christ is born within us and we are in the family of God, with God as our intimate heavenly parent.
And so I remind you again today, you are baptized in the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8/Canticle 13
Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15
Lectionary LinkPerhaps you remember the apocryphal story of Isaac Newton and the law of gravity. Newton was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell and hit him on the head, thus inspiring his famous theory and law of gravity. And he got credit for the law law of gravity even though Aristotle and Hindu philosophers wrote in other ways about this obvious force of Nature long before Newton.
Did gravity exist before the Newton wrote his law of gravity? Of course it did. And Einstein and the Quantum Physicists have come to write theories of gravity different from Isaac Newton's theory.
Today, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the Christian understanding of God as One God, in Trinity of Persons. And the events of understanding God as Trinity; did these events make the Trinity exists or did the Trinity always exists? And the Trinity would not be God, if the Trinity did not always exist so such a question is obviously, rhetorical.
Did Jesus create the Trinity? Before Jesus how could we have known that God had a Son? The only direct son of God before Jesus would have been first son, Adam. We can say that the Trinity became revealed in time and space history in a particular way with the appearance of Jesus, but the New Testament writers wondered if the Nature of Jesus had existence before the conception of Jesus in the Virgin Mary.
Probably, the most Trinitarian Gospel is the Gospel of John, the last Gospel and one with clear evidence of the oracle of Jesus alive and well in the early church.
John's Gospel, rewrote the beginning in a way different than the book of Genesis. The Book of Genesis begins: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word, the word was with God and the world was God. All things came into being through the Word.
Why do you think the writer of John's Gospel seems to rewrite the beginning? Was God in the beginning or was Word in the beginning? Or both?
Could it be that the writer of John's Gospel was trying to indicate how the eternal Christ was One with God from the Beginning?
How does the Genesis writing explain creation? God spoke and said, let there be light and there was light. The Genesis writer also wrote that along with God speaking and ordering creation, the divine wind or breath or spirit of God moved over the chaos and brought what was created into being. God the Father spoke, what he spoke was Christ the creating word and the Spirit executed the Word which made creation, in all of its array.
Even as we can understand that gravity existed long before Newton wrote his law of gravity; so too the nature of God as Trinity was retroactively shown to be long before it became to be revealed in the way it was revealed in the life of Jesus Christ.
Christians have been disagreeing about the Trinity for many years. When disagreements threatened the unity of the church and the Empire, the Emperor got the bishops of the church to meet in council to try to standardize a teaching and a doctrine about the Trinity and place it in a Creed so that it could be promulgated and taught in a singular way throughout the known Christian world. But it took more than a century for the teachings of the Nicaean Council to gain general acceptance, and those who were declared to be heretics were not insincere people of faith. There are insights to be found in heresies, even as they could not become the general doctrine of the church.
You and I may not identify with all of the politics of the theological disagreements in the church. In fact there is good statistical evidence today that lots of people are staying from church attendance because of how all of the church disagreements get publicly aired.
You and I probably want something more than the politics of the Trinity. How do we get beyond the politics of the Trinity?
First, we acknowledge that the Trinity, like God and like lots of things, is a mystery. We live and move and have our being in the Triune God who is much bigger than we are. God, who is much bigger than we are, is a mystery. We can come to honest humility to be able to say "I don't really know the intricate details of how God is a Trinity of Equal Persons, because anything that is truly great is never finished in being further revealed and understood." The Trinity has been revealed but the understanding of it has not been exhausted; therefore the Trinity still has future Epiphany events for you and me and for this world. The Trinity is open to a future because being everlasting, means always being open to a further future.
Another way to get beyond the politics of the Trinity is to return to the clearest insight given to us about the Trinity. The Trinity is essentially the relationship that Jesus had with his Father and the Holy Spirit, and he shared his dynamic relationship with his friends.
And what did he shared? He shared that each of us could be born of the Spirit of God and that we can know ourselves to be sons and daughters of God. Jesus understood himself as God's Son, and he became the chief sibling who taught us how we can be his brothers and sisters with God as our Father.
Perhaps we can see now the importance of the baptismal formula. "I baptize you in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." This is the ultimate invitation to each of us. At the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him and the heavenly voice of God the Father, said, this is my beloved Son; with him I am well pleased.
The best way for us to understand the Trinity is to understand the meaning of our baptism. The Holy Spirit has become known inside of us and given birth within us of the life of Christ. And in this event we experience our adoption as God's children, children with whom God is well pleased. We have become God's children with rights to be downright familiar with God and call God, "Daddy, or Abba."
Today, let us not complicate the Trinity; let us return to our baptism and remember that we are born by water and the Holy Spirit, the life of Christ is born within us and we are in the family of God, with God as our intimate heavenly parent.
And so I remind you again today, you are baptized in the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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