Sunday, May 22, 2016

What's the Trinity good for?



A Sermon preached on May 22nd, Trinity Sunday, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Proverbs 8: 1 – 4, 22 – 31, Romans 5: 1 – 5, John 16: 12 – 15

Today is Trinity Sunday, one of the Church’s principal feast days, celebrating the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is three Persons God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. According to some sources, this festival, or at least this date for such a festival, was originally instituted by St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who is of course most famous for having been murdered in his cathedral. Ordained ministry has always been risky! From Canterbury, the new feast day spread throughout the Western Church, but not to the East. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters actually celebrate Pentecost as the feast of the Trinity. Which also makes sense as – at least in Luke’s Gospel – it is first great act of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

I have heard or read some sermons and articles that comment on it being strange or unique to have a Sunday dedicated to a doctrine, well no it isn’t. A doctrine is a particular belief that defines the parameters of a religion, in our case Christianity. The word just means correct belief. The Resurrection is a doctrine, which we celebrate at Easter. The Incarnation is a doctrine, which we celebrate at Christmas. There is a doctrine of Creation, and we now have an ecumenical Day of Creation in September. Of course, there are doctrines without a specific day, like the doctrine of Christ’s nature – that he is fully human and fully divine - or the doctrine of salvation or the doctrine of the divine inspiration of Scripture, but they are a part of every church service. 

Today however we focus on the doctrine of the Trinity, which is at the same time the doctrine we share with our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters that there is only one God, and that God is One. That might seem like a contradiction or a paradox, one and three? Well it is a apradox, but – to use a quote I found recently: “From Arianism onwards, heresy always arises from the refusal of paradox.” It is the same in politics. Those who offer simple answers to complex problems – build a wall, blame the stranger, leave the EU – tend to the extremes.  

But back to the Trinity. The extract from the Book of Proverbs about the figure of wisdom, a divine or semi divine female figure, shows us that while of course Judaism does not recognize the concept of the Trinity, the Hebrew Scriptures still contain descriptions of other divine figures participating in and rejoicing in God’s work: “When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” (Proverbs 8:30-31) I think the 99 names and attributes of God in Islam send a similar message. 

But still the Trinity is uniquely Christian. We believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or as you will also sometimes hear, in God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, because this is how God revealed godself, how the first Christians experienced God, how we still experience God today. First we know God as the creator of everything, including us, as the one who sustains Creation, and as the one who wants us to share in the care of creation. 

For those who experienced him, who shared in his ministry, who witnessed his deeds of power, his death and resurrection, Jesus had to be more than just a simple human being. We call him “Son” because that was his own way of defining his relationship with God. Again and again Jesus talked about the unity between him and the Father, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” (John 14) or this week “All that the Father has is mine.” (John 16:15)

Last Sunday I spoke in depth about how we experience the Holy Spirit and about what the Spirit empowers us to do. Unusually for him, Paul summarizes this both succinctly, and beautifully in his Letter to the Romans in the phrase,God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) 

The Trinity is however more than just a way of describing how humans experience God. The concept, the doctrine also tells us something about God’s essence or being. As we are made in God's image, and therefore in the image of the Trinitarian God, the doctrine therefore tells us something about who we are or who we should become. What might that be? For Saint Augustine, of Hippo not Canterbury, love best illustrates the nature of the Trinity. In his dissertation on the Trinity, Augustine writes:
“Now when I, who am asking about this, love anything, there are three things present: I myself, what I love, and love itself. For I cannot love love unless I love a lover; for there is no love where nothing is loved. So there are three things: the lover, the (be-)loved and the love.”[1]
 
This is still only an analogy, but it is a good and true one. God’s nature is relational and personal as expressed in the divine community of love that is the Trinity. We cannot say that God is love if God is alone. Instead, love resides both in God’s nature as a personal being and in the relationship of the Father, the lover, to the Son, the beloved, by love, the Holy Spirit. And gloriously this love overflows into God’s love for us and for all of God’s Creation. God’s love is the very reason for our creation. Through love God reaches out to us and calls us back into relationship through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, and by the transformational work of the Holy Spirit.

As image-bearers of God, we cannot reflect that image solely in our own persons or by ourselves. We bear the image of God as Trinity only when we are in community and relationship with one another, and through the act of love. We bear the image of God as Trinity only when we reach out to draw others into community, and away from loneliness, isolation, and self-destruction, when we share the Good News, and when we share in and relieve their suffering. 

It is good to have a day designated to celebrate the Doctrine of the Trinity, which is not just about who God is, but about who God wants us to be. As Paul writes to the Romans, through our faith in Jesus Christ we have been reconciled with God, and share in the glory of the Trinitarian God. Through the Holy Spirit God’s love, which is God’s very being, is poured into our hearts. Today is not about understanding the Trinity intellectually, logically, or analytically. That is not what the doctrine is for. Instead, we are called to understand the Trinity by living in the light of its implications both in our Christian community and by reaching out to serve the greater community outside our doors.
Amen.


[1] St. Augustine, “On the Trinity”

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Breaking down barriers



A Sermon preached on May 15th, the Day of Pentecost, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Acts 2:1-21, Romans 8:14-17, John 14:8-17, 25-27

Today is Pentecost, sometimes also called the birthday of the church or even also the feast of the Holy Spirit. Now I don't want to preach a Trinity Sunday sermon one week too early, but we worship only one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So every Sunday is the feast day of all of God. And of course if we look at a normal Sunday service, the Holy Spirit gets a good look in every week, in the readings from Holy Scripture which is, we believe, inspired by the spirit, in our prayers, in the creed, in the Eucharistic prayer when we ask the HS to sanctify, to transform the gifts, and in the final Trinitarian blessing. But clearly today's service has a special "spirit focus." So just what is the Spirit's role, what does she do for us? I see the Spirit as a solvent! The Holy Spirit dissolves and breaks down barriers, and there are an awful lot of barriers to break down. 

First of all the Holy Spirit helps break down the barriers between us and God. Now of course Jesus came to break down the barriers between us and God, the ones we erected. This is the main reason for his incarnation and his participation in our human life. We hear this in his little dialogue with Philip in the gospel. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" (John 14:9) 

We often talk about Christ's ministry of Reconciliation, which is in origin a Latin word meaning to re-unite or re-connect. Christ made us his ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:20), his agents of unification, and he gave us God's Spirit to aid, support and strengthen us in that task: "When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." (Romans 8:15) We always seem to be trying to create new barriers between us and God, or new intercessors or go-betweens: the Saints, the Virgin Mary, and also priests! It's not that we are not good for something or course, but you certainly don't need a priest to interact with God. As Paul goes on to say a little later in the 8th chapter of Romans (26-27) God's Spirit helps, even when we do not know how to pray, by interceding directly on our behalf, and God knows what is in our heart through the Spirit dwelling there. 

Secondly, the Spirit breaks down the barriers between us and our fellow human beings. Just look at the Pentecostal event. There the Spirit quite literally breaks down the language barriers, thereby allowing all the people gathered in Jerusalem on that day to hear the message of God's power, to hear the good news of Jesus Christ and of his ministry of reconciliation: "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." (Acts 2:4) The barriers that need tearing down are human ones, ones we have erected despite having been created in God's image. But that is something we find very difficult to believe and to act on! 

I've just got back from Israel and Palestine. We visited many holy sites, beautiful buildings and spectacular outdoor settings, buildings and places where we can be very sure that Jesus walked and lived and taught, and ones of more dubious provenance. But we also experienced modern day Israel, we saw and had to as through the so-called separation wall that cuts Palestinians off from their neighbours, from their land and from their work. We saw the injustice of the occupation. We were told about the almost complete separation of society within Israel itself with separate schools and towns or neighbourhoods for Jewish and Arab Israelis, for Jew, Christian and Muslim. There is just too little opportunity for exchange, to get to know each other, to move beyond stereotypes, to learn to love one another. This is wrong at so many levels. There can be no reconciliation without dialogue and encounters. And it is not God's will. In God's kingdom there are no walls or barriers, no divisions: There is neither Jew, nor Greek, neither Slave nor free, just as in the Acts' reading the gift of the Spirit is promised to all, young and old, men and women, slave and free. 

Finally, the Spirit breaks down the barriers we have erected within ourselves.  We don't have to worship quite as exuberantly as our Pentecostal brothers and sisters, but a little enthusiasm and joy will do us no harm at all. That too perhaps is a barrier the Spirit can help dissolve. But actually fear is the biggest hurdle we construct, fear of failure, fear of the stranger, fear of how other people will see us. Trusting in the gift of the Spirit can help us overcome the barrier of fear. 

To reassure his disciples, who fear for themselves once he has gone, Jesus promises that God will send the Holy Spirit, and tells them that they have no reason to worry as the Spirit will both strengthen, and empower them: "Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid" (John 14:27) Paul too picks up on the theme of fear. The assurance of being children or God should free us from fear: "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption." (Romans 8:15) If we act in Christ's name we have nothing to fear.

Today is the feast day of the Holy Spirit, the day we celebrate the gift of the Spirit. That gift comes with a purpose: To enable us to act in God's name and to further God's great mission of barrier breaking, of reconciliation. People flocked to the early church because it was open, welcoming, and fully inclusive in its invitation to become part of the Body of Christ. May the Holy Spirit move and empower us, as she moved and empowered all the disciples on that first day of Pentecost nearly 2,000 years ago. Peter believed and preached that the Pentecost event was the fulfilment of Joel's prophecy that God will "pour out (God's) Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." (Acts 2:17) My prayer for us all today, as we reflect on and rejoice in the gift of the Spirit, is that we not only see God's vision and God's dreams of peace, harmony, and unity for all humankind, and between humanity and God, but that we do all in our power, to transport and realize this vision. And we have that power, for as Christ promises "the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and ... will do greater works than these." (John 14:12)
Amen.