Sermon - Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday – Year B

                                                                We Are Triune Christians 

When the ELW was printed, the third of our approved “Creeds” was omitted.  The ELCA confesses three Creeds:  The Apostles’, the Nicene, and The Athanasian Creed. 

The Athanasian Creed has typically been used once a year – on Holy Trinity Sunday.  Written later in church history (sometime around the 6^th century), it is the only creed in which the equal natures of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated.  (It is also the only one of the Creeds which states that those who do not hold to the statements of the creed are condemned.) 

Having (seemingly) expressed my dissatisfaction at the non-inclusion of the Athanasian Creed, let me say that I found it troubling when we did use it, year after year, on Trinity Sunday, with no real explanation.  Its language is harsh.  I wondered how those who had not sat in a seminary classroom might respond to its insistence that “those who do not believe these things are condemned already.”   

On the other hand, I do believe it to be a good teaching tool.  And I am all about teaching.  Especially on a concept as difficult to explain (and understand) as the Trinity.  It is important, on Trinity Sunday, to turn into a teacher and attempt to teach as much as can be learned about the Trinity, and why understanding the Trinity is important.  Our Christian faith is a faith in a Triune God.  We worship One God, in three persons.  And if it takes the jolt of the Antanasian Creed to remind us how serious all this is, so be it.  

You would be hard pressed to find a modern day gathering of Christians who doesn’t make use Father-Son-Holy Spirit language.  But not all of them will be observing Holy Trinity Sunday.  We do.  Just like Christmas and Easter and Pentecost, Trinity Sunday is set on our calendars as one of the major Church festivals. 

One God, three persons; indivisible, yet distinct.  This is the way we talk about God; this is the way we understand God.  It is the way we have come to understand God.  This does not mean that the earliest gathering of Jesus’ followers understood God to be a Trinity.

 

Before they were called “Christians,” the followers of Jesus were referred to as participants in “The Way.”  Before there were official Church statements, there was a whole plethora of statements of understanding.  Yes, it is completely true (and never denied,) that there are other “gospels” out there, in addition the four collected in our bibles (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and it is also true (and never denied,) some of these other accounts speak quite differently about Jesus and about his relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The Church statements, developing over time, decided which perspectives were to be embraced (some would want to say “allowed”) and which were to be regarded as informative, but not normative. 

The perspective of one God in three persons, which we now share, was not universally shared by all those who in the first century A.D. were trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus.  They had the core teachings which lead to the formation of the Doctrines associated with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But, they would not have used that formula, nor insisted that each worship service begin and end with it. 

Over time, the understanding of God as one yet three is the perspective which the followers of Jesus came to share.  They/we found this perspective to be helpful and informative.  Seeing God as One God, in three persons, allowed us to see in its entirety the message which Jesus taught. 

Father – Son – Holy Spirit.  These are the “names” associated with the Triune God.  Some prefer to refer to the functions of these three, so you will hear formulas like Creator – Redeemer – Sanctifier.  The perspective being sought is one in which God is understood as larger than and more complete than anything we could envision or describe.  God needs three names to even begin to speak of who he is and what he does. 

God the Father/God the Creator, is an acknowledgement that in God all things find their ground of being.  Who we are is rooted in God.  We are all God’s creation; everyone one of us.  The God whom we worship is the maker of all things.  The God to whom we offer our prayers, is the One who called all things into being.  When we insist on a Triune perspective we are instructing followers that no one in the whole of God’s creation is to been seen as anything less than one of God’s children.  Their ethnic heritage or the color of their skin, nor even the creed they confess changes or denies that they are God’s.  Everyone, and everything, in the whole of creation, belongs to God.  

In talking about the Son, it is helpful if we begin with the opening words of John’s Gospel.  John writes, In the beginning was the Word,  he tells us that this Word of God called into being everything which is.  After painting a marvelous vision of the power and strength of this Word of God, he tells us that this Word has become flesh and dwelt among us. 

The Son, the Redeemer, is that part of God’s person which seeks to be known.  It is the facet of God’s person which allows us to understand.  It is that self-expression of God which liberates us from the fears associated with darkness and death.  We have come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the One sent among us to save us. 

Within the Trinity, the Son embodies what it is that we believe and teach.  It is the invitation from God to think right thoughts. 

The name of the third person of the Trinity is the one which varies the most.  Like many of you, I grew up referring to the third person as the Holy Ghost.  “Ghost” language begins to be changed to “Spirit” language sometime around the early 70’s.  “Spirit” is a better word.  And “Ghost” has too many non-religious connotations.  In scripture, this third person is referred to as the “Paracleat,” or more simply, “Helper.”  In another part of John’s Gospel, the Spirit is called “the Advocate.”  The Spirit is that part of God which guides us into righteous living.

The Spirit is concerned with how we live.  The Spirit addresses the realization that God not only concerns God’s self with who we are and what we think but also with what we do.  Salvation may be associated with the second person of the Trinity, but our relationship with God isn’t complete unless we are also actively seeking sanctification.

Father – Son – Holy Spirit; Creator – Redeemer – Sanctifier; who we are – what we believe – how we live or lives;  this is what it means to embrace the concept of a Triune God. 

Who we are – what we believe – how we lives our lives; all three are important to those who continue to desire to participate in the Way of Jesus. 

The Doctrine of the Trinity is one of those Church statements which developed over time, reaching it final formulation centuries after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Those who formulated the Doctrine (and those accept the Doctrine) believe that all of the parts are there in the earliest writings.  Most importantly, we see in the Doctrine of the Trinity a way to direct the perspectives of those who would seek to become Christian, encouraging them to see all that there is to be seen when one considers who God is and what it is that God calls upon us to do. 

Father – Son – Holy Spirit.

Creator – Redeemer – Sanctifier.

Who we are – what we believe – how we live our lives. 

Our identity as Christians includes all three.   

Amen.

Pentecost Sunday - Year B                                                                                                        

Acts 2:1-21     (Gen 11:1-9)                                                  

 

                                                   The Spirit-Gift to Community for Mission

 

            Thomas G. Long, professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary, tells of teaching a confirmation class in which he was discussing the major festivals of the Church Year.  The Children knew about Christmas and Easter, but no one in the class could remember the significance of Pentecost.  Dr. Long explained that the day of Pente­cost was the day the Holy Spirit came from heaven with the sound of a rushing wind, and fire rested on the heads of everyone gathered in Jerusalem, and they all spoke in different tongues.  At that point one girl raised her hand and said, "I don't remember that.  My family must have been out of town that Sunday." 

            The story exposes one of the major difficulties which confront us on Pentecost Sunday: how do we bridge the gap between the events recorded in Acts and the experience of the church today.  Many of us are troubled and confused by the circumstances surrounding the birth of the church.  If anything resembling the events in Jerusalem ever hap­pened in our church, it had to have happened on a Sunday that we were away. 

            The timing of Pentecost increases the likelihood that we were away.  Today is Pentecost Sunday on the liturgical calendar; on the calendars we carry in our pockets, it’s the first Sunday of summer - the vacation season has begun.  Our congregational calendar is also slowing down.  We have one more week of Sunday Church School?  Then we move to one service (at 9:30 am).  With all that comes the general expectation that attendance will be lower from now until sometime in August.

           Confusion and calendar location - is it any wonder that the mention of Pentecost is met with blank stares? 

            The story of the rushing wind and the tongues of fire is one of the best known stories of the bible.  Unfortunately, its popularity is not accompanied by a high degree of understanding.  All too often, the second chapter of Acts is the source of major misunderstandings about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community.  The events recorded here are too often used to bolster the mistaken view that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a reward for special righteousness, that the Spirit is concerned only with individual believers, and that the primary manifestation of the Spirit's presence is the speaking in tongues.  In fact, the text itself makes three very different affir­mations: 

1 - The Holy Spirit is a gift, given by God;

            2 - God gives the Holy Spirit to the community of faith;

3 - God gives the Holy Spirit to the community of faith for mission.

            First, Luke proclaims that the gift of the Holy Spirit is God's gift.  It is not, and cannot be earned, and it is not deserved.  It is simply a gift.  This point is missed or misunderstood by too many of our contemporaries.  While none blatantly insist they have a right to an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they speak of spiritual disci­pline in such a way as to imply that one positions oneself for the Spirit's arrival.  The pure, the chaste, the pious - - such members of the community carry themselves in such a way as to suggest that they are more deserving of the Spirit's visitation.  The author of Acts has no such illusions. 

            Those who were gathered in Jerusalem were not seeking the gift of the Holy Spirit, they could only accept it.  They did not create the Spirit's power, they could only claim it.  They did not program the Spirit's arrival, they could only respond to it.  The Holy Spirit is God's gift, freely given to those whom God chooses. 

            The second affirmation within the biblical text is the affirma­tion that God gives the Spirit to the community of faith.  In Jerusa­lem, the coming of the Spirit created unity were there had been division.  That long list of difficult names read for us are a remind­er of the variety of nationalities and peoples present in Jerusalem.  The Spirit comes, and diverse people become the one people of God. 

            Congregationalism among the modern church has eroded our ability to see the diversity of those who assemble in God's name.  It is our tendency to join congregations where folks look and act and talk in the same way we do.  At Pentecost, the Spirit swooped through the crowd, as with an out-stretched arm.  Gathering together all those who had once been individuals; making of them children of God. 

            The events described in Acts 2 are set in juxtaposition with the events in Genesis 11.  This is another well-known, but often not-so-well-understood biblical story.  Genesis 11 is the story of the Tower of Babel. On first reading, the story of the Tower of Babel seems to show human pride destroying human unity - resulting in God's punishment of scattering the people of the earth literally (geographi­cally) and symbolically (linguistically).  But a second reading reveals a more complex plot and deeper meaning. 

            The people who settled on the plain of Shinar were unified.  They shared a common language and a common purpose.  They wanted to make a name for themselves and keep themselves from being scattered to the corners of the earth.  The unity they sought, however, was contrary to God's instruction - given in Genesis 1.28 - to be fruitful and multi­ply, and fill the earth.  The Tower of Babel is a warning against all attempts to establish unity on the basis of human autonomy and self-sufficiency.  The unity desired by God is based not upon common lan­guage or common goals but on a common commitment to do God's will and to live according to God's purposes. 

            The Holy Spirit is given to the community of faith.  The spirit comes to the individual believer only in the larger context of restor­ing proper relationships in the community of faith and empowering the community of faith for service. 

            The third affirmation present in the story of Pentecost is that God gives the Spirit to the community of faith for mission.  The Spirit is God's active presence in the world. 

            When the Spirit is considered an individual gift; when the Spirit is considered a reward for pious living; it ceases to be active - rather it becomes a trophy, held with great pride and dis­played for all to see, but never used in the accomplishment of an even greater task.  God's gift to the community of faith - the Holy Spir­it - is given to us so that we might be about the work of God in the world. 

            Here again we can learn something from that story in Genesis 11. 

God punished the people by confusing their language so that they did not understand one another.  The word rendered "understand" is the Hebrew shema, the same word that appears in the affirmation "Hear, O Israel:  The Lord our God is one Lord."  (Deut 6.4)  This connection is important because it focuses attention on hearing as an essential ingredient in the divine-human relationship and in relationships within the human community.  Whether between parents and teenagers, husbands and wives, men and women, or God and humanity, when hearing fails, relationships fail. 

            This emphasis on hearing, not the speaking in tongues, is the link between Genesis 11 and Acts 2.  The word “hear” appears at several crucial points in the Pentecost narrative in Acts (2.6, 8, 14, 22, 37).  The events of Pentecost do not, as is usually assumed, reverse the punishment given to the builders of the tower but rather results in a "fresh capacity to listen."  (W. Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation, John Knox Press.) 

            In spite of all the speaking in other tongues, those who gathered in Jerusalem heard the gospel in their own language. God did not restore a single language or one homogeneous community.  Instead God enabled the diverse and scattered peoples of the earth to hear one another.  On Pentecost every nation under heaven is embraced.  It is that same Spirit which empowers and sustains the church as it seeks to give voice to God's word of salvation and become a channel of God's work in the world.

            God gives the Holy Spirit to the community of faith for mission.  When we lack an understanding of the mission God has given us; when we consider the Spirit an individual prerogative; when we link the Spirit's arrival with our own faithfulness - it is highly likely that we will be away, should the Spirit ever descend.  Let us open our hearts and our minds, receiving this gift of our God's, allowing it to unify us in Christ and setting us forth to proclaim the Good News. 

Amen.