June 12, 2022 Sermon
Sermon title: "Trinity Sunday" (or "The Holy Trinity")
Scripture: John 16:12-15
(Other lectionary choices include Proverbs 8:1-4 and 22-31, Psalm 8, and Romans 5:1-5.)
John 16:12-15
12"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
You may be wondering why, since it's Trinity Sunday on the Christian calendar, I did not choose a Scripture reading that had the word "Trinity" in it. The reason? There is no Scripture that has the word "Trinity" in it! We have Father, Son and Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit - but no Scripture with the word "Trinity" in it. The doctrine of the Trinity came about after the New Testament was written, and, as far as I'm concerned, is an example of God still speaking. If you are going to say that Jesus and God are One, and if we have Scriptures that have Jesus saying, "When the Spirit of truth comes", as we had this morning, you almost HAVE to have a doctrine of the Trinity.
Let's back up a minute. We believe that God sent his Son Jesus to earth. We believe that he was crucified and died, and we also believe that God raised him from the dead. We also believe that he returned to be with God, and we talked about that two weeks ago in the sermon on the Ascension. In last week's sermon, we talked about Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended on the young church. We are told that even though Jesus went back to his heavenly father, his disciples still experienced him as being alive and with them. One way this happened is during Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down upon the early church. This is both the Holy Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit of Jesus. As I pointed out earlier, in at least one place in John's Gospel, Jesus says that he and the Father are one. So....think about it: if Jesus and God are one, and Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit upon his believers, you almost NEED a doctrine of the Trinity. ONE God but with THREE masks or 3 PERSONAS, which is what "persona" means: MASK!
If you don't want to accept this, that's fine. I knew at least one minister in the United Church of Christ who told me that she was definitely NOT a Trinitarian, She was a Christian, certainly, but not a Trinitarian. What is a Christian, after all, but a follower of Christ? So, I think you can be a Christian and not a Trinitarian. Also, remember that we are dealing with SYMBOLS here! Remember last week when I included in the sermon Ezekiel's vision of God? What I said was, How do you describe the INDESCRIBABLE? After the New Testament was written, church thinkers looked at Scripture, looked at passages that had Jesus saying, "I and the Father are One", and the story of the Holy Spirit descending on the church at Pentecost, and thought, "We need to say something about all these manifestations of God." What they COULD have done was say there is a DUAL Godhead, Father and Son. But then what do you do with the concept of the Holy Spirit? Is He LESS than the Father and the Son? Oh, no! That would have NEVER worked! Can you imagine a creed like that? "I believe in the God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, which is LESS than the Father and the Son together!" Come on! It would have never worked! We would have had one God with two faces, and something a little less than God, the inferior Holy Spirit! Again, we are dealing with SYMBOLS here, and it wasn't until the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. that the church hammered out what we now know as the Nicene Creed. (Nicene Creed: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.)
This whole "God in three Persons, Blessed Trinity" concept didn't get hammered out until Nicea, which happened in 325 A. D., so almost 300 years after Jesus walked the earth. (Isn't that interesting that stuff we consider "basic" wasn't really there until later?) So, believe what you want about the Trinity. I won't consider you a heretic! But also remember that when we talk about God, we must talk in symbols, because it is impossible to DEFINE God. We can say what God is LIKE, but we can't really put a period on our description. (That's another UCC thing: "Don't put a period where God has put a comma.") When I was in high school, my minister at the Presbyterian church then said that if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus Christ. That may be enough! Early church thinkers, because they lived in a Greco-Roman world where Greek philosophy had a lot of influence, I personally believe felt compelled to describe God, Jesus, and the abiding Holy Spirit in a way that was "intellectually acceptable".....and that is why we have the doctrine of the Trinity. We believe in God. A man named Jesus appears on the scene who seems to have a special relationship with God; in fact, he even calls God "Father". Some think he is the Messiah, or the Anointed One, which is what "Christ" and "Messiah" mean: "the Anointed One". He gets killed, but some of his followers insist that God has raised him up. His appearances to his followers eventually cease, and so we have come up with the doctrine of the Ascension. But his followers insist that he is still with them in some way. So, we came up with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which is both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus, who is now considered more than Christ or Messiah, but God Himself! (See how Christian thought evolved over the centuries?)
If all these intellectual exercises tire you out, that's okay. As the early disciples would say to people they hoped to convert, "What think ye of Christ?" Again, as my high school minister told me, if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus Christ. What did the Beatles sing? "Love is All You Need." Well, for this Trinitarian, what I really believe is, "Christ is all you need." Amen.
Pastor Skip
