Sermon Cloud

Well, the day has finally come. I've been dreading this Sunday for a long time now. But today is the day I preach my most boring sermon ever. Hopefully, you aren't thinking "that's every week." Today's topic is one usually reserved for academic ivory towers or seminary geeks who have no clue how to have a normal conversation. Today we're discussing the Christian belief of Trinity.
Some of you hear that word and you're immediately repulsed, Christians use such weird words. Or you may have a flashback to some really boring or strict religious class. Where you were forced to agree with this idea but you had no idea what it meant for the way you lived life.
I'm sorry if you've had those experiences, and with all due respect to your teachers, you were robbed. Trinity might very well be the single most energizing reality in our universe. It revolutionizes how we think about God and other people. The belief of Trinity is what makes Christianity different than any other world religion.
But before we look at what Trinity means, I want to briefly set it in historic context. It's not like I woke up this morning and decided to talk about this idea. The great thing about our faith is that it's anchored in 2,000 years of thought. The idea of Trinity has been around longer than John McCain.
Now what happened is that there were some powerful Christians who had secret meetings to decide the best way to control the ignorant masses and these guys came up with this crazy idea of Trinity. Wait, I take that back. I'm mixing up actual history with what I read in the Davinci Code.
But it did take a few hundred years for Christians to come to the understanding of Trinity. It took early Christians about 100 years to understand that Jesus wasn't just the Messiah, he was actually God. And then it took about another 100 years before they realized that the Holy Spirit is God, too.
As they studied the writings of Jesus' disciples, including the books about Jesus, they began to see this idea of Trinity, of one God in 3 persons. It's important to understand that the bible isn't just a list of propositions. The bible is a story of how God rescues us from the mess we've made of things. As they read the details of this rescue story, they saw glimpse of Trinity.
I want to share with you a few of the passages upon which our belief of Trinity is based. Matthew 28:16-20. Another glimpse is 2 Corinthians 13:14. Another picture comes from the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3:16-17.
What these scriptures reveal is that while God is one God, he exists as 3 persons. This isn't 3 Gods or one God who changes clothes three times a day. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are 3 unique persons who exist as one being. If that's hard to get your mind around, that's okay! I have trouble understanding it. But I rest in the fact that he's God and I'm not. He's infinite and I'm finite. There's stuff I'll never understand about God. And I'm okay with that. I had a professor in college say that if God downloaded everything about himself into our little brains, we wouldn't be able to handle it. They'd be scraping our brains off the classroom wall. I loved that professor! His point was that God is so much bigger than our little mind.
This study of the scriptures lead the early church to write out what's called the Athanasian Creed in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. This creed articulates the Christian belief of Trinity. And we've held onto this belief throughout the past 1600 years.
This idea of Trinity is not simply for ivory-tower discussions or academic textbooks. Trinity is the way we live. The reality of Trinity informs every detail of our lives.
But isn't it just something we believe? To be a good Christian means I add "Trinity" to my checklist of the correct things to believe. "God is 3 but 1, yep, I believe." No, it's so much more than that.
There's an epidemic in our churches. We've got churches full of people who define their Christianity as what they believe in their mind. If you'd follow them to their workplace, you'd find the only difference between them and the person in the other cubicle is that they intellectually assent to the idea of Trinity, Resurrection and the other main doctrines of Christianity, while the other person doesn't. If you'd look at their lives, you'd see they spend their time the same, their money the same, they parent their kids the same way. The only difference is some mental belief, and maybe they spend an hour in church each week, as long as they feel like it. In fact, there have been several very disturbing studies that prove about 80% of people in churches like TF are no different than anyone else. Their relational, sexual, financial, occupational behaviors are exactly the same as their "godless" coworkers. That's not Christianity.
It is however, a crock. A crock of BS. I don't know what you're thinking, but BS means Biblical Stupidity.
There's a guy named James in the bible who was worried that his church was getting kind of smug because of their beliefs. "I believe in God, so I'm okay." He told them, "big deal that you believe in God, the devil believes in God, but it doesn't do him a lot of good." James also said that "faith (correct thinking) without deeds (correct behavior) is dead.!"
Being a follower of Jesus ISN'T about simply believing the right things! Believing the right things is the launch pad that propels us to live the right way. But we've got churches full of people still sitting on the launch pad. They've got the right beliefs, but their beliefs have yet to inform their everyday lives.
The longer I do this pastoring thing, the more concerned I get about the disconnect between Sunday morning worship and the rest of our week. Our belief in God is the starting point for allowing God to change us.
3 things about Trinity that not only informs our brains, but guides our lives. (There have to be 3 things when we're talking about Trinity).
1) God is relationship At the very center of the universe is the eternal relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In 1 John 4, we're told twice that "God is love." But how do you love if it's only you? Love demands an object. The Father loves the Son, who loves the Spirit, who loves the Father. It's this endless cycle of love. Corelius Pantinga, At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, communicate with each other, defer to one another.
He also said, The ceaseless exchange of vitality, the infinite expanse of Spirit upon Spirit in superlative, triplicate consciousness. From eternity, God has had a communal life. I don't quite grasp all of that, but it sounds cool.
An eternal cycle of 3 persons loving each other, serving each other, giving to each other. Can you imagine a community of people who understood Trinity? Loving, serving, giving to each other? God is a community of love and service and we're his people.
Trinity reveals why God created. When God decided to create us, it wasn't because he was lonely. God is complete in his Trinitarian relationship. But all of the love within God spilled out into creation. He created us to pour his love and goodness out upon us.
Of course, we've all turned our backs on God's love. We've all told God we'd be better off without him. That's sin. Sin separates us from God. God rescues us from ourselves and brings us back into relationship with him, through Trinity.
2) God saves through relationship Imagine how you'd feel if your child said, "I don't need you dad." When we said we didn't need God, we broke the heart of God the Father. But the Father did something about it. He sent the Son to die on the cross to demonstrate the seriousness of our sin and the seriousness of the Father's love for us. "I love you so much, I'll allow my own Son to pay the penalty that is rightfully yours."
After the Father raised the Son back to life, the Son sends the Holy Spirit into our lives. The Spirit points out our sin, let's us know how much the Father loves us. You know your own spiritual journey. Maybe it was months or years before you finally surrendered your life to God. That whole time, the Holy Spirit was tugging on you, pulling you toward the Father. Some of you can feel that tugging, but you're fighting against it. But when we finally say "yes," the Father reaches down and picks us up, just like a dad holding his newborn child.
Our sin broke the relationship with God. But the Father, Son, Spirit work together to bring us back into a right relationship with our Creator.
And the Trinity works together in making us more and more of what God wants us to be. The Father has a plan and purpose for our life, but our own screwed-up humanity keeps getting in the way of God's best for us. But the Son knows what it's like to be human, what it's like to be tempted, and he acts as the mediator between us and the Father. And the Holy Spirit keeps us on the right path. The Spirit reminds us when we're doing something wrong. And the Spirit takes our heartfelt prayers and communicates them to the Father. There's a great passage in the bible that tells us that even when we don't know how to pray, the "Holy Spirit prays for us with groans that cannot be expressed in words." You ever just cried before God? The Son understands our pain, the Spirit communicates that pain to the Father.
Frederick Buechner said, He is God beyond us, God among us and God within us. We are daily blessed by God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God makes us new, he saves us, through the Trinity.
3) We imitate God through relationships In the second chapter of the first book in the bible, we read that we were created "in the image of God." God put his character traits in us. This explains the deep mysteries of the universe, such as the question of why 13 year old girls talk on the phone all the time. Being created in the image of God means we're hard-wired for relationships. We crave deep friendships, authentic relationships. When you find someone who wants nothing to do with others, it's probably because someone hurt them deeply.
Eugene Petersen, Trinity keeps pulling us into a far larger world than we can imagine on our own. We are not spectators to God; there is always a hand reaching out to pull us into the Trinitarian actions of holy creation, holy salvation and holy communion.
To build a close relationship with another person means you're connecting into the same power source that drives our universe. It's not just a cup of coffee, it's living the way our Creator intended us to live. It's not just small group meetings, it's Trinitarian community.
This is why even a person who wants nothing to do with God, will drop everything to help out a close friend. This is why someone who hates institutional church, will take a week off work to do something like help rebuild New Orleans. At the core of our being, there's this deep understanding (even if it's not verbalized) that we're connected to each other. That to be truly human means we give to each other.
This is why we call ourselves Trinity Family. Trinity Family logo This symbol is called a triqueta. This shape illustrates how the Father, Son and Spirit are separate but united. The same is true of us. While I'm responsible for my own relationship with God, my relationship is incomplete if it isn't connected with ___'s relationship. And ____'s connects with ____'s. We come together in a loving, serving, giving family. The quality of our Trinitarian life together reveals the love of God to people who are hurting. The answer for our hurting world is the Creator who loves us and wants to make us new. Which is why we are people of the Trinity.
So the question is "do you just believe it" or "will you live it?" Will you give yourself in service to other people? Will you be vulnerable enough to build deep relationships with other people? Does the quality of your life point other people toward God?
Prayer
If you'll grab your weekly, you'll see there's a great opportunity for relationship building as a church next Sunday. We WON'T be meeting here next Sunday. We'll be meeting at Veterans Park on Center Street, south of Main. We need everyone to bring food, details are in the weekly.
Gathering for worship is a way of affirming our need for each other. To let us know who is worshipping with us, we pass our friendship registries every Sunday.
And every Sunday we take an offering. We don't do this to just "pay the bills." We do this as an act of worship to the God who generously gave us everything. This act of worship enables the local church to live out our life together. Ushers - offering


Blessing
2 Corinthians 13:14