Trinity:  A Love Story

When I was young, science was a subject that fascinated me in school… especially lab science.  So much of it seemed to be magic.  Even when I understood the principles involved, it still seemed wonderful to me that one drop of water could hold hundreds of wiggling rotifers, that little, tiny wheels could move huge weights so easily, and that titrating drops of one colorless liquid into another colorless liquid could suddenly turn an entire beaker of liquid a brilliant blue.  I can still remember the day that we took an ordinary ice cube out of the refrigerator and put it into a dish and spent a few minutes observing it, writing down all the properties of ice:  clear or translucent, colorless, cold, hard, solid, measurable size and shape, can be touched, held, and so on.  Then, at the teacher’s instruction, we lit a Bunsen burner underneath it and watched in wonder as that hard cold piece of ice began to melt.  Once again, we madly scribbled down the properties of the resulting liquid, as our ice cube became a puddle of water in the dish: clear or transparent, colorless, no definite shape, takes on the shape of the container it is in, etc.  We continued to watch as the flame heated the dish and suddenly tiny bubbles appeared in the water.  As the bubbles increased, we could occasionally see wisps of a whitish vapor that rose over the dish and drifted away.  In a very short time, all the water had disappeared and we had to turn the Bunsen burner off before it destroyed the dish.  Then, we sat down and wrote the properties of the vapor, steam:  clear, colorless, lighter than air, etc.  How could this be?  How could one thing change so much and act differently in different forms?  How could water be a solid, a liquid and a gas?

Of course, all of this was much more magical before the days of Startrek and Star Wars, and all the wonders of science fiction that we have seen on the silver screen in recent years. Now, I am afraid that, if our heroes cannot take multiple shapes, or transport themselves easily between worlds, or pull out their lightsabers to slash the enemy in two, they are truly not worthy of our respect.  But, I digress. Let’s go back, for a moment, to the ice, water, and steam.

  Today is Trinity Sunday.  One of the most difficult concepts that we need to communicate within the church today is the concept of the Trinity and why it is important.  So, I want to begin first by talking about the concept of the Trinity… and our starting point is to talk about the three persons of the Trinity… beginning with God the Father, Our Creator.

We have a God… an almighty, all-powerful, omniscient and omnipresent God…a God whose glory fills the skies… a God you have heard me speak of from this pulpit before.  Our God, who existed before the beginning, and will exist after the end of the world, is a God who can do anything, knows everything, and is present everywhere.  This is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of justice, the God of mercy, and the God of life.  There are not words in our English language… or in any human language… that can adequately describe our God.  So, we are forced to turn to analogies that will describe God in terms that we are capable of understanding… pictures and stories that tell us something that is true about our God.  But analogies are not able to exhaustively describe God, for whatever analogy we use, God is always greater than what we can compare God to in human existence.

Let me give just one example:  God is love.  Yes, it is true that God is love. God is pure love… pure, unblemished, undiluted, unconditional, and everlasting love.  God’s love is greater than anything we can ever imagine or think.  I remember quoting John 3:16 in Sunday School as a child.  I think it was one of the first verses I ever learned by heart.  How about you?  Do you know it?  Can you say it with me now?  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”  It was just a Bible verse – one of many that I had to memorize – so I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.  Then, when I was in my twenties, my son was born… my only son… my only child. Suddenly, this verse took on a whole lot more meaning.  God gave his only Son?  Why?  God sent his Son to earth, knowing that his Son would be killed.  Why?  As a mother, I could not conceive of ever sending my child to a place where he would be in danger.  Certainly, if I knew he would be killed, I would do everything in my power to prevent him from going to that place.  As a mother, my heart aches for all of the mothers whose children are in places or situations where they might be in danger.

And God certainly did not love Jesus any less than I love Julian.  God’s love is, after all, greater than any love we can ever imagine.  However, God sent Jesus into the world to die.  Why?  Why?  Love.  God is love.  God loves.  God loves us.  And the real miracle, as the Apostle Paul shares in his letter to the Romans, the real miracle is that God sent Jesus to die for us when we were still sinners.  Not because we have done anything worthy of that love… not that we could do anything worthy of that love… but simply because God loves… God loves us with a pure, unimaginable, unconditional, and unlimited love.

Think of God… for just a moment… as if God were the water… the liquid… from my science experiment.  When water is poured out onto a surface, it goes everywhere.  It seeps into cracks and crevasses.  It pours over boundaries and through openings into open spaces.  And it leaves a little of itself on everything it touches.  (Pause)  So it is with God… and God’s love… only more so… infinitely more… an endless stream of abundant love.  God is, after all, more than love.  And God is infinitely more than water.

Now, let’s look Jesus Christ, the Son of God… the second person of the Trinity.  Jesus Christ… the Son of God… the Word of God Incarnate… is also God.  Do you remember the beginning of the Gospel of John that I read this morning?   “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  And later in the same chapter:  “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Jesus Christ… the Son of God… the Word of God Incarnate… is also God.  So, now we must adjust our thinking a little.  This all-powerful and almighty God was willing to abandon his heavenly throne… give up his immortality… and leave his unspeakable powers behind…to become a human being… mortal… finite… bound in time and space by a particular body… born at a particular time in history… and subject to hunger… cold… exhaustion… illness… and all the other qualities of our human condition... even sin… even this separation from God… with whom he was one.

Now, I don’t know about you, but, if I had immortality… and limitless power… and omniscience… and omnipotence, I don’t think I would want to give it up for anyone.  I particularly would not want to give it up for a bunch of ungrateful… self-centered sinners who were unwilling to acknowledge that gift… and who (according to the Scriptures) spent more time turning away from God than obeying God.   And yet, according to Karl Barth… God so desires a relationship with the human creatures God created that God gave up everything to come to earth to live with us… to be like us… so that God could have a relationship with us. 

Having done that, think of Jesus… for a moment… as if Jesus were the ice cube from my science experiment.   It is water… H₂O… as God the Father is water… but it is different.  Now the water has a definite and finite shape and place.  It doesn’t move around.  It stays in one place.  And… outside of a freezer… it has a limited life.  And yet… now this picture should be easy for those of you that grew up with cartoons… it is as if God poured Godself out… into an ice cube tray and placed that tray into the freezer… knowing that, once frozen, God would be limited to only what an ice cube could do.  The all-powerful, almighty God took on human flesh… illness… poverty… death… and, of course in our world… taxes to be with us… Immanuel… God with us…  Why?  For love.  (Pause)  For if A = B and B = C, then A = C.  If Jesus is God… and God is love.  Then, Jesus is also love… Love Incarnate.  One and the same, and yet different.

But, there is still one more person of the Trinity to discuss: the Holy Spirit.  Listen to what the gospel of John says about the Holy Spirit… and this is Jesus speaking: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When 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.  He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine.  For this reason, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”  The Spirit of God, you see, is also God.  The Spirit of God was with God in the beginning… at creation.  Do you remember how the Spirit of God moved across the face of the deep at the beginning of the passage from Genesis that Julian read today?  And, in last week’s reading, the Spirit of God came at Pentecost… the advocate and guide that was promised by Jesus to his disciples.  The Bible also tells us that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  This Holy Spirit… this advocate… teacher… guide… and friend… is God.  This Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of love, as God is love.

And the Holy Spirit is everywhere at work in the world.  Think of the Holy Spirit… for a moment… as if the Holy Spirit were the steam from my science experiment.  It is water… H₂O… as God the Father is water… but it is a vapor… lighter than air… and able to penetrate into places where ice cannot go.  So it is with the Holy Spirit… who goes where Jesus… fully human… could not go.  The Holy Spirit is God… God who comes to us… to dwell not with us, but within us… penetrating to the depths of our hearts… when we become believers.  This God is the God who remains with us as we learn to walk as Christians… the God who guides our steps and illumines our way... the  God who is love and fills us with love… the God who lifts us and sustains us… the God who is everywhere at work in the world until Christ shall come again.

The analogy is imperfect… as all analogies are… but it says things that are true about our God.  So we know that our God… the one true God… is three:  God, our Father and Creator … Jesus, our Brother and Redeemer… the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide… one God in three persons.   Perfect… personal… powerful… able to do anything… to be anywhere… and yet, desiring to be with us… always… til the end of time.

 What greater gift can we give to our graduates… our young people today… than to say to them: “Vaya con Dios”… go with God?  Go with this one who is all-powerful… who loves all of you… each of you… beyond all reason… who is with you… and will be with you… until the end of the age.  Go with God… who chose you… chose each of us… before time began… who formed us in our mother’s womb… who comes to you… to each of us… in a particular way… in a particular place… in a particular point in time… and is our father… or brother… our friend… our advocate… and our guide… who empowers… and sustains us… through all that life can throw at us… until we stand before the throne of God on the last day… and behold the glory of God… face-to-face, at last.  Go with God… who created you… created each of us… unique and different… with gifts bestowed upon us for the whole of God’s people to share… to build up and sustain others through the power of the Holy Spirit… to be a light to shine in someone’s darkness… and a beacon on the path that we all walk.  You are a child of God… a heir with Christ to all of the gifts that God can give… a child of the covenant… created in love… to be love… and to love… always surrounded by the One who created you… who walks with you… and who lives in you:  God the Father, God the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit… three in One.  Vaya con Dios.

John 1:1-14; Matthew 28:16-20; Genesis 1:1-2:3