May 27 sermon: Images Of God

Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning. The voice of the Lord shakes the desert; the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry, “Glory!” The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever. The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.

(Psalm 29:1-11)

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     Well, today is the day that Christians the world over wait for with great expectancy, and in anticipation of this festive occasion I’m sure that none of us were able to sleep last night, so pumped up were we all about coming to church to celebrate – Trinity Sunday! It’s the Sunday after Pentecost which we set aside to reflect upon the central doctrine and perhaps the identifying belief of the Christian faith – the Trinity. The God who is both Three in One and One in Three. But rather than just listening to me speak about it, I want to introduce you to Connall, Donall and St. Patrick – and we’ll give them a shot at explaining this greatest of all Christian doctrines this morning.

You Tube Video: St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies

     You get it now – right? The Trinity. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Or – we could say it in Greek: τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος. Or – we could go with Roman Catholic tradition and use Latin: in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Or we could use some of the alternative trinitarian formulae that have arisen in recent years: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, or Creator, Christ and Spirit or Love, Love Incarnate and Love’s Power, or God Above Us, God With Us and God Within Us. Or we could use some of St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies that Connall and Donnall tore apart for us: water, ice and steam or sun, heat and light, or a man who’s a father, a son and a husband all at the same time. You probably get the point. There are so many different ways in which we speak of the Trinity. The Trinity is important. I’d be the last to suggest otherwise. Some think it’s an arcane bit of theological history, but for Christians it’s central. Before I came to Pickering Village I was interviewed by another church, and one of their first questions to me was: do you believe in the Trinity? Belief in the Trinity in some form is what identifies us as Christians and makes us unique among the monotheistic faiths of the world. Years ago, in Port Colborne, my UCW arranged for a speaker from a local mosque to come to their monthly meeting. He arrived at the church early and I invited him into my office where we chatted. I said to him at one point, “you know, we actually have a lot in common in what we believe.” He looked at me and said “Maybe. But we would never accept the Trinity.” It defines us as Christians, and yet – as the video demonstrated – it’s a concept that really can’t be properly explained or fully understood. Ultimately it might be derived from Scripture, but it isn’t precisely “in” the Bible. The Bible never says that God is Three in One and One in Three. The Trinity is what I’d call a classic doctrine of the church. It’s something developed by the church to try to explain the mystery of God but as with all doctrine, the Trinity should introduce God to us and push us further along the path of trying to understand God, but for many Christians the Trinity becomes an end in itself. Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes for some the totality of God – and yet God can’t be contained in a human formula. And as is always the case with doctrine – doctrine understood as an end rather than as a start leads to accusations of heresy, and heresy divides the church. Now please understand – I am a trinitarian. The doctrine of the Trinity is vital to my understanding of God, but I believe that the Trinity does more than just speak of three persons in the godhead – whatever that means – and, if we’re being honest, we’ll admit that we don’t know what “three persons in the godhead “ means anyway. So I think I understood the point that Connall and Donnall were making. We can use all the analogies and all the fancy doctrinal language we want – but the Trinity remains a mystery, and the nature of God remains a mystery (“Holy Mystery” as A Song of Faith says.) I’m not so much concerned with understanding the Trinity as I am with where the Trinity directs me, and with what it tells me about God – because I think that’s the purpose of all doctrine.

     I found myself thinking of these words from the great modern theologian N.T. Wright, who wrote “When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship.” That can be a problem, I’ve discovered, with how Christians treat the Trinity. It turns into an absolute for faith. It becomes a litmus test by which we judge the faith of other Christians. It becomes what God is to many Christians (even if they don’t really understand it) so that the image of God that we reflect becomes a hardened God – an idol, if you will, made not of wood or stone but of the words of church dogma. I choose instead to see the Trinity as a guide that helps me to explore the fullness of God without binding me to an inevitably incomplete picture of God.

     Today, we read the 29th Psalm. It is not, obviously, a trinitarian piece of writing. But of all the lectionary readings for today I wanted to use it because I believe it’s doing something similar to what the doctrine of the Trinity does: it doesn’t so much explain God as it captures the essence of God, the mystery of God and the power of God. It speaks not just of the power of God over nature but of God being seen in the most powerful events of the natural world: thunder and mighty water; lightning and earthquakes and mighty winds all seem to make their appearance. People have always discerned the presence of God in natural events, or at least they've seen something otherworldly in the natural phenomenon of this world. When I was young, whenever there was a bad thunderstorm I'd be told - and my family were atheists - not to worry, because the thunder was just “God bowling.” And even looking at it from the other perspective, one can't look at pictures from Hawaii right now and have any doubt where the popular images of hell cake from, as we watch fire and red hot molten rock being belched up from the earth. The natural world becomes our window to the things of God and of the spiritual world. So “God chooses to be known” might be a way to paraphrase what the author of the Psalm is saying. God chooses to be known in ways that we can’t help but notice. What does that have to do with the Trinity? Directly? Nothing perhaps. And yet – the Trinity is also a way of speaking of God choosing to be known. If Psalm 29 speaks of God being known through the power of nature, then the Trinity speaks of God being known through the power of love – if I can quote Bishop Michael Curry from the Royal Wedding! (And, just as an aside, I may be the only person in the world who watched the Royal Wedding because I wanted to hear the sermon!)

     The Trinity speaks of relationship. “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” - or whatever formula you choose – speaks of the fact that God is essentially self-sufficient; God needs no one or nothing; God needs no relationship with us because relationship itself is the very essence of God. On the surface, perhaps saying that God does not need us seems rather cold – but it’s really quite the opposite, because if God does not need us (and the very idea of God as Three in One and One in Three testifies to the fact that God does not need us) then there is only one reason that God created us: God wants us; God loves us. Henri Nouwen said that

we’re inclined to see our whole existence in terms of ‘quid pro quo’; you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. We begin by assuming that people will be nice to us if we are nice to them; that they will help us if we help them; that they will invite us if we invite them; that they will love us if we love them. ... Everything that Jesus has done, said, and undergone is meant to show us that the love we most long for is given to us by God, not because we deserved it, but because God is a God of love.

     For me what matters about the doctrine of the Trinity is not that it establishes some unchanging formula that defines God once and for all time. What matters about it is that it reminds me that the God who didn’t need us nevertheless chose to create us, chose in Jesus to come among us and chooses in the Holy Spirit to remain with us. The Trinity reminds us that we are wanted by God and loved by God. Which is altogether more important than any point of church dogma could ever be.

May 6 sermon: Our Friend Jesus

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

(John 15:9-17)

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     Anais Nin was a French-Cuban author who died in Los Angeles in 1977. She’s not the sort of author we talk about a lot in church, because some of the writing that made her well known was (shall we say) of the more adult variety, but she touched on a variety of subjects, and somewhere along the way she wrote these words: “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Jesus, in our passage today, is speaking among other things about the value and the importance of friendship. We think of Jesus in many ways – Lord, Saviour, Son of God, Messiah. These are all good and noble titles, but I wonder if there is any more noble title than that of “friend”? To make someone a friend is to make a conscious choice that this person is worthy of being an intimate part of our lives.  As Anais Nin said, to make someone a friend is to – in a sense – create a whole new world just between the two of you. This is the type of relationship that Jesus invites us into. It’s all of those other things I just mentioned – but it’s also a friendship.

     I think we understand that concept in church quitewell. We sing songs like “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” and songs that include words like “Christ calls his people friends,” and we know the type of close, personal and intimate relationship that we’re speaking of with those words. Friendships are sometimes strange things. Most often, sadly perhaps, they’re temporary. They come; they go. The friends we once had we sometimes lose contact with (although precious is the friendship that lasts a lifetime!) but we make new friends as the years go by. In this constant revolution and evolution of friendships, our worlds come and our worlds go; new worlds are created with new friends; old worlds are set aside when some friends move on or when we move on. We all know that. Usually it just happens naturally over the course of time. When I was a young boy from about Kindergarten onward, I had two best friends. Forgive the poor grammar – I know it’s not logically possible to have two “best” friends, but you get the point. For several years the three of us were a team in one way or another. Rick and Greg and Steve. I had lots of other friends, but the three of us were best friends and everybody knew it. We played together at recess and at lunch time. We spent time in each other’s homes. We played street hockey in the winter and baseball in the park in the summer. We all collected hockey and baseball cards and traded them among ourselves. I remember that well! “Wow! You’ve got two Norm Ullmans? I’ve got two Paul Hendersons! Let’s trade!” It wasn’t always an easy relationship. It had its ups and downs. Sometimes all three of us were best friends; sometimes one of us would have a falling out and it would be two friends with one cast outside for a while for some reason. Boys being boys I think I can even remember a couple of times when fists might have been involved with some of the falling outs, but whatever caused the falling out was usually quickly forgotten and set aside and eventually we’d be Rick and Greg and Steve again: best friends. But … time marches on; things change. Eventually Greg moved from Scarborough to Brantford, and after Grade 6 Rick and I went to different schools. The friendships were gone. After all, there was no Facebook or Instagram or texting back in those days. So for each of us one of our worlds ended. Losing them was tough for me. After I graduated from Grade 6 I became the target of the school bully for a couple of years. Grades 7 & 8 were a miserable, isolated and lonely time for me. I think it would have been easier if Rick and Greg had still been around, but still - even without them and even with the bullying – life went on. And eventually new worlds of friendship were born to replace those boyhood friendships, but those friendship with Rick and Greg (or at least the memory of them) still affect me. I think back on them and I realize that although those specific worlds of friendships may have ended, their impact affected me so that they become in some way inevitable parts of whatever new worlds of friendships that I’ve ever formed or that I ever will form. Rick and Greg and I shared a world for a few years. We’re always a part of each other in a way, even though it’s been many, many years since we’ve had any contact.

     But, you know, it would have been nice to have kept them around. I really do believe it would have made those years of bullying a lot easier to handle. And it strikes me that that’s the truly precious thing about Jesus. He’s always around. He doesn’t move away or go off to a different school. He’s just always there. From time to time we might get into a fight with him – and we might even shake our fists at him – but he always declines the opportunity for a dust-up with him, and just tells us “we’ll talk about it when you cool down. I’ll still be here.” If only the bond of our every day friendships with those around us were so simple and yet so strong. In “What A Friend We Have In Jesus,” the question is asked, “Can we find a friend so faithful?” Well, the answer is “no.” We can’t. Jesus’ faithfulness to us is a given, even if our faithfulness to him isn’t always. It’s demonstrated in ways that few of our other friends have ever had to demonstrate. We can be a shoulder to cry on or a sympathetic ear – but the real test of friendship comes when we’re faced with the prospect of having to give something up for the sake of those we claim as friends. Jesus made the point well. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” How many of us would do that – and for whom? Our spouses, our children – I hope for them. But what level of “friendship” is required to make that kind of sacrifice; that kind of commitment? In this passage Jesus is saying that the potential cost of friendship is high; that we need to be prepared to make real sacrifices for those we count as friends. In this era of “Facebook friends” that we’ve never actually met, friendship seems a bit watered down – but from Jesus’ perspective friendship is not something to be taken lightly. It’s too easy for us to get confused about the difference between true friends and mere acquaintances. Jay Leno once said, “Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren’t bad people; they’re just acquaintances.” I want to tell you something – Jesus would drive you to the airport! Jesus would do more! Jesus did more! “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus did that. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,” says John 3:16, and as Paul would write years later in 2 Corinthians 5:14, reflecting upon the meaning and the mystery of the cross and on his own relationship with Jesus: “Christ’s love guides us. We are convinced of the fact that one man died for the people.” He’s our friend, indeed – a friend without equal. George Washington (a man who was known for being cautious in his friendships) once wrote, “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.” Jesus’ friendship for us has been tested by the greatest adversity – the cross! Jesus is a proven friend who is worthy of being called that.

     And what of us? Jesus’ words have a challenge for us as well. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” How do we do what Jesus commanded? Jesus isn’t speaking here about slavish obedience to a set of rules that have to be followed for a friendship to be a friendship. That would be the very opposite of real friendship. Real and true friendship must be freely chosen and freely lived. So when Jesus says to “do what I command you” he’s not talking about obedience to rules, he’s talking about a changed heart. Are we going to do what he commands us by changing our lives and how we view the world and how we treat those around us so that we, too, might finally reach the point of being willing  to sacrifice everything we have for his sake – which means doing it for the sake of those around us, because – frankly – since we call ourselves Christians, any friend of Jesus should be a friend of ours!

     Remember those words of Anais Nin: “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” May we be creating new worlds of friendship all the time, as we befriend the children of God and as we experience the continuing joy of friendship with Jesus!