What is the nature of God?
Does the "Trinity" really matter?
Sermon on: Matthew 28:16-20
Date: 6/2/96
Tape Number: 112
George Byron Koch
Gospel lesson for today:
Matthew 28:6 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain
where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but
some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely
I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
I read recently the observation that 1600 years ago Gregory of Nyssa
complained that you couldn't go to the market, the bank or the baths without
getting caught in an argument about whether God the Son was equal to or less
than God the father. In 393 this was the hot topic. By 493, and continuing to
today, it is not.
Today is Trinity Sunday. It is that Sunday of the Church year when we are
asked to look seriously at this idea of the Trinity: three in one; one in three.
It's an idea easily rejected. Some would quote, as do the Jews in every
synagogue service, the She'-ma from Dt 6:4:
"Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."
Even Jesus says this prayer in Mk 12:29. And nowhere in the Bible is the term
"trinity" even used. Unitarians, Jews, and other "strict"
monotheists would say God cannot be divided. Others would say God shows many
faces to the peoples of the world - what sense is there pretending to restrict
God to only three? - such a God is too small.
And still many more, perhaps most of us, would ask the sensible question -
does this really matter? Isn't our call really to serve God in the world? Why
get bogged down in such abstruse doctrine and theology - there is work
to do!
If we are honest, we have to acknowledge that this is not an idle question.
It is a serious challenge.
So today I'd like to really engage the idea seriously. I beg your indulgence
in taking it seriously. This will not be brief, so settle in.
Let's start with the Bible. In the New Testament there are 24 explicit
references to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, spoken of together and acting in
concord. Jesus today, in the Gospel, specifically commands his disciples to
spread the Gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. It doesn't matter if we label this "trinity," it's
pretty clear that these three go together.
In Genesis 1:26, it says,
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness... So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them.
This passage also suggests, by the way, in spite of the masculine pronouns,
that God is not male, since both male and female were created in God's image.
When he visited Abraham to announce that Sarah would become pregnant, he is
described as appearing as three men.
Genesis 18:1 The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat
at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three
men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet
them, and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said,"My lord, if I find favor
with you, do not pass by your servant.
There are other examples. Even in the She'-ma, which comes from Deuteronomy
6:4 (and which Jesus quotes in Mark 12:29):
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
the word for one is the Hebrew echad, which can denote both singleness
and a ‘composite' one, like three strands of a rope.
Here are some examples of this word echad:
Genesis 2:24: Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings
to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Genesis 11:6 And the LORD said,"Look, they are one people, and
they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do;
nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Genesis 27:44 And tarry with him a few days, until thy brother's
fury turn away;
Ezekiel 37:16-17, when two sticks in Ezekiel's hand become "one:"
16 Mortal, take a stick and write on it, "For Judah, and the
Israelites associated with it"; then take another stick and write on it,
"For Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with it"; 17 and
join them together into one stick, so that they may become one in
your hand.
So to be simple the Bible says that God is three in one; three persons, in
relationship, but one God - much as we might say that this church, Resurrection,
is many persons, each with distinct gifts and ministry, but one congregation. It
makes decisions, in relationship, and acts as Resurrection. Gifts to our food
pantry may come from a handful of individuals, but they are given by
Resurrection. In fact we would feel wrong somehow in labeling each can or box of
food with the name of the person who brought it in. We give as one body, as one
church, as one family. The personal and communal aspects of our life as
Christians cannot be pulled apart. They are one whole.
This is taught strongly by Jesus, strongly by the early church.
The genius of the trinity is that it teaches that this kind of communal
relationship is not incidental, but rather it is the very nature of God.
The creator is not impersonal but personal, already in relationship in his
fundamental nature. God's nature is a person related to other persons.
The doctrine of the trinity says that God does not exist except as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Apart from the divine persons, there is no God.
Together, these three persons, in relationship, are one God.
Our creation, our origin as people, is in a creator who is not solitary but
already in relationship - in relationship before the universe even came into
being. And we are persons, we are defined, by virtue of our relationship with
one another. It is how we are created.
And so in our communion with each other, we recognize the uniqueness of how
we are each created, but we are bound together in one whole as the body of
Christ.
And so when God said,
"Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...
it included this fundamental characteristic of God - relationship. We are
created to be in relationship, in communion with one another. Not as loners
complaining about everyone else, but engaged with and a part of everyone else.
We are called to share with each other our joys and sorrows, our pain, our
faith, and our uncertainty. This is why we are here. It is of the nature of God.
Two Questions
Now, if you have wrestled with this idea of trinity, as I'm certain many of
you have, two questions are likely to have arisen - among others - in your
wrestling: What does it matter? and To whom do I pray?
One the first point, why do I care whether it's three persons and one God, or
perhaps one God who appears in different forms, or who I simply perceive
as three based on different actions, but who is actually just one - the
Eternal, cosmic, ONE. This is in fact the position of one early group of
Christians, and is one of the first heresies condemned by the church. It is also
the position of some modern groups - the Oneness Pentecostals, for instance, who
believe Jesus is actually all three "forms" of the Godhead, in
disguise. Or the Unitarians, as well as Religious Science and Unity,
Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, the Theosophists, and many other
eastern-leaning churches and virtually all new age groups. There view is of one
cosmic eternal Mind or Creator, who sends forth messengers to earth: Krishna,
Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, others - but they are all one, all from the same one
source. This has a certain simplicity and intellectual appeal, quite apart from
the fact that it is dead wrong.
On the second point: if there are three persons here in this God, to which
one do I pray? It's a somewhat smaller version of the problem many Roman
Catholics have in figuring out which saint to pray to for intercession, based on
the need: St. Christopher for travel, Mary for motherhood, or at the time of
death, etc. There is, by the way, nothing in the bible that permits or
encourages us to pray to dead human beings, saints or otherwise.
And it's a much smaller version of the problem that Hindus and other nature
religions have, where there are hundreds or even millions of individual gods,
any one of which - or many of which - you may have angered and need to
propitiate, to make happy.
God doesn't permit this, by the way. Remember:
Exodus 20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me. 4
You shall not make for ourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is
in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
Let's take the latter issue first: to whom do you pray? If God is
three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, (or creator, redeemer and
sustainer), which one do I pick for a given problem, or to which to offer
praise? It's clear that some of us pray to each of these three: to the Father,
in the Lord's prayer, and probably at many other times. To Jesus, sometimes in
immediate crisis or thankfulness: "help me Jesus" or "thank you
Jesus." And to the Holy Spirit, as in, "come Holy Spirit."
At other times we may ask God (usually meaning the Father) to send the Holy
Spirit, something of course which Jesus said he would ask the Father to do.
Confused? And if you choose the wrong member of the Trinity to pray to, does
your prayer get lost, like a letter with a bad address or a misrouted phone
call? Is there a "dead prayer office"?
On this issue, I would rest easy, and not worry at all. We pray to one God.
God hears our prayers. And whether we've directed it specifically to one member
of the trinity or not won't affect its being answered. God will act as needed.
Praying to God is perhaps like calling a company that really cares about its
customers. Even if you reach the wrong department, no one ever responds by
saying, "It's not my job." They help you anyway, regardless, and
either help you personally or assure that you are helped until you are
satisfied.
So don't worry about to whom you pray.
But does this mean that this trinity stuff doesn't matter after all, since
God can sort it all out even if I don't accept or believe it? No. The fact that
God can sort out our prayers doesn't mean we should be casual about his nature.
First of all, as I've said, relationship is fundamental to who and what God
is, and it is therefore in the very nature of we who were created to be
in God's image. We need to comprehend the enormity of this fundamental truth
about ourselves: we are created to be in relationship.
Secondly, if God is really only One, appearing to be three, showing off three
faces, but still only One person, consider the consequences: today's gospel
is a lie. If God only pretended to be Jesus, and also only pretended to be
human - which was the heresy of the gnostics and the docetists - then he didn't
really suffer. He only pretended to, and our faith is in a savior who only
pretended to suffer and die for us - who only pretended. A liar. A fake.
A priest I know recounted this story at a clergy retreat: she was in an
airport, and went into a bar to get change for a twenty dollar bill. The
bartender, handing the change to her, held it back, and seeing her collar,
asked, "Can you explain the trinity to me?"
What an opportunity! Here was a soul, hungry for truth and understanding,
asking to be taught so that he might understand and come to believe. Many of us
pray for opportunities like this.
She said, "Oh, just think of God as an actor on a stage. He wears
different masks. Sometimes Father, sometimes Son, sometimes Holy Ghost."
She took her change and left.
She laughed in telling the story and said someone later told her she had
skirted somewhat near the "modalist" heresy. Actually, she'd spoken it
quite clearly. She left a man believing God was just acting, pretending to be
different persons. Not exactly the sort of being to whom you'd want to dedicate
your life. And not anything like Jesus says he is. Right doctrine matters
eternally, and she should have been on her knees confessing, not laughing.
Here's why it matters: if Jesus isn't who he said he is, he's a liar. Or his
followers are liars. They made him up and died as martyrs for their own fiction.
Further, if God only pretended to become man, pretended to live among us as
fully human, and pretended to suffer and die as humans do, then God is a fake.
If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, as the firstborn of all who die, then
we are dead in our sins. As Paul said in 1 Cor 15:17 -
"And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are
still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all
men."
We are to be pitied.
And in John 3:16, the most famous passage in the New Testament, it says,
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
If the Son is not a separate person, given to us as an act of love, but only
a "mode" or "face" of God, again it is just a fake, a fraud.
Nothing has really been given. But God, out of his love for us, his
creatures, actually did let Jesus suffer and die for us. It was a true gift, a
real and hurtful sacrifice - God grieved - not just a deception to make us love
him.
And Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to us, the comforter and
sustainer, to live with us and in us, to lead us into all truth, and guide us
toward greater love and holiness. Did Jesus just send himself: change costumes
and come back as the one he had promised to send?
The doctrine that we assert, and which really matters, is spelled out clearly
in the Nicene Creed. It is based clearly on what Jesus taught about himself, the
Father and the Holy Spirit. We believe that God, truly God, in the person of the
Son, became incarnate, was made man, truly human, when he was born, through the
power of the Holy Spirit, to Mary. He wasn't faking it. God loved his creatures
so much that he became one of them, lived as one of them, suffered and died as
one of them, and then overcame death through his resurrection. It was not just
an act.
So - the trinity is vitally important doctrine. It is essential to our faith
as Christians. Without it, we have a gospel which is a pack of lies and a God
who is a faker, a pretender, and who never loved us enough to suffer or
sacrifice for us.
But we do have a God who loves us, and who suffered - and suffers - on
our account. Who sacrificed - and who sacrifices - for us. Let us not deny the
magnitude of the gift by denying the nature of the God who makes this possible:
three persons in one God.
From this trinity, these three persons in one God, we get our very nature -
relationship - and we learn the nature of love for one another: in true love,
there is sacrifice and, often, willing suffering. This selflessness is the stuff
of love, and the stuff of God.
And so when Jesus sends the disciples out to the whole world, proclaiming the
Gospel, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he is not
promoting a new theology, he is sending them to help the world understand the
nature of God, which is loving relationship - and he call all of us into it,
both with each other and with the God whose nature is loving relationship.
We were created for relationship, and if we are willing, we are adopted into
a family full of affection, whose very nature is loving relationship. This is
what the family of God is all about. In Matthew 28, Jesus sends each of us out
into the world, to demonstrate saving love, and bring new members into the
family of love.
Have you invited anyone this week to join the family? Are you living out a
loving relationship in this family of Christ? Are you here to show your love to
your brothers and sisters, and to give them the chance to show it to you?
Remember, always remember, it is what Jesus told us to do. It is who we were
created to be.
Love
God, neighbor and enemy. 
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