THREE TIMES A SOVEREIGN
Scripture: John 16:12-15
FOCUS: The awesome mystery of the trinity is a window into the unbelievably extravagant mind of God and a source of hope for we who are known and graced by God’s presence power and peace.
Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. We ponder on this day the mysterious truth we proclaim that while we who bear the name of Christ cling fast to the belief that ours is the one true God, we also acknowledge the truth that God relates to us as three unique persons or manifestations. To those who have never experienced the varied presence, who have only intellectual curiosity concerning the faith, such truth is incomprehensible. It is certainly a concept around which it is difficult for me to get my head. It is too big, too wonderful for my little mind. Do I fully understand the trinity? No way. Have I experienced the effects and the benefits of this marvelous truth? Absolutely!
The lectionary Psalm for today is one of my favorites. In its nine short, poetic, verses we find a treasure trove of truth as the psalmist ponders some of God’s most wonderfully unfathomable acts.
1 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
A comic strip shows a young boy looking out the window at the starry sky. He asks his father, "Daddy, who made the stars and what's after the last one?" In the next panel the father says something like, "God made them, but little boys shouldn't worry about what's beyond the farthest star." In the comic's last frame the father and mother are in bed. The mother is peacefully asleep and the father stares wide-eyed out the window at the stars. I can identify with that dad.
For the most part we live our lives as if our world is all there is. For that matter, we tend to live as if our community is the whole universe, or at least the largest part of it. Of course science teaches otherwise. If David was amazed by the starry sky, we ought to be exponentially more amazed. I imagine David lying out with his sheep in the field on a clear summer evening. In those days before the advent of artificial light pollution, the sky would have been absolutely on fire with millions of brilliant points of light. For David a sense of wonder sprang from the premise that the countless tiny dots of light in the night sky were pinholes in a dome shaped ceiling above the earth, miniscule portals into the heavenly abode of God. Such a thought is truly wonderful, but replace that theory with the knowledge about the night sky which science has since taught us and the enormity of God’s power and creative ability truly defies comprehension.
Consider a few facts. According to NASA our galaxy alone contains 100 billion stars of which the sun is the closest. It has been calculated that traveling in a jet plane, it would take 5 million years to get to the next closest star in our galaxy. And ours is one of perhaps as many as 500 billion galaxies, the next closest of which is so far away, perhaps 2 million light years, that despite the fact that it includes more stars than our own galaxy, it is no brighter than a relatively unspectacular star in our night sky.
To give us a relative frame of reference consider the fact that if our universe were the size of North America, our solar system would be the size of a quarter, Alabama would be the size of a single molecule of dust on that quarter and each of us would be no bigger than a a quark, one of the subparticles which combine to create the various particles found in atomic nuclei. If such thoughts don’t humble you just a bit there is something disturbingly out of sync in your ego. The psalmist looked at the sky, saw the stars and was in awe. He was struck by the relative insignificance of his existence. Sure, he was a king, yes he had defeated a giant with nothing more than a slingshot, true he was both a skilled musician and a decorated military leader. Yet in his wisdom David recognized that in the big picture he was but a quark, less than a speck of dust, and so are you.
So, I guess we might as well just pack up, go home and be depressed by our total and complete insignificance. After all, compared to David we are nothing, and by God’s standard David was just a speck. But wait there is more. Order now and you will get, absolutely free, a wonderful bit of good news. David recognized that God is even more majestic, more wonderful, more awe inspiring than the vastness of the night sky. He affirms the wonderful truth that all the vastness of the known universe and beyond is the work of God’s hand. Then he marvels at the fact that God is mindful of us, that God cares for us, that God has given us responsibility to oversee all things on earth. A responsibility which, by the way, we are prone to ignore!
I cannot fully comprehend the vastness of the universe, or even of our solar system or this earth for that matter, but I am in awe of it, and am amazed and humbled by the reality of it all. So it is when it comes to the way God has chosen to interact with us. I can’t fully comprehend the whole trinity thing, but I am in awe of it, am amazed by it, am deeply humbled by it, and I know it to be real because I have experienced it. We all experience daily things we do not fully comprehend don’t we? I don’t understand air conditioning, but I am sure glad we have it these days and I use it without reserve. I don’t understand, as do some of you, all the intricacies of the workings of an internal combustion engine, but I drive my car every day. I guess you could even say that I have faith in those things, not because I understand them but because I have experienced their activity.
If you seek to wander about in the academic wilderness you could spend years pondering the difference between economic and ontological theories concerning the trinity. Numerous scholars are known for doing just that. Such an endeavor is not inherently wrong unless one comes to the point that the intellectual inquiry overpowers the spiritual experience. Don’t get me wrong, as many of you know, I am one who believes strongly that if we were not intended to be about intellectual pursuits we would not have been created with brains or active minds. And I do like to read theology and debate theory. But the Christian faith is meant to be experiential. All the theory in the world does no good if we miss out on the experience, all the debate over the exact nature of the trinity is of no use until we come to honor the Creator, to accept as Lord of our lives the Son and to daily turn to the Holy Spirit for direction, comfort and strength.
Now I know how some of your minds work and how mine does. If I were sitting where you are I would probably already be searching on my phone for economic and ontological Trinitarian theories, so I’ll just go ahead and give them to you, the short versions that is. The ontological Trinitarian theory focuses on who God is while the economic theory focuses on what God does. Most Christians believe the economic reflects and reveals the ontological. Catholic theologian Karl Rahner went so far as to say "The 'economic' Trinity is the 'ontological' Trinity, and vice versa."
So what does all that mean for us as we walk through daily life? The simple answer is that it means everything. For we who seek to be the children of God we are called to be it is imperative, not that we fully understand the theory, but that we experience the wonder of the Trinity. What matters is not whether we can completely explain the way it works, rather that we open ourselves to its movement in our lives. If we allow ourselves to become so consumed by the theoretical pursuit that we fail to experience the presence we are like one who refuses to turn on the air conditioner until he can fully comprehend all the schematics, can explain the chemical reaction which cools the air, can describe the process of dehumidification and can write a dissertation on electrical power.
Notice what Jesus said in verse 12 of our text. “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now.” Those words resonate with me as I consider how we relate to the various manifestations of the Trinity. Jesus understood that some of the truth he came to reveal would be hard to comprehend, perhaps even impossible, at least for a time. But that did not mean that it was any less the truth.
As I consider the workings of God in and around my life I can say without hesitation that I have experienced and been blessed by each of the three Godly personalities. I have been deeply moved on numerous occasions as I have found myself immersed in the beauty and majesty of the worldly order created by God the Father. Standing on the top of a mountain in the Blue Ridge range, overlooking lush forests teaming with wildlife I have been left speechless by the quiet beauty. Walking in the sand at the edge of the Gulf I have been awestruck by the vastness of the waters that lie before me and have marveled at the notion that we have been given dominion over all of God’s earthly creation. I have experience the awesome presence of God the Father, the Creator of life.
I wonder how many tears the Father God has shed over the environmental debacle which is the oil spill in those very waters. As I watch the heartbreaking stories on the TV I cannot help being struck by the realization that while we have been charged by the creator to act as stewards of creation, humankind has so often acted more like ruthless occupiers than loving stewards. While none of us are calling the shots at BP or at the EPA, all of us, myself certainly included, are guilty to some degree of poor stewardship when it comes to God’s environment. We fill landfills with stuff we ought to recycle. We drive in gas guzzling vehicles with far more power than we will ever need to places to which we could walk or car pool. We purchase disposable everything simply because it is convenient, failing to consider the impact such consumption has on our landfills.
As I ponder such matters I am reminded of what God told Adam and Eve in the garden. In some translations we find the word dominion which I think is an unfortunate choice, for to our modern ears such tends to imply control and dominance. I think The Message reflects more what the creator intended when we read, “God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth." I hear the creator saying to me, to you, to governments and to corporations, “It is time to be responsible.”
I have experienced the presence of Christ Jesus in many different ways. One of the things I find particularly meaningful about the traditions of the Methodist denomination is the way that our emphasis on the liturgical year reminds us repeatedly of the story which is at the heart of our faith. The presence of Christ seems to be ever near as we celebrate Advent each year, as we remember the events in the upper room on Maunday Thursday, as we rejoice on Easter, as we gather for Holy communion each month. Taking bread and juice, I often feel the presence of Christ. As I read, study and meditate on the Gospels, as I gather for Bible study with some of you, the one whose life is chronicled there comes near and speaks to me.
Finally, I have experienced God’s presence through the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the One who comes to us in these later days and walks with us as we journey through life. In our scripture we read that the Spirit who will come is the Spirit of truth. Sometimes the Spirit has come as I have prayed about some decision. Sometimes the Sprit has come during an especially meaningful service of worship. Sometimes the Spirit has come when I was not expecting it. On occasion that persistent Spirit has come even as I was trying to run away from it. And when the Spirit comes It always leads me in right paths and guides me back to the truth, whether I want to go or not.
The Trinity. It is a holy mystery. It is that which both creates and brings meaning to life. The trinity is that which brings hope to the desperate and salvation to the lost. It is both the source and the sustenance of all life. How exactly does it all work? Alice Knotts, a United Methodist pastor in California said it well in the devotional Kathy and I read yesterday morning. Knotts wrote “The creator gives us identity. Jesus’ love gives us peace, hope and new life. The Holy Spirit brings the gift of truth.”
In this life I may never fully understand the wonder of the trinity. But I have experienced it and so can you. All you need do is open yourself to its coming. For your sake and for the sake of the kingdom of God, let it be so. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
