Trinity - Does it matter what we believe?

TRINITY SUNDAY – 16^th June 2019

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8  •  Romans 5:1-5  •  John 16:12-15

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…. And welcome to Trinity Sunday.  The “sign of the cross” is just one of the things that we do which testifies to the Trinity.   But when did it start and where does it come from?  Is the Trinity a Church doctrine or is it Biblical?

In Matthew 28:19 Jesus says to his disciples, “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,”   It is there in the Bible, however, I have come across some, who claim to be Christian yet reject the Trinity.  While grateful for their challenge, I usually find that there are other vital facts about our faith that they also reject.  This has taught me that it is essential that we know what we believe and why.  What we believe is Good News, truth and sets us free.  God sent His son, Jesus, to give his life to redeem us. It comes at a price, which shouldn’t be dismissed.  The Good News needs to be safe-guarded.

Right here and now we live in a time when many think like John Lennon, “Imagine no religion. It’s easy if you try. Nothing to live or die for. Above us only sky”.   This is what some believe.  And many Christians who aren’t too worried about the finer details - after all, God is love and he forgives and saves – so does any of it really matter?

Actually it really does matter and it was because it matters that the Doctrine of the Trinity was created.  It may be a church doctrine but every aspect is firmly grounded in scripture and it was formulated for the safe-guarding of the Good News of our faith.

For those who don’t know, the Doctrine of the Trinity was not formally mentioned until the late second century when Theophilus of Antioch mentioned a trinity consisting of God, Word, and Wisdom.  We know Jesus is the word of God and one of the aspects of the Holy Spirit is wisdom.  Yet this version or understanding of the Trinity is not correct and it wasn’t until much later in the fourth century that our formalization of Biblical truth would be written as our creed.

Our first reading today speaks of wisdom and personifies it.  The literary form is poetic personification of a characteristic.  Apparently this is a verse that Jehovah Witnesses use to argue against the doctrine of the Trinity, stating that this is referring to Jesus, and in the text it speaks of wisdom being created by God, therefore they would argue that Christ was created and separate.   https://www.equip.org/article/who-is-wisdom-in-proverbs-8/

Our first reading is simply telling us that when discerning any truth we need divine wisdom.  And we learn that God’s wisdom is far beyond human wisdom.   I would like for us to just for now hold onto the final line, where we see wisdom rejoicing in God’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race.  Why?  Because in the light of so much that we can get wrong, the heresies, the sin, the war and the chaos, this firstly tells us that God is wise and that in His wisdom there is a plan of goodness and victory.  There in the poetry of this reading we find the echoes of God’s love and sovereignty.

In the fourth century, a young Deacon, Athanasius, articulated the Trinity in defence of a heresy being presented by a priest by the name of Arius.  What Athanasius articulated formed the Nicene Creed, which is basically what we proclaim when we affirm the faith of the Church.  We believe in one God…. Etc..   What I note as I go through the creed is that everything that is proclaimed can be proved by scripture.  https://tumi.org/images/nicene-creed-scripture.pdf

Though the term “Trinity” is not used, the evidence of God the father, the son and the Holy Spirit are there all through both the Old and New Testaments.  Can we accept it without really explaining it?  Simply put we believe in One God- One in essence - but three distinct persons.

Recently I’ve been teaching children about beat and rhythm.  I was explaining to them that we can clap the beat and say the rhythm – the rhythm is made up of sounds and sometimes two sounds = one beat and sometimes four sounds equal one beat… and it occurred to me that this is probably as confusing to them as the concept of the Trinity.  How can one God be three persons?

From the beginning of John’s Gospel we read; “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Just in case you were in any doubt.  In verse 14 we also read, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…”.

A diagram that has been used to describe the trinity shows that God is…. And The father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God… but the father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit is not the Son or the father, and the Son is not the father or the Holy Spirit… Jesus sends the Spirit and prays to the father and now sits at the right hand of the father.  From Matthew 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only”.

While it is clear about the deity of Christ, it is also clear there is a distinction in persons of the God-head.

Can human minds comprehend God? 

Jesus knew that it was all too much for his disciples to understand which is why he promised to send the Holy Spirit.  It seems to me that an encounter with the Holy Spirit is what is needed to be able to really understand anything of God.  Remember Paul?  He was struck down and asked who are you Lord?  He was zealous for God before that encounter – and zealously persecuting God’s people, confident in his belief or even, shall we say, wisdom – but his belief was an error, and his human wisdom was folly.

Many people will say that they believe in God.  They aren’t sure about a lot of things, but they suppose that there is a God – but do we realize that the disciples and Paul all believed in God and were powerless without the Holy Spirit?  

When it comes to knowing doctrine and understanding things about God, the disciples had the very best teacher – they had Jesus, but even Jesus says to them that they can’t bare the things that he needs them to know.   He tells them that when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide them into all the truth.

We are living in times that are challenging us, as Christians, to say what we believe about things that we’ve never had to talk about before.  How can we reach out to the world around us in true wisdom?  Only through an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

The church of the future is so very in need of the Holy Spirit.  We are the Church, therefore each of us is so very much in need of the Holy Spirit.  We all need to be consciously asking God to out pour His Holy Spirit on us, because I’m more than sure, a time of great challenge is headed our way… and is already here.  Jesus has sent us His Holy Spirit – past tense!   But is it possible, that it is like a gift we’ve received that is yet to be unwrapped…. Or maybe it has been unwrapped and then put aside while the worries of life take our focus away?

It wasn’t enough for those early Christians to just believe in Jesus and know they were going to heaven.  Jesus knew they needed His Holy Spirit and assured them and exhorted them many times before they did actually receive the Holy Spirit…. And so I say to you/ myself and every Christian – RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT!

Jesus knew a time of persecution was coming for the disciples and the Holy Spirit would be essential.  But is any time any different?  Every life has its challenge, whether personal or as a group or church.  We are always in danger of losing our hope and getting things very wrong, but with the Holy Spirit we know that challenge actually sharpens us and as our Romans reading tells us, suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 

How is the love in your heart going today?  We know from the Gospel of Matthew that because of the increase of wickedness and false teachings, the love of some will grow cold.  How do we safe guard against this?  We need the Holy Spirit.  And why is it said that God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit?  Why love?

Those things that challenge us threaten our love more than anything.  When we need to stand against false teaching, accusations of hate is often the first thing of which we will be accused, and Jesus command is to love.  Also, any of us can easily get it wrong.  We need to be loving with each other but not compromising on the truth.  That section at the end of creed that speaks about believing in the one holy catholic church does not refer to the Roman Catholic Church, but to God’s church which has no denominational tag.  Catholic means Universal.

Understanding the association with challenging beliefs and heresies, and our celebration of the Trinity, one question keeps begging an answer – that question is; Does it matter?  Does it matter what we believe? 

At the core of Christianity is GOOD NEWS, truth, love and freedom. So I ask you, do these things matter?

When God’s love is poured into our hearts we will know what matters and what doesn’t. Exactly describing the Trinity does not matter so much as believing in one God, the father the almighty, God the Son - the word who was with God in the beginning and IS God. And the Holy Spirit of God who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who is sent to live in us.  This is important- This is vital.  Why?

The whole world is asking if and why it matters, and telling us that religion divides. Imagine all the people living for today – it is an old song, but from Eastern mysticism to Islam and from Hinduism to voodoo and witchcraft, does it really matter what we believe?  Hopefully you can see that it does, because some beliefs ARE NOT life-giving.  In the New Testament St. Paul had to stand against various “Not quite right beliefs” and one of them was that Jesus was not really bodily raised from the dead.  These were Christian folk who were believers in God and figured that it was okay to believe this slight difference.  St. Paul’s reply was..; 1 Corinthians 15:19 –“ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. The reason being that they had diminished the Gospel & TRUTH.  Jesus is the way, the TRUTH and the life.

We can say that to some extent anyone who believes in God, shares our belief in God almighty, and many times they do, but Christianity stands completely apart from any other religions in that while all other faiths strive to achieve perfection, our perfect God did for us, what we could not do for ourselves and became one of us and died to give us life.  As our Romans reading declares, “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” and Jesus has also said that no one comes to the father, except through the son.

One of the travesties of our modern age is that we’ve allowed ignorance of history.  Jesus Christ is thought by a many to be no more than a myth.  Jesus was an historical person of flesh and blood.  He was written about by his followers in the Gospels, but also in many other early sources and most notably by 1st century Jewish historian, Josephus.  Most notably because this is a non-Christian source verifying some aspects about the person we know as Jesus the Son of God.  For the critics to dismiss belief in God and the Holy Spirit is one thing, but to dismiss Jesus is another altogether.  He existed! 

So very, very many people want to dismiss or diminish our faith, and over the years we have given them more and more ground, but on this day we remember that misunderstandings and false teachings have always been around and they cause us to question what it is we do believe and whether it is worth taking a stand for our faith.

Jesus Christ is the visible expression of God.  Jesus was flesh and blood… fully human, yet fully God.  It was because of His claim about himself that the religious of his day crucified him.  But proving himself true, he rose from the dead – He appeared to his disciples and ate with them.  His law is love – he gave a new commandment to love one another as he loved us.  Love does no harm to another.  His sacrifice brought us new life and peace and unity with the father and then He sent us his Holy Spirit to be with us always.

There are many more things that need to be said to make clear the Good News about our faith, but as Jesus said, 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.

That gift of the Holy Spirit, we need to take off the shelf and properly unwrap.  No wonder the writer of proverbs speaks of wisdom delighting in the human race.  It seems that wisdom was looking down the tunnel of time and seeing the whole plan of God.  There is victory, where we could see none, beginning with the Good News of salvation and continuing in the out pouring of the Holy Spirit.  May we be every day and every moment aware of the extreme Good News of our faith which is a plan unfolding from the beginning of time …. A plan that unfolds in the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – Amen – so be it!