"THREE IS COMPANY"

Rev. Jim Petersen

1^st Congregational UCC, Great Falls, Montana

                                     MAY 18, 2008                                                      

Text: Matthew 28:16-20;   II Corinthians 13:11-13

Last Sunday was Pentecost, birthday of the church. I know some of you missed the party. My thanks to those of you who did join our Conference and Disciples of Christ delegates at Central Christian Church.  It felt good to fill their sanctuary and worship together.  I am sure Jesus was pleased with this ecumenical birthday party. "That they might all be one," as we quote from the Gospel of John as our UCC motto.

Well, I've got good news for those of you who missed it. We are not done celebrating.  For the Sunday following Pentecost also has a special name, for which we have left our red Pentecost paraments in place before going to green for the long season of Pentecost.

Brothers and sisters, today is Trinity Sunday, which follows Pentecost Sunday on our Christian calendar. Though don't feel bad if you don't have this one down yet, for in the history of the church Trinity Sunday is a late comer to the calendar.  It is hardly 600 years old.

Nevertheless, let me be the first to wish you a happy Trinity.  And if you ask, what does that mean, then you are in for twenty minutes of Trinity.  Or else we are on to our Annual Meeting early.  Sorry, you lose.

Two men are traveling across the country riding in a hot air balloon.  And they are lost.  They look down from their floating perch in the sky and see a fellow walking along a country road.  "Why don't we ask him where we are?" the one says to the other.

So they lower the balloon, get within a few feet of the man, and, in a most unmanly act, ask for directions. "Say, can you tell us where we are?" they yell. The helpful pedestrian shouts back, "You are in a hot air balloon."

Says the one lost traveler to the other, "That man must be an economist.  What he says is absolutely true, but it is of no practical use whatsoever."

Perhaps this joke could be told on theologians as well.  For theologians are often accused of telling us truths which have doubtful practical application.

Take the doctrine of the Trinity, for example.  As someone said, "If you don't believe it you are in danger of losing your soul, but if you try to understand it, you are in danger of losing your mind."

It is true historically as introduced by the Catholic Church not believing in the Trinity was akin to committing blasphemy.  Back in the medieval Church the Trinity was considered a talisman, a protection against the demonic forces.   If you were going off to the crusades you would paint symbols of the Trinity on your shield to protect you from your enemies. 

The Trinity was serious business, so Christians began the practice of genuflecting upon hearing the words, or crossing yourselves as a sign of homage before "the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."

Homage began taking a hammering with the Age of Enlightenment.  In terms of the Trinity it came to fruition with a radical group of Congregationalists, who dumped the Trinity as a doctrine and founded a new denomination called the Unitarian Church.

That was back in the early 1800s, and centered around Harvard University, which the Congregationalists founded as the first college in America.  This free thinking group rebelled from the British law which said believe in the Trinity or go to jail.  Laws like this tend to galvanize free-thinkers.  Especially when you are an ocean away from the authorities.

Though it is said the Unitarians were not as far away from the Trinity as they believed, for they had their own version which went something like, "the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston."

Despite the Unitarians, the concept of the Trinity has survived, for better and for worse, as set to creed by the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.  Some argue it adds more confusion than clarity to our Christian thinking, like James Pike, the noted Episcopal Bishop of California, who said, "We give up!  Get rid of it."

Shortly thereafter Bishop Pike, you may recall, disappeared under mysterious circumstances while on a visit to the Holy Lands, never to be heard of again.  Nobody has drawn any conclusions from this, but neither has anyone since suggested we do away with the Trinity.

So it is still around. It is hanging in the back of our sanctuary, in the Nancy Anne Long tapestry.  Those symbols serve as the Trinity, the crown for God the Father, the chi-rho as the first two letters in the Greek word for Christ, and the flames to represent the Holy Spirit. 

As you pass through these doors at worship's conclusion you are blessed on your way out to the big Montana blue sky by the "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," just as I bless you with my traditional Trinitarian benediction.

But more importantly, each of you began your Christian life blessed in the Trinity, as you were baptized in the name of the "Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."  So you can't really get away from it.  So where does it come from and what does it mean? Or, why do we have a Trinity Sunday anyway?

The Trinity is biblically based.  The origins are in Jesus' "Great Commission," where in the conclusion of Matthew, Jesus sends his disciples into the world to baptize all persons "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."  As I say, right down to you.

Paul, in his closing letter to the Corinthians, concludes with the same Trinitarian formula, a farewell benediction, as he writes, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."  A different order, true, but the same cast of characters.

The Trinity summarizes our belief about God.  It is a theological shorthand for what we as Christians believe.  Obviously the Trinity does not contain God.  The lesser cannot contain the greater.  Nor does the Trinity define God, quite the way geometry defines a triangle or parallelogram.  But the Trinity is a formula which reduces that which is beyond our understanding into something we can hopefully wrap our arms around, if not our minds, and be comforted.

The Trinity is a theological equation which simplifies for us the riddles and wonders of "how great Thou art."  It is like what theoretical physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, said of his science, when somebody asked why he did this, making reference to all the numbers and equations on the blackboard in his office.  Oppenheimer replied, "Because they are so beautiful."

We should appreciate the Trinity in the same way.  It is "so beautiful."  It is a window through which we can see the ineffable beauty of that which we cannot fully comprehend.  But let's try!    

1) First of all, to say God is Father/Mother/Maker of heaven and earth, first person of the Trinity, is to say we believe the world is orderly. 

Truly an affirmation not always apparent in our world, I know, but we get to choose.  There is abundant evidence on both sides.  Is "life a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," as Shakespeare wrote? Or do we affirm, along with the ancient psalmist, "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth"?  (Psalm 8:1)

Is chaos king, or does a loving God rule, who sees to it that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven?  And encourages us to do the same.

4000 years ago, the Jews believed in the Creator God. They expressed their belief in an ingenious poetic form, still sublime today, called the Creation Story, which says God created the world - and everything in it - and then God called it good.   No other people believed like that then.

What it means is God is in charge. Though God "has crowned us a little less than God, and given us dominion over the works of God's hands," (Psalms 8:5-6) to quote the Psalmist again. 

God is in charge.  Therefore, life has order.  And meaning and purpose. Even evil, in God's kingdom, can be used to accomplish God's purpose in the world. For example: the cross of Christ.

To say, "God the Father," is to say this is God's world, and we are God's children.  And all the things that happen to us, even the bad things, can be used by God to help us to grow and become better kids.

Our other choice is to believe we are on our own, and life is a product of circumstances.  So if we fail, we are a failure.  If we sin, we are a sinner.  If we lose, we are a loser.

This is life without grace.  It is called fatalism.  Our fate is determined by the position of the stars, or by predestination, or random selection, or by our environment or genes or family income. Whatever.

But our faith says life is not bondage.  Life is grace.  Which brings us to the second "person" of the Trinity.

2)  Jesus Christ.

Jesus, as the incarnation, the presence, of God in human history, is the grace which sets us free from bondage. Jesus is the Christian Moses delivering us from captivity. We are free to seek God's purpose for our life.

As Paul wrote to the Romans, "If God be for us, who can be against us?  Nothing is able to separate us from the love of God which we saw in Christ Jesus."

Or as Iranaeus, one of the early Christian theologians put it a couple hundred years later, "God became like us so that we can become like God."

Because God came to us in the son of a carpenter, there is now something holy and precious about the least and most humble among us.  The revelation of Christ says, if Jesus is the son of God, then each of us is the son or daughter of God as well.

I tell you, this is the most revolutionary idea in the history of humanity.  It says that Jesus Christ not only reveals God in human flesh, it also reveals that human flesh is capable of godliness.

So from Paul to the Pope, from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King Jr., from John the beloved disciple to John Wesley, the same message has been preached. 

Every person is of worth - each of us a child of God. 

To believe in the second "person" of the Trinity is to believe that God's grace is available to everybody, and that God's grace can "break the power of canceled sin and set the prisoner free."  Alleluia!

3)  And finally, the Holy Spirit, the third "person" of the Trinity.

The same God who created the world, and made it good, the same God who graced the world in Jesus Christ, is still present in God's world today as the Holy Spirit, here to guide God's world and direct God's creation.

It is Jesus' promise in the Gospel of John, "I will not leave you comfortless.  But if I go, I will come to you again." (14:18) And so he does.

You will note in our gospel reading for this morning, it says in Matthew, "Jesus came to the disciples."  In every other place in the gospels, people come to Jesus.  But after the Resurrection, Jesus comes to the people.

This is the grace of God, returning to God's world, following the physical departure of Jesus. We call this presence of God the Holy Spirit, here to comfort us, to encourage us, to goad us, to guide us to do God's will and to live purposeful lives.

We sang William Cowper's hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" prior to this sermon.  Cowper was one of England's great 18th century poets.  He was also a friend of John Newton, the former slave trader who became Rector of the Anglican Church in Olney, England, and who is the composer of everybody's favorite hymn, "Amazing Grace."

Together poet Cowper and rector Newton published a hymnal called Olney Hymns, which included "God Moves in a Mysterious Way."  Cowper suffered depression throughout his life, beginning as a youth.   He tried to commit suicide three times. The third time he should have succeeded.  His survival was so miraculous, Cowper was sure it was God's doing, moving in a mysterious way.

So he wrote this hymn in thanksgiving, including the second stanza, "Ye fearful saints fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread  Are big with mercy, and  Shall break in blessings on your head."

That this happens is the testimony to Cowper's composition.  That cloud which we dread turns out to be a blessing. That which we think will be the end, is a beginning.

One door closes, another opens, for God is "big with mercy."

Which is a mystery to us. We call the mystery the Holy Spirit, the third presence of the same God who created the world in the beginning, who redeemed the world in Jesus Christ, and who is still here to comfort us and guide us as the Holy Spirit.

There are other experiences of God, to be sure.  God is larger than any formula, doctrine or creed. But as Christians we express our experience of God through the Trinity, which proclaims: God as creator, Christ as savior, and the Holy Spirit as everlasting comforter.

Think about this as you pass by our Trinitarian tapestry and depart these sanctuary walls into the approaching summer season.  Remember each one of you, once upon a time, was baptized "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

If this remains incomprehensible to you - don't sweat it!  But do go forth with the grace of God and be yourself a blessing in God's world.

AMEN.