The Trinity

The Trinity.

This is perhaps the stickiest subject in Christianity, possibly because it is the most other-worldly.  That is, it is the thing about the nature of God that seems to be the most difficult to get our heads around, precisely because it is the matter that is the least like the things we see around us.

Think about this for a second.  Consider the following.  Jesus was a great believer in teaching with parables.  That is, he would use the things we see around us on a daily basis to explain the things that
we can't possibly understand.  He would use lost coins, wandering sheep, pearls in the ocean and money buried in a field, all to talk about the kingdom of God.  He would discuss himself as a good shepherd, as the door to the sheep pen, as the vine whilst we are the branches.  All good stuff, because it uses things that we know to explain what we don't.

But somewhere that Jesus doesn't use images, doesn't use metaphor or simile, doesn't use parables, is with the Trinity.  Now, obviously, if it was as simple as giving it the shamrock shake, or as straightforward as explaining it like an egg, then he would have.  But he doesn't.  These are all things that we have had to use ourselves to try to explain the Trinity, but because they aren't divine, they are going to have problems, and they're going to break down.

The Trinity is by its very nature not of this world.  Understanding the big questions about it, asking who Jesus is talking to when he prays, asking how the Holy Spirit fits into everything, well, that's all complicated, to be sure, and it resists our efforts to rapidly find a way to explain it in terms of things we get, and things we understand readily.  The reason, once again, being that it exists outside what we have around us at hand.

The absolute best way I've ever heard it explained is from Dorothy Sayers, who talks about the mind of the maker, being a discussion of the nature of God as understood through the lens of the creative process.  Dorothy Sayers herself was an author, both of fiction and of nonfiction, and her understanding that she used was to talk about God as being someone who made things, like we write or compose or create.  And understanding creation in that way would help to clarify the difficulty we see in explaning the Trinity while we are stuck in this world.

Think of this world as a play.  Think of this world as a play, conceived by an author, and produced on a stage. Now try to imagine the world from the point of view of the characters, not of the actors.  Try to imagine the world that the characters are living in, and trying to explain to them that the world they see around them is fake, that it is a simulation of the real world, but that it isn't anything real.  Oh sure, the set seems real to them, they're acting as though it is, but it's not.  This isn't the real world.  Now, imagine telling the characters who are in the play that there is a real world out there, a world not made out of crepe paper and styrofoam, a world where the trees are made of wood, not of papier mache.  What would they feel to learn that there was a real world where the sun gave light instead of Frenells.  How would they feel to learn that there was a world beyond the proscenium, where there were people who watched the play for an hour and then left, and went to a world that wasn't locked to the size of a stage, but was the size of the entire world, where they could go where they wanted, do what they wanted, where they could go and see other plays, and even be in plays themselves!  Imagine how they characters would react if you told them that out there, somewhere in a world beyond the limits of the stage, was an author who had conceived of their entire world, who had written their lines of dialogue, and who had worked out what was going to happen long before the play was rehearsed.

How would those characters react?  how would they see their place in the world knowing that this is the case?  Would they be able to understand the concept of the author?  What if the author, who was also a director, starred in the play himself, and was able to tell them about the world that was to be found outside?  What would they do?  How would they take it?  It's not as small as you think it is, either, not really.  It's far more complicated than you think it is, given that the characters in the play would have no idea what it was like to be born, to grow up, to have children, to eat real food and drink real drinks, any of these things that we go through in the course of our lives?  How would they take it?  Odds are, they couldn't possibly conceive of it.

That's what we have in the Trinity.  We have the author, who conceived of the play as God the Father, creating the world and the people in it essentially out of nothing.  Then we have the director, God the Spirit, who tells the characters what the author has in mind.  He gives direction, and guides the members of the chorus, the leads, everyone in a real way to ensure that the play goes the way it was supposed to.  and then we have the actor, God the Son, the one who enters into the world of the play, and who lives according to its rules.  The tragic hero, the one who suffers, the one who dies, and as far as the other characters know, dies for real.  In their world, he perishes.

But here's the score.  The actor, the son, knows of a larger world out there.  He knows of a bigger world out there not limited to the stage, not limited to the world that is stuck beneath the lights.  He knows of a world that is lit by the sun, the world that he came from, and the world that he is going back to.  And he has promised that one day he will make it so that the characters playing in that play, not the actors but the characters, who only exist in that play, will be able to walk off that stage and into the real world, where they can choose where they want to go and what they want to say.  No lines, no script, just life.

How would they take it?  Well, we assume that they'd take it well, but were' not basing that on anything.  More likely than not, they wouldn't believe it, or would find there was no way for them to imagine it.  Everything that the Son could do to tell them about the world he had come from would be confusing for them, because it would sound like their world, but would be impossible for them to conceive of.  There would be only so much that the Son, the actor in the play could do to explain the situation to them by relating it to what they see around them, before saying that there is ultimately so much that they could never ever work out, so they'll have to take what he says on faith.

For us, the Trinity works like that.  We have the Lord our God who made everything, who fashioned the world out of nothing, and placed it here, in this universe.  This wasn't where it had to be, but this is where he chose it to be.  He made the world, and made the rules that govern the world. He placed it into the universe, and chose how it was going to work . Then he placed into it the people that he was going to love and cherish, that he was going to watch work and grow.  And then they sinned, and caused the destruction of the world around them.

So God sent his son into the world, to take on flesh and dwell among us, to live as we live, to grow as we grow, to exist goverend by the rules that he had made yet had never been bound by, he placed himself into this world and lived and died based on rules that he absoultely did not need to follow.  But he did so becuase he loves and cares for us, and wants us to break us out of the stage, away from the death that awaits us, and into the real world that until now only he has known.  What is that real world?  It's too hard for him to explain, because it's far far beyond what we can imagine.  The characters in a novel can't imagine what it is like off a page.  The characters in a movie can't imagine what it's like to be anywhere but on film.  We can't really conceive of heaven.  And we can't conceive of a God who made everything entering into human history to guide and redeem us.

But that's the story of the scriptures.  And to be a Christian means that you know that it's not just the story of the scriptures, it's the story of us.  It's our story as children of God and people who are in history.  That means that the creeds aren't the story of creation and redemption and sanctification of the human race, or of Israel, or of the disciples, they're our story too.  The dogma is the drama, and it's the drama of humanity.  It's the drama of our story, the story of humanity that lives with God, and cherishes him because of what he has done for us.  It's the story of  God creating you, redeeming you, and making you holy through his means of grace. That's why it's such an important thing to be immersed in - because it's not the story of the past, it's not a dead document.  It's the story of today.  And it's vibrant, burning flame.

Pentecost

The disciples were there, all assembled in one place, and divided tongues of fire were seen over their heads, indicating the presence of the Holy Spirit.  And immediately, all those who were in attendance heard them speaking in their own language.  Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome both Jews and proselytes, all heard the word of God in their own language.

This is one of the best readings in the entire Bible to hear from the front of the church, because it's always a terrifying time to have to read it.  I mean no disrespect to any of our most excellent readers in our congregation, but it's a matter of incredibly difficult, unfamiliar words.  Now, in the church, there are a great number of things that are unfamiliar, tunes that are hard to sing, names that don't come too easily, but the idea is to work through them until our weaknesses become our strengths.  This doesn't work with the goodness that is the Pentecost readings, though.  The pentecost readings are a different beast, given that they are words that sort of come up once and once only.  And good luck getting used to those.

But the sheer difficulty with the words in the pentecost reading is ironic, given that the disciples' words were heard by everyone in their own language, presumably with the words not being overly complicated either.  And this barrier being broken down is something that is of key importance for us as Christians, especially as Lutheran Christians.

You see, for a long time, the Bible wasn't in the hands of the people.  It was only in the hands of the elite.  It resided in the hands of the clergy, the rich, the powerful, and nobody else could get a hold of it, but that wasn't always the way.  I was speaking with a member of the youth group not too long ago who (rightly) pointed out that a long time ago, the Bible was only available in Latin, which nobody spoke.  Of course, we continued our conversation to work out why it would be that the Bible was in Latin in the first place.  Here's a clue - the Latin Bible is called the Vulgate.

Vulgate.  As in vulgar.  As in common, everyday, base.  The Vulgate was an attempt to get the Bible out of Greek into the language that more people would have been speaking and reading at the time. And the New Testament being in Greek was itself an attempt to get the Bible into a language that more people would have been speaking and reading at the time. Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic, but outside of his immediate environs, there wouldn't have been much call for it.

So, Greek was used to get the Bible out there as far as possible.  And when Greek waned, the Bible was Jeromed into Latin, so that more people all over the Roman empire could read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it.  No problem so far, right? Well, here we go, because after a while, the common language of the people changed.  People were speaking English, Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish, but the Bible remained stubbornly Latin.  The Bible was so stubbornly Latin, actually, that people were incinerated to keep it that way, instead of having it be translated into more commonly spoken languages.  So what was the point?

We, in the church, we have a way of forgetting, and of applying an element of righteousness to something that was supposed to be utilitarian.  The Bible was in Greek to make it more legibile, but the good people determined that it was intended by almighty God to be in Greek forever.  Then in Latin forever.  And all sorts of things that we do in the church, the things that we hold onto as being relatively important, a lot of those are things that were once for a good reason, a good purpose, that now we hold onto sort of just because.  And that leads to a whole bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.

It's the duty of those in the church to have our own new Pentecost every once in a while.  It's our duty to look at where we are, at what we are doing, and to ask ourselves 'does this make things better, or does it make it worse?  Are we getting our point across better, or have we been missing the mark a whole lot?  And why?

For sure, some things will be a matter of scripture, about which Paul warns us in Galatians 'if anyone, even an angel from Heaven, gives you a gospel different from that which you have received, let him be accursed.'  Okay, good to know.  But that lets us change all the other things instead.

And here is the snag.  We are under semi specific instructions to remove all the barriers to the Christian message as possible.  We are charged to be 'all things to all people that we might win some.'  To be a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greek, to be all things to all people, but to keep the Gospel of the Lord intact.  And yet, it is entirely our temptation to do the opposite.  It's our temptation to keep the wrapper and to toss out the gift.

In this way, we're a little like children.   You know how it is to raise kids, right?  To have a teeny tiny one year old obsess over the wrapping paper, the ribbon, and completely discard the gift?  You know what that's like.  Well, that's us, not to put too fine a point on it.  We're entirely like that.  We love, we adore, the things that come along with the Gospel, the trappings, the ribbon, the outfits, the music, all that stuff, and we love it more than we love the core, the content of the scripture.  Why is that?  well, it's actually not that hard to figure out, you know.  We love it because we made it.  Unlike the Gospel, which was written by the Lord our God himself, the trappings, the bits and bobs that make up the service, or the church structure, or any of that, we claim ownership of that.  That's ours.  We made it, and we place it alongside the Gospel of God, and we say to the world 'these are your gods who brought you out of slavery!'  Yes indeed.

Idolatry, at its source, always seems to end up with the person making the idol as the god that the idol represents.  That's why idols aren't actually all that hard to work out.  When it comes to gods, to the gods of the world, ask yourself how closely they reflect the character of the person who worships them.  Interesting, isn't it.

But you stop me and say 'pastor Jim, surely most Christians would do the same, right?  Most Christians would present to you a version of Jesus that looks an awful lot like them, right?  Well, yes, they likely would.  Now, that doesn't mean that Jesus, the God of the Bible, is an idol, far from it.  That just means that we turn him into one.

Remember the great gift of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit smashed through the masses of layers that the people of God had placed around themselves, the layers that they had made over the years, and reminded them, through whatever means that he had to, that the kingdom of God wasn't all about the things that they had made themselves, but was instead about the word of God.  Smashing through those layers is awfully difficult, can be horrendously complicated, it's  minefield where teasing out what you've added to it from what was there to begin with is a process fraught with problems, but that's what we are called to do, to present the word of God whole and unviolate, to present the word of God exactly as it was given, show it to the world, to all nations, and say to them 'here is where forgiveness of sins, life everlasting, here is where comfort for your conscience and blessed assurance are to be found, in Christ Jesus.  He is the way, the truth and the life.'

That's all.  No idols, no layers, no insistance on language or culture, no insistance on coming to me before you come to Christ, just Jesus, and nothing but.  Paul says that he purposed to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, that the people may not see Paul, may not meditate on Paul (was Paul crucified for you?) but that they may see Christ, and know him only.  It takes a lot to get out of the way of the Gospel, it's a heady dose of humility to be able to handle it, but that's what we are called to do.  To echo the words of John in the wilderness.

He must increase, and I must decrease.

Up with mothers!

The Ascension of our Lord is a curious matter, don't you think?

I'll elaborate, because it's one of those things that we celebrate, that we have a festival about in the church, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense on the surface, given that it's a day in which our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into the clouds and left us all alone on earth.

I suppose something analogous to that would be to celebrate the day that your two loving parents broke up, and your father moved away to Zaire and only sent you money in an envelope once a year on your birthday.  This is not a happy day.  Jesus ascends into the clouds, and vanishes from their sight.  The man who was God in the flesh, he who had been working on their behalf, the man who had been healing the sick and raising the dead, the man who had been curing diseases, performing miracles, the man who had been doing all these amazing and wondrous things, he ascended into the sky and was gone.

And then, as it tells us in the book of Luke, "They worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy."

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the disciples to be filled with great joy while they think about Jesus, the lamb of God, being taken from their eyes.

Now, this is a problem until you consider what's happening here on a bigger scale.  Consider this. Consider the ascension less like a loving parent moving out from you, and more like a loving parent helping you move out.  Now, if you're reading this, there's a good chance that you moved out at some point, and got a place of your own.  There's a good chance that you have a spot to call your own, your own apartment, condo or house where you live quite contentedly.  If that is the case, who cooks for you?  Who cleans for you, who irons your shirts, who does your laundry?  If I were to guess, and I am guessing, there's a great chance that you do that yourself.  Your mother doesn't still come in twice a week to do your laundry for you, I'll wager. 

But cast your mind back to a time when your mother did do everything for you, and I'm sure there was one.  Cast your mind back to a time when your mother tied your shoes, cleaned for you, cooked for you, tucked you in, kissed you goodnight, and did all those other things that had to be done.  And if your mother did that forever, what would happen to you?  Well, you've seen it a thousand times, parents who did everything for their kids for far too long, parents who stepped in and insisted on looking after their children to such a degree that their children became helpless eventually. 

Now, there's a certain degree of tension that comes along with this.  When you first start to learn to cook, you get an awful lot of stuff wrong.  You make a few key mistakes that a veteran chef wouldn't.  You substitute baking powder for baking soda, you get salt and sugar mixed up, since they look so similar.  You forget to turn the slow cooker on before leaving for the day. You know, all this stuff that leads to ruined dinners and wasted food that becomes inedible.  There is a learning curve that will never be overcome if someone else keeps on doing it all for you.  One of the great things that my mother gave to me was the task to cook for the family, to learn to work with food and ingredients, to get a grip on what it means to assemble meals from scratch. I'm still rubbish at baking, but cooking I can do, but that never would have happened if my mother had assembled my meals for me all the time.  I would, by now, still be incapable of working with food, as many of us are (I'm still bad at laundry, so don't think that I'm talking myself up too much).

Here's the point - if someone else makes the meals all the time, then they always turn out fine, but I never improve, even a little bit.  If I am to learn how to make the food, then it won't always be great, but both the food and I will improve over time.  This only ever happens if I am taught, and if I'm allowed to learn.

The various things that Jesus asks us to do in the scriptures, there are some unexpected benefits to them that we might not see until we actually go about accomplishing them.  In all the things that Jesus sets out for us to do, there are two things that happen with each and every one.  First of all, if we go about and do the thing that Jesus asks us to do, then the thing gets done.  This is a good thing.  It doesn't get done quite as well as it would if Jesus himself were to do it, but that's how it is with letting someone imperfect tackle a job.  Your grandmother could bake circles around you, but you'll never learn her recipes if you just let her do the job for you forever.  But the second thing that happens is the important bit that we don't see until we accomlish the task at hand.  We become changed by it too. 

We are God's workmanship, says the scriptures, created by him to do good works which he has prepared in advance for us to do.  Good news indeed.  Good news indeed for us, we people who view good works, charity, acts of love for those near as well as far, as just something we do and accomplish for other people.  It's not just for other people.  It's for us, too.  By doing the things that Christ has set out for us to do, by loving each other by caring for each other by doing works of charity and courage, two people benefit - the subject as well as the object.

This is partially why the Lord our God has chosen to work on earth in this capacity.  This is part of what church, a community of faith offers, which is to aid us to see the grit and challenge that comes along with being an active participant in the work of God in the world.  For you see around you the people who don't know how to do anything, how to manage a household, how to cook or clean, and if someone else does it for them forever, then they care less about that work, and become lazy and indolent.  They become spoiled man-children who just wait around for someone to do this sort of work for them. 

Jesus doesn't have that in mind for us.  We're not supposed to have that spirit of timidity.  2 Timothy tells us that God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, love and self-control.  We are supposed to get on with the kingdom work, even though Christ our Lord could accomplish it just fine without us, but then who would we be? 

Something happens when you get invested in things.  Something happens when you get involved, invested, when you take ownership, is that stuff gets done, and that you yourself are changed in the process.  This is something that is incredibily simple, yet maddeningly elusive, for some reason.  It is so straightforward to say that we should be able to see this, but in reality, the connexion between them is often lost on us. 

And this, this is why we need Christ. We need Christ's counsel for when we'd rather not do what must be done, when we'd rather step to one side and shirk our responsibilities.  It's a simple matter of us understanding that the work that must be done is for our benefit as well as for the benefit of those we do the work for.  And a large part of what happens in the church is understanding the words that Paul gives to us, where he says 'be imitators of me, as I am an imitator of Christ.'  Paul, the apostle called by Jesus Christ after his ascension.  Paul, called into active service by Jesus after he had gone away, and called into really serious evangelism work that took all the energy he had.  And what happened ?  Well, Galatians tells us that because of the work Paul was doing, and because of who he was, they glorified God because of him.  Could this have worked otherwise?  Possibly.  But Jesus was able to use the imperfect tool that was Paul to great effect, he was able to work with this limitation, to turn a weakness into a strength to get his work done.  Many many times in the Bible, people called by God have had excuses: I stutter, I'm too young, I'm too old, I'm not one much for talking, I am afraid, and so on and so on, and God cuts through them all, saying only this much.

I haven't chosen to work through other means.  I've chosen to work through you.  And your weakness will be made strength in me.  Because your sins are forgiven, you will be able to forgive others.  Because you have been loved, you can love.  Freely you have received, now freely give.  And when you do, you will change other, and you yourself will likewise be changed.  That doesn't happen if I do everything for you always.  That happens when you become a spiritual adult, when you exchange milk for meat, when you take ownership of your faith, your church, the rich legacy that has been passed down to you, and realize that if there is a future, part of it is yours.  And you must be invested in it, or it will lapse and wane.  Muscles only work as long as they are used.  Languages can be forgotten unless they are spoken by those who have learned them.  Cars won't start up if they are just left sitting forever.  Exchange milk for meat, grow strong in your faith, and remember that as Christ's workmanship, you have been created to do these good works.

give it to me straight

And now, say the disciples, you are speaking to us without figures of speech. 

Ah yes.  All they wanted was for Jesus to be straight with them, to give them the straight goods, the straight dope, the Georgia straight, if you will.  All they wanted was to have Jesus tell them what is known as the Gospel truth.  And that, well, was more than they'd bargained for.

It's like this, if you will.  Man says to woman to just say what she means.  She says what she means.  He asks why things are so difficult to say straight, and why she can't just say what she means.  So she does.  Again.  Same result, ad nauseum. 

 

There's the perpetual complaint that nobody says what they mean, but honestly, they frequently do, and therein is the trouble.  If you want to know what someone means, there's a good chance they're already telling you what that is, but you refuse to hear it or listen to it.  And that's the problem.  CS Lewis gets to the base of it, talking in his essay 'the problem with X' about how the people whom we have tried to communicate and have given up communicating with all have a fatal flaw making talking with them in a straight way about their faults and failings impossible.  But the point about Lewis' essay is that we are the exact same.  We have the same sort of faults and failings, we are every bit as weak and frail, every bit as difficult and backwards as the people that we are trying to communicate with. 

Now, this slots in nicely with the Gospel reading, where the disciples say to Jesus 'we want the straight goods,' and the response from Jesus is to say 'here's the straight goods.  You all want to stand by me, you all think that you're going to be with me until the end, but you're going to be scattered, each to his own home, and I will stand alone.  Just me and God.'  The most obvious, visible sign of

this is the presence in the Gospels of Simon of Cyrene, the man made to carry the cross.  If the disciples were as steadfast as they had promised to be, if they were as keen to follow through with their commitments, then finding someone to carry the cross of Christ wouldn't be necessary.  There would be 12 volunteers.  But there weren't. 

Christ stood alone.  He stood alone, and was escorted to Calvary and crucified there between two criminals.  He was buried in a stranger's tomb.  There wasn't anyone around to stand fast by him to help him with the work he was going to do.  He was going to be alone.  This was the straight goods, the straight goods that the disciples didn't want to hear.  They wanted to hear the straight goods that they were going to be good, they wanted to hear that they had been doing a great job, and that everything was going to slot into place nicely based on their excellent work.  But that wasn't how things actually went.  Jesus was going to give them the straight goods, and the straight story was that their vigor, their commitment, their decisions for him were all essentially worthless when it came to the salvation that they needed.

The reading from Revelation that we had for this Sunday is one that tells us that there is a holy city, the new Jerusalem waiting for us, with streets of gold and environs of Jasper, that it is a wonderful place that nothing unclean will ever enter into, but the straight goods is that there's a good chance that you've done some pretty unclean stuff yourself.  Or, to put it another way, I feel fairly sure that there's at least one person who couldn't possibly imagine paradise if you were there.  How does Revelation put it?

As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Are you 100% certain that you've avoided all that?  100% certain that you're not a coward and a liar?  For I tell you the truth, and this is a great mystery, cowards and liars make up the vast majority of the disciples.  Or, to put it another way, have you ever found it strange that St. Peter, one of the all time great cowards and liars, is often depicted as the one who is the gatekeeper of heaven itself!

How does that work?  It works because Jesus stands alone.  The commitment, the steadfastness, the righteousness that the disciples all planned on showing and displaying, none of that stood.  It wouldn't and it can't.  The salvation rests on the shoulders of the one who died on the cross to take all those sins away.  

With us, a vast majority of the time, we end up with our commitments on one hand, and the world on the other, and the world has a nasty habit of getting in the way.  We arrive at church, we get confirmed, we get baptized, we commit to Christ, we choose him as our Lord and savior, we answer the altar call, whatever it is that we do for him, and then the world has a way of getting in the way.  Reality matters, and the real world, for all its troubles, squeezes the Gospel out of things.  Just like the likelihood of crucifixion squeezed the commitment out of St. Peter in the courtyard.  But this is what Jesus came to do.  He came to overcome that world, he came to do what he had to do to ensure that all the sin that sticks to us, all that stuff that we do because the world is there, pressing in all around us, he came to take that upon himself and break it on the tree.  He came that we may have life, and have it abundantly.  This is what he is all about, and it is his prime focus.  That's what the Gospel is.  

If you claim that the Bible is too hard to figure out, if you wish that the Christian church spoke clearly, and just said what they mean, then here it is, in black and white.  Jesus Christ came, and was crucified, to save sinners, of which I am the chief.  And since he has done so, since he has chosen us, not that we have chosen him, then let us love one another.  

That's what it means.