May 18, 2008 Trinity Sunday
Sermon Title: “Why the Trinity Matters”
Series: None
Text: Matthew 28:16-20
Dr.
Delivered on May 18, 2008
“Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit….” Matt. 28:19
Why The Trinity Matters
A few years ago Leo DiCaprio played in a Steven Spielberg movie titled “Catch Me If You Can.” The movie was based on the real life of a man named Frank Abagnale who ran away from home at sixteen and for five years impersonated his way around the world, cashing over 2.5 million dollars in fraudulent checks and assuming various identities as he went. He successfully posed as an attorney, an airline pilot, a college professor, and a pediatrician before finally being taken into custody. Abagnale’s story shows us that when it comes to identity, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. This morning we’re going to look at another case of assumed, or you might even say mistaken, identity. And the party whose identity is in question isn’t trying to be cagey or to impersonate anyone else. I’m talking about God, and the Holy Trinity.
Today is Trinity Sunday, for centuries this has been the Sunday where the church has done its best to proclaim one of the central mysteries of our faith – that God is not a poseur. God isn’t a doting grandfatherly old man sitting on his throne as some people make God the Father out to be. He’s not just our buddy, or some kind of sissified man, or a revolutionary as some make Jesus out to be. And he’s not some kind of ethereal vapor floating around like a ghost even some folks do still call Him the Holy Ghost. God’s not an “it,” God is a person. God is much, much more. God is the mysterious three-in-one.
Before you start yawning and tune me out because we’re talking about a supposedly boring subject like the Trinity, I want to state right up front that the Trinity was not made up by a bunch of egghead theologians sitting somewhere in their ivory towers. The Trinity was actually first described by the earliest Christians who recognized that their God was the same one God of the Jewish people, but yet they experienced Him in different ways than the Jews did. The thoughts of these earliest Christians were eventually put in the form of a creed because they realized there is something essential to Christian belief in our “three-in-one God.”
Of course,
making the Trinity a part of the creed was the easy part. The tough part is explaining
what it is. Martin Luther once said,
“To try to deny the Trinity is risk your salvation, to try to understand the
Trinity is to risk your sanity.” We know in our hearts that God appears to
us as Creator, Savior and Sustainer, but exactly how these three work together,
and how we should relate to them isn’t clear.
In fact, the word “Trinity” itself isn’t even found in the Bible. But the concept is clearly there – for example, look at today’s readings. In the Genesis account God says in verse 26, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” Who is the “us” and who is the “our” in that verse? It’s the Trinity. And look at the Epistle; as Paul closes his second letter to the Corinthians he uses Trinitarian language in his benediction which just happens to be the same one we close our services with here at NewSong, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:13). That’s as clear a statement as you’re going to find of the doctrine of the Trinity. And then, of course, there is the passage we read this morning where Jesus himself mentions the Trinity. Jesus teaches that we are to baptize all newly made disciples “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). The word Trinity may not appear in the Bible, but the fact that there are three coexistent, co-eternal persons that make up God is clear. Not three Gods, but one God, one God made up of three persons.
Still, no matter how we try to explain the Trinity we fall short. For instance, some have tried to teach about the Trinity using an egg. An egg is one thing and yet it has a shell, a yoke and the egg white. Others liken the Trinity to water – water can appear in three forms: ice, liquid, or vapor. But even these examples fall short. The egg fails in that the shell, white, and yolk are parts of the egg, not the egg in themselves. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not parts of God, each of them is God. The water illustration is somewhat better but still fails to adequately describe the Trinity. Liquid, vapor, and ice are forms of water. But the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not “forms” of God, each of them is God. So, while these illustrations may give us a picture of the Trinity, the picture is not entirely accurate. In the end we must admit that an infinite God cannot be fully described by a finite illustration nor fully grasped by a finite mind like yours and mine.
At this point you might be thinking that’s all well and good, but still, what difference does it make if our God is a “three-in-one” God or not. What difference does it make whether we have a singular natured God, or a Trinitarian God? Well the answer to that is that it makes all the difference in the world. Because our God is a Trinity it affects who we are, what we do, and how we measure success. Let me explain.
Who We Are
The fact that our DNA as God’s people is essentially Trinitarian affects who we are because it defines the nature of who we are. For instance, like the Trinity we are (or we should be) diverse and equal within our unity. God the Father is different from but equal to God the Son, and God the Son is different from but equal to God the Spirit, and yet, all three are unified – they are unified in their diversity. They are also equal. We in the church are (or should be) the same way.
Sometimes this is more evident to me than others. For instance, on our mission trip this past week to Mississippi it was again very evident to me that even though we are all folks from the Cumming, GA area that attend NewSong and all share many of the same beliefs; we were a very diverse bunch. We had people who were young and people who were older. We had people with “people-skills” and we had folks who were better with tasks. We had male and female, single and married; we had quiet shy types and we had outgoing people. But bottom line, we were all unified; we had diversity within our unity and each of our gifts were needed and used by God. We were united, different, and yet equal as we ministered together.
Unfortunately, the church has historically tended to homogenize itself, with people gravitating towards “other folks like us.” But since we should be Trinitarian, like the God who called us into being, that’s not how God planned it. We need all the gifts within our body. That’s what Paul was talking about when he used all that “body of Christ” language reminding us that we need both feet and elbows in the church – we need eyes and ears; imagine what it would be like if we were all ears or ankles? Paul also went on to say that no part has more “honor” than another. Eyes aren’t superior to ears, etc…
I rejoice in our diversity at NewSong and I rejoice in our unity as a church. I also rejoice that there isn’t a hierarchy of importance at our church where some body parts are elevated over others. We must always remember that we need each and every person and their specific gifts which God sends us. We must also remember that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
Stated in the negative, watch out if you’re attending a church where everyone is a little clone of everyone else. Heaven isn’t going to be like that – and neither should the church be. That’s why Jesus said in this morning’s text – Go and make disciples of ALL NATIONS… the Greek there is ta ethne – which literally means “all people groups.” There are only 194 countries in the world, but there are 16,293 people groups in the world. And God says to us to “go and make disciples” in all of them. Imagine what a diverse group of people that will be one day in heaven!
What We Do
and How We Do It
A second way our Trinitarian DNA affects us is it defines what we are to do and how we do it. By that I mean we are sent out – and we are sent to build relationships to help the world around us see, grasp, experience and participate in the creative power, redeeming love, and transforming presence of God.
The Trinity – the “three-in-one” does not exist simply for mutual edification. Certainly there is no lack of love and attention between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there is far more than that. The classic definition of the mission of God (Missio Dei) is God the Father sending the Son, and Son sending the Spirit, and the final “movement:” The Son sends the church out into the world, empowered by the Spirit (see John 17:18 and 20:21).
In today’s text Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples…and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” Matt. 28:19-20. How is Jesus with us always? He’s with us through the Holy Spirit whom each believer receives when they become a believer in Christ.
The mission of God gives the church its purpose which is to have an outward focus, to look beyond ourselves to the world around us. God’s mission also shows us how to accomplish this – we are to build relationships with others. That’s what Jesus did – he was God incarnate – God in the flesh. And he came that way because there was no other way but to show us how to do it. He needed to build a relationship with us so that we could, in turn, build relationships with others.
One night a small little voice was heard from the bedroom across the hall. "Daddy, I'm scared!" The response came quick: "Honey, don't be afraid, daddy's right across the hall." After a very brief pause the little voice is heard again, "Daddy, I'm still scared!" Again a response: "You don't need to be afraid dear. God is watching over you." This time the pause is longer ... but the voice returns, "Daddy, I want someone with skin on!" Jesus is God "with skin on." And God has sent you and me to be “God with skin on” to show the world God’s love.
Here’s something else you can bank on, based upon this simple Trinitarian concept – people aren’t looking for someone with all the answers. They’re looking for someone who truly cares.
Given that most
of our team this past week shared the same lack of construction skills as me,
if all the people in
How We
Measure Success
The final way the Trinity forms us is in how we measure success as a church (or at least how we should measure success). This aspect of our Trinitarian nature is the most difficult for me personally to get through my thick skull by the way. It goes like this.
God, expressed as a Trinity, is at His essence a union of love. Think about it; each of the persons of the Trinity lives completely for the others; each is a complete gift of self to the others. This complete self-giving not only constitutes the individual persons of the Trinity, but also their inseparable oneness. Before anything existed, God was experiencing and demonstrating love at the deepest level. Each member of the Trinity was showing love to the other perfectly, without competition, jealousy, or selfishness of any kind. Thus, for Christians, everything starts with the reality of the loving communion of persons that is the Holy Trinity.
Because of this, the success of a community of faith should not determined by quantitative measures such as the size of its budget, how many members it has, the quality of its music or preaching, or even the amount of social services it offers. Instead, success should be measured by the quality of Christian love experienced in the midst of its common life and ministry. In other words, the measure of a church has nothing to do with the typical indicators of society uses to measure an organization such as size, status, power, or influence. Instead success is measured by the level of self-giving Christian love to be found in the community and in its circle of influence.
The world learns about God by watching Christians. And when Christians fail to show the world the love of God we fail to make an invisible God visible. Instead of showing the world the love of God it seems to me that we get off track by trying to mirror or mimic things people can already find in the world.
Jesus said the world will recognize the true church by its love (John 13:35) not by the quality of its PowerPoint presentations or how “cutting edge” the church can be. Should we have excellence in all things? Of course! Should we use whatever technology we can to help get the message out? Yes! Should we speak in ways that people can understand us? Naturally. But what’s the real mark of a church? By the quality of love experienced in and through that particular congregation. And why is that? Because of the Trinity.
So, you see, the Trinity isn’t just a stuffy doctrine we don’t need to bother with. The Trinity defines us! It guides us! It IS us. Because of the Trinity we are a diverse yet equal and united group of people. Because of the Trinity we are not meant to huddle within these walls but we are sent out to build relationships with a lost and dying world. Because of the Trinity we don’t measure our success by the world’s standards – we measure success by how loving we are.
This morning as I close let me ask you, are we the kind of church God wants us to be? Are we Trinitarian here at NewSong? Are we reaching out? Are we making a difference? Is love the defining characteristic of our church?
John Ortberg
shares the story of three women from his church that attended a ladies retreat
and got fired up and decided they wanted to “save all the babies in
I’m grateful for folks like that. And I’m grateful for each one of you. Let’s pray.