Matthew 28:16-20
June 19, 2011
"The Holy Trinity"
Today is Father’s Day and Holy Trinity Sunday. I am going to use Father’s day as an object lesson to deepen our understanding of the inner nature of God and how that can be reflected in our relationships within our families and with each other.
I want to start with a story about my dad and what he taught me about faithfulness or in other words “loyalty” in the face of defeat. When our family first arrived in Tucson in the late 60’s we attended a United Methodist Church called Pueblo Gardens. Some of you might remember that church.
As I remember it, the church was beset with poor leadership and internal conflicts mostly around issues with the preschool and Sunday School program. The fighting got so bad the church collapsed and the Annual Conference closed it down in the late 1970’s.
My dad would not leave that church until the doors were closed. He was taught by word and example that when you joined a Church you supported it through thick and thin, through good and bad pastors. And if all else desert the church, he would not go! He believed this, he lived it, and still lives and believes it.
So, if you ever wonder where my fierce loyalty to the localchurch comes from, it comes from him and is actually a family tradition. Back in the 1930s a pastor came to the small German speaking church his family attended in Pennsylvania. My Grandmother did not care for that pastor and other members of the congregation asked her why she did not quit and go some place else. She said, “This is my church. Pastors come and go, but this is my church.” She was right; 30 years later that pastor did go…. He retired.
“Loyalty” is a strongly held character trait in my family taught by word and example.
It is within the relationships within the family that we learn of the basics of the faith. We as parents are the number one religious educators of our children. The Church is actually in a secondary role to support and train parents in their role as teachers; which is what is going to occur in July in our Sunday School program here at Christ Church.
I remember my mom modeling prayer for me in her singing of “the old old hymns” and at our bedsides and in church. My Dad modeled prayer at the table. He used to say if we started eating before grace, “Even a dog would bark at it!” And he was always in worship.
Growing up I remember hunting and fishing a whole lot, because my dad was a forest ranger, but I also remember we didn’t miss too many Sundays, because we were in the field hunting. It was that loyalty thing.
We indeed nurture our children by reading the Scriptures to them, being caught reading the scriptures by them, and quoting the Scriptures as they guide us in life By example we model the Christian life by treating all people fairly, honestly and as children of God.
Awhile back I read a book called “Birth of the Living God” written by Dr. Anna Maria Rizzuto. In this book Dr. Rizzuto shows that in some sense all people in our western civilization have an image of what God is like from our earliest childhood.
This image can be faceless and nameless. It can exercise great power on the individual or simply be ignored. But all people have an image of God that is built up by their parents. It is built on their image of their parents.
Example, if children observe their parents in worship and adoration of the being we call God, the Holy Trinity, it has a profound effect on the children because for the children their parents seem godlike. This affects them, calls them into the worship and adoration of God.
For children being brought up in the faith then, it’s the prayers before meals and bed, the Bible stories read to them. It’s the trips to worship and Sunday School that count and add up to a faith in Father Son and Holy Spirit.
There was a little girl Amy here this last year. She and her parents have moved to California now. She used to call me “god” much to the embarrassment of her parents. I would show up on Sundays and Wednesday nights and she would say, “Hi God.” I would explain to her that I was not God but worked for God, but at age 3 I do not think she grasped that. We as adults have a profound impact on our children’s image of God. We need to take seriously Jesus’ command to teach in our scripture today for our example often screams louder than words.
Now I want to speak for a moment specifically on the Holy Trinity and then tie this in with Father’s Day.
First, I want to start with a caveat. Total understanding of the Trinity is impossible for that would mean we would have total understanding of God, but we can grasp enough of an understanding of God as Triune to explain it to others, defend it and be nourished by it.
Madeline L’Engle puts part of the problem of understanding the Trinity this way, “talking about the Holy Trinity is attempting to talk about God’s wholeness to a human race that only knows what it is to be fragmented and broken up.” Desperate Preachers Site May 20, 2002
For us to talk about the Trinity is to try to understand a concept that human words can only approximate and analogies are what we often most need to use.
Some use the analogy of a burning oil flame to describe the Holy Trinity. “Look at the flame,” one pastor wrote, “the flame is actually burning oil (you can’t see it) the flame is light (you can see it) and the flame is hot (we can feel it).” “The same with God… The Father is the flame…burning oil, the source of it all, invisible, the Son is the flame….revealing, shedding light, the Spirit is the flame….bringing warmth and we feel it” God: Creator, Savior, Lifegiver.” Father Son and Holy Spirit. Desperate Preachers Site May 24, 2002
‘Another analogy that is used is water, which can exist in three different states, ice, liquid, steam. It is the same substance in 3 different forms, causing three different sensations in/on our bodies. In fact the world is “built” this way—all the elements in the Periodic Table can exist in these three forms.’ Desperate Preachers Site May 25, 2002
A theologian named Elizabeth Johnson said, “(Christians see) the saving God in a threefold way as beyond them, with them, and within them, that is, as utterly transcendent, as present historically in the person of Jesus, and as present in the Spirit within their community. These are all encounters with only one God.” “God is beyond, with and within us at all times.” Desperate Preachers Site June 14, 2002
I believe we experience the Trinity best in relationships of love.
‘Poetically or artistically I love an image of the Trinity that comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. It comes from John of Damascus (eighth century) through the works of the theologian Gutherie. John spoke that God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is like three dancers, holding hands, dancing around together in joyful freedom. Guthrie goes on to say that God in himself is God in community.
“The oneness of God is not the oneness of a self-contained individual; it is the unity of a community of persons. And personal means by definition interpersonal: one cannot be truly personal alone, but only in relation to other persons. Such is the unity and personal character of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
They are not three independent persons who get together to form a club (or a dance group). They are what they are only in relationship to each other. Each exists in this relationship and would not exist apart from it. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live only in and with and through one another, eternally united in mutual love and shared purpose.”’ Desperate Preachers Site May 22, 2002
As to the singularity of God remember as you look at the scripture that Jesus said to baptize “in the name of” not “in the names of.” God’s name here could be in the language of the internet “FatherSonHolySpirit”.
Contrary to what some teach and say we baptize in the one name and nature of God. We are brought into the relationship that exists within God, and we feebly, to the best of our ability try to live it out in the relationships within our family and church.
The key is relationship!! And this is how the Holy Trinity fits in so well with Father’s Day. We are called to be in relationship and to loyally, faithfully stay in relationship with our spouses and children. Jesus promised us never ending loyalty in our Scripture today, that he would be in relationship with us forever when he said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Father’s and mother’s and families to the best of their ability need to incarnate this relationship, this eternal relationship with God by staying in relationship with one another. And I say this as a pastor who has seen the brokenness of this world. We need to strive to work through and above the brokenness and we can only do that through Christ.
And fathers are critical in developing faith and loyalty to God, to developing their children’s relationship with God. In the book “American Church in Crisis” a researcher of the modern church wrote, “the impediment to family faith (he found) was, in a word, men.” “If there is one marketing secret Hybels learned, it is this: Men are the crucial adopters in religion,” Twitchell writes. “If they go over the tipping point, women follow, children in tow.”
A study in 2000 from Switzerland provides insight on the importance of male attendance on the religious development of children in that country. “In summary, if a father does not go to church, no matter how regular the mother is in her religious practice, only one child in 50 becomes a regular church attendee. But if a father attends regularly, then regardless of the practice of the mother, at least one child in three will become a regular church attendee.” American Church In Crisis page 89
And boy o boy do our country’s children need male role models to help them discover and live the faith. In an article in Thursday’s Star Newspaper titled “Roles of American dads diverging this Father’s Day” it said that “nearly half of American dads under 45 this Father’s Day say they have at least one kid who was born out of wedlock. And the share of fathers living apart from children is more than double what it was not so long ago (1960s).
Children in America today are growing up without crucial male role models and examples.
President Obama in that same article put it this way, which I believe is an understatement, “Father’s Day reminds us parents that we have no more solemn obligation than to care for our children, but far too many young people in America grow up without their dads, and our families and communities are challenged as a result.”
He has got it right and commitment to relationship for the good of the kids, I believe, needs to be striven for throughout our society. Men in our society need to step up to their obligations and others need to step into the father figure role.
Single moms need to look for male role models for their children first in the family if “dad” won’t do it than granddads, uncles, cousins. If family members won’t do it than scout leaders, choir directors, coaches, and pastors can also be sought out.
I know for a fact that through the years that I was a youth pastor I became a father figure for many youth who had no father figure and the only reason I was able to do that was because of my father’s example before me.
We in the church need adult males to step up into teaching and leadership roles in our children’s and youth ministry. I appreciated all 49 volunteers at Music Camp but particular thanks go to the guys!
My friends, the very inward nature of God is love. It is a Trinity of relationship and love. We love because God first loved us. We are in relationship because within God there is a relationship of love.
And we are called here not to judge one another today, but to help one another and the children that God has brought into our families, our lives and into our church. We are not going to be perfect at it anymore than we can have a perfect understanding of the Trinity.
As I quoted Madeline L’Engle “talking about the Holy Trinity is attempting to talk about God’s wholeness to a human race that only knows what it is to be fragmented and broken up.”
We are fragmented and broken people often coming from fragmented and broken homes and relationships. But it is in the Holy Trinity that we see the promise and hope that one day things won’t be like this. We will be whole and holy. We will find the wholeness and peace we seek and approximate here on earth.
Jesus in his words today promises not only that he would be present in a relationship of love, but that one day this present age will end and a new age of wholeness and completeness will begin.
On earth the best place we can taste of this is within the church and home when they are at their best. But these are only a taste of what is to come.
In the meantime I urge mothers, fathers, and grandparents to be engaged in the lives of your children.
In fact I urge us all to be engaged in the lives of our children, for there are little eyes always searching for the example and the realty of God with us,
God within us
and God transcendent forever more. Amen
In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
