Experiential Understanding
Dr. Jim Wilson, May 30, 2010 At the foot of the hill on Main Street in West Dundee, stands the Village Hall. It is a square colonial-type building with a square steeple. On each of three sides of the square steeple, north, south and east, is the face of a clock. The fourth or east side faces the side of the hill and the American Legion Hall and has no clock. Growing up, I was fascinated by the steeple and its clock faces. Were there three clocks or one? If three, how did they all keep the same time, which they did, more or less---I checked it out more than once. If there is was one clock, how did that work. It seemed a grand mystery. As I became older, I thought less about such questions and looked to the clock to speak to my life---especially telling me how much time I had to cover the six blocks home before mom’s curfew. All this came to mind last Sunday evening as I began to think about the sermon for this particular Sunday, which the liturgical calendar designates as “Trinity Sunday.” It is one of the few Sundays that focuses our attention on who God is rather than what God does. For us, who bear the name Christian, God’s Name is Trinity. When we speak of God, we speak not of some vague notion called God, but of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, the blessed Trinity, one God revealed in three persons. Now I have just nudged us over the edge into the territory of mystery. It is a territory fraught with questions---How can this be? How can God be one and yet three? No doctrine is more puzzling and perhaps incomprehensible to our rational patterns of thought. Augustine, one of the greatest minds in the western world spent over a decade writing the15 books that comprise his ON TRINITY. I have much appreciated the counsel of our forefather John Wesley, who suggested the Trinity “…is better left a mystery to be pondered and adored than rationally explained.” Or perhaps even better is the advice offered by another English preacher, Colin Morris, who counseled, “A preacher with any sense would call in sick on Trinity Sunday.” Well, I am here and it’s Trinity Sunday, so you can draw your own conclusions! However we come to grips with the Trinity, I believe we are at the very heart of the Christian faith. Mystery or not, Trinity is the most significant statement we make about God. We do so in song: “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” We do in baptism: “ I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” We do so at the conclusion of worship in the familiar benediction: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The Christian faith itself emanates from the confession of God as Trinity. Ever since Moses asked God for a name, and God answered with that somewhat puzzling response, “I am who I am” or if you prefer, “I will be who I will be,” the faithful have been drawn into a mystery, a mystery that engages nature and name, understanding and experience. I invite you to enter this mystery with me this morning, but in a particular way. Rather than struggling to understand Trinity at an intellectual level, I want us to attempt to understand Trinity as how we experience the gracious love of God. I am not suggesting that we ignore the intellectual. I hope we will discuss how the Church has presented God as the three in one, from the Council of Nicea to the work of contemporary theologians on the Trinity. That is important. I am suggesting, in a proper Wesleyan manner I think, doctrine should reflect our experience. And as Father John himself maintained our faith journey itself is Trinitarian in nature---We are drawn by the Spirit to the Son and through the Son to the Father. I believe we find an expression of such an experiential approach in our text for this morning. After spending the first four chapters of his Letter to the Romans presenting his argument for the realization of God’s promised salvation in Christ Jesus through faith, Paul turns to the results of God’s gracious act. “Since we are justified by faith,” writes Paul, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” In other words, the gracious, justifying grace of the Father is experienced in the Son. He goes on to say this gracious love not only makes us right with God, it becomes the foundations of our lives, “the grace in which we stand.” Jesus, this historical, human face of the Eternal One, comes to forgive us, reconcile us, and free us for a new relationship with God. Now no matter what we experience in life, this grace will surround us---when we suffer this grace will produce endurance, and through endurance this grace will shape our character and as it shapes our character, this grace will fill us with hope and this hope will never disappoint us. Note all of this is about experience not about the intellect, but about our experience on the journey of discipleship. Why can we trust that these experiences will result in hope? Paul answers, “…because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Again experience of God’s gracious love is Trinitarian: poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, making us right with God through Christ Jesus, granting us peace with the Father. While these words of Paul do not constitute a formal statement of the Trinity, nor is there any such a statement to be found in Scripture—they do describe the experience of Trinity, the God who is one God in three persons. Such an experiential understanding leads to a couple of insights that I believe are significant for our faith. First, understanding God as Trinity provides us with God’s “Full Name.” God’s full name is not simply God. It is Trinity. That is a correction to those who speak of believing in God but leave God a vague, undefined, somewhat mysterious notion. Awhile back, I was browsing the theological section at Barnes and Noble when a woman said to me, “Isn’t wonderful how spiritual we Americans are becoming?” I replied, “I am not sure what you mean by spiritual?’ Somewhat startled at my apparent stupidity, she said, “Why believing in God, of course!” I probably should have just smiled and said, “Yes,” but of course I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Now that depends on which God!” She gave me a rather disgusted look and hurried off. Or take the case of those who return God’s favor and create God in their own image. My Canadian friend Ron Harrison tells of being at a clergy meeting in Toronto to deal with racial tensions. A couple of clergy went on with rather bigoted remarks about minorities. Ron, interrupted and said, “I am sorry, I didn’t catch the name of the god you serve. Whoever he is, he is quite different from the God I know in Jesus.” God’s full name is Trinity, the One who chooses to reveal himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit---so we can experience the gracious love of this God in the wonder and order of Creation, in the presence of the One named Jesus, and in the presence and power with us now in the Spirit. This is less a mystery to be comprehended than a love to be experienced. We might even draw a parallel from our own lives. We are one person but people experience in various ways. For instance, I am Jim Wilson one person but one person experienced as Mary Beth’s father, Char’s husband, pastor of BUMC. Some you experience me in other ways---but we will stick with these three for now. They give meaning to my full name. So Trinity is God’s full name. Trinity also tells us about our God. Biblically speaking, names tell of relationships. Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah when they come into relationship with God. Saul becomes Paul when he encounters the Risen Christ on the Damascus Road. Trinity suggests that relationships, a sense of community, lay at the very nature of God. God is at once the Father/Creator, the Son/Redeemer, and the Spirit/Reconciler in relationship with one another. This is how we experience the three persons. Person here does not mean an isolated, individual consciousness detached from the world. Rather it is a word used for a mask worn by actors in Greek theatre. The persona is the mask an actor uses in a role and when the actor assumes a different role he holds us a different persona. Just so we encounter Trinity as three persona, three related but distinct modes of God’s relating to us. What this suggests is that like Trinity all reality is meant to be relational, in community. Relationship/Community is at the very heart of the created order. To experience God as Trinity is to experience God’s intention for all of life, relationship and community grounded in God’s gracious love. That, I believe, is a critical understanding. We live in a culture that is becoming increasing individualized, privatized, people isolated from one another---the whole “bowling alone” syndrome. This is a real concern to me. I believe if we worship the One whose name is Trinity; the church must be intentional about relationships, about building community, for that is Trinity’s intention for life. About a year or so ago, Char and I attended a reception. We both watched with amazement how the hostess moved among the guests, welcoming new arrivals, attending to the needs of those present, introducing people to one another, responding to a few minor crises. I thought to myself, this woman is intent on creating relationships and building community and she does it very well. Her name could be Trinity! For that is the business of this God who is at the center of our worship and our faith. Thanks be to God! Amen! |
