TRINITY - PSALM 8, MATT 28:16-20, 2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13
I was once guilty of a form of Planytis. For me it wasn’t a case of deciding which preachers I would attend worship led by. Instead I had a tendency to ensure that my days when I was not available to the Superintendent minister, were the ones which most discomforted me. In the case of Trinity Sunday, it was a Sunday when non availability could be virtually guaranteed. In a sense, I was as one with the late Bishop John Robinson who when asked how he would teach a child about the doctrine of the Trinity, replied,
‘I wouldn’t.’
And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is a major part of our Christian understanding. Not articulated in a formal way in the Scriptures, it represents an understanding arrived at in the early centuries of Christianity after fierce debate over the nature of Jesus. In that debate, there was a struggle between those who emphasised the divinity of Christ over his humanity and those who emphasised the humanity of Christ over his divinity. By the time of the Nicene Creed, it was beginning to be generally accepted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We could experience God as Father, Son and Spirit. Whilst today we often make the Trinity seem like a lifeless doctrine, we do well to appreciate that it came into being out of the dynamic experience of early Christians and from their passionate grappling with the search to understand that which God is about.
The God of the Trinity is experienced by us in a range of ways. Psalm 8 points us to God as the loving Creator to whom we owe our lives and the good gifts of creation. Some of you will be aware that I regard the hymns of Charles Wesley as amongst Methodism’s greatest treasures, I agree with the Congregationalist scholar Bernard Manning (no relation to the Mancunian comedian) that it is Wesley’s hymns that are the greatest thing that Methodism can bring to the ecumenical dialogue. Yet the one thing, I struggle with in Charles Wesley’s hymns is a tendency to refer to humanity in terms such as 'worms'. I hope I have misunderstood Wesley because I think Psalm 8 calls us to see humanity in a much higher context than that. This Psalm which points us to the majesty of God, tells us that God has created humanity with status, the status of being cared for by God, the status of being but a little lower than the Divine and ‘crowned with glory and honour.’ Out of this has come responsibility for caring for the created order, a sharing in the very work of God.
I wonder if we take this seriously enough. Too often we interpret the term ‘dominion’ which is first used in the Genesis 1 creation narrative to imply that we have a world to do with as we wish and this irresponsible attitude is increasingly lead us to the point of environmental crisis. Only a few weeks ago, a gathering of climate scientists meeting in Exeter at the request of the Prime Minister, concluded that the threat of climate change is so great that amongst other things;
- in the next few centuries, the sea level will rise by twenty feet wiping out whole communities
- sand eels have left the warm waters of the North Sea causing a collapse of the bird populations that have fed off these eels
- the increasingly acidic seas will lead to the destruction of all the world’s coral reefs within 35 years.
And if all that is not enough, the Independent Newspaper on Friday estimated that at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon Rainforest will be no more within 50 years.
Such environmental disasters are a consequence of our failing to appreciate that Biblically ‘dominion’ is about following the example of God whose ‘dominion’ is exercised in loving care and servanthood. And what our world needs now is not a theology that justifies the ravaging of God's gift of this incredible planet but a theology espressed in the exercising of loving care of our planet in partnership with God.
So this morning, we see a challenge to not only appreciate that this world and our lives are the gift of God, but also that we are called to live out our high calling in harmony with that God.
But then we come to the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. I have always like a quote from David Jenkins from the time when he was Bishop of Durham. This is what he said;
‘God is. He is as he is in Christ. Therefore there is hope.’
What Dr Jenkins is saying here is that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look at Jesus. Gaze at Jesus and we begin to see what unconditional love is about. This is the one who turns the world right side up. Jesus continually challenges our smug norms. He finds value in the most unlikely of places and people. He crosses the barriers of religion, race and gender to bring a message that to him all are special and loved by the Divine. Every prejudice of his day and by implication of our day also, is challenged with a message that our responsibilities are not just for those who are as we are but for people in all their diversity. For Jesus, our calling is not just about me and mine but also for those who in our dark moments we see as beyond the pail. And for this humanity which he meets at its very worse in his Passion, he gives his all and cries ‘Father forgive.’
But more! On Trinity Sunday, we recall that that Jesus is enthroned, is interceding for us, able to fully empathise with us in the weaknesses of our humanity for such has been his experience. And because he still is, there are those times when we sing aloud that which we can at all times sing in our hearts;
‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’
Note, it is 'What a friend we have in Jesus' not 'What a friend we had in Jesus.' For this Jesus lives and is for us in the present as much as in the past.
Last year one of my courses was in 20th Century Christology. We looked at how a range of 20th Century theologians interpreted the significance of Christ. One of them was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian. I found him rather difficult and didn’t dare attempt an essay on him in the examination at the end of the year. And yet one thing about Barth I find endearing. Towards the end of his life, after a lecture he was taking questions when a student asked him which of his theological discoveries was the most important one. Without hesitation Barth who had written thousands of pages in his 'Dogmatics' replied,
‘Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.’
And those words which many of us remember singing in a Sunday School chorus say it all!
But we can not leave the Trinity without touching on the third person. Last week of course was Pentecost when we recalled the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. This Holy Spirit totally transformed the closest friends of Jesus from the cowards of Gethsemane to courageous pioneeers of the Gospel, lions for God. In the Spirit we see God’s continued engagement with the world. Through the Spirit, God prods, rebukes, encourages and strengthens us so that the story of God goes on through the lives of those who follow God. The Spirit challenges our baser thoughts and lifts them to a higher plain where we can truly begin to respond to the vision of the Psalmist in which we care for the world, engaging in God's work. The Spirit is God at work in our world yet taking the risk of daring to trust in people to be partners in that work. And indeed it is through the Spirit that we know that we are not alone for to turn to the great hymn, ‘Hallelujah! Sing to Jesus’ we find that incomparably great line;
‘Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.’
So on Trinity Sunday, we come not to meditate on dry words but instead to encounter a living truth of a God who is for us in differing ways - Father, Brother, Spirit. And who is probably experienced in many other ways too. That is the magnitude of our God who is all that we need God to be and so so much more.
And in Trinity, God is revealed as community, dynamic community and that is also our calling to be a community of diverse peoples in relationship to one another, constantly being patterned in God’s image so that we might take God’s togetherness into the world and in the words of Bishop Spong be those who are;
‘Living life to the full
Loving wastefully
And being all that we possibly can be.’
AMEN
This sermon was preached at Alwington on Trinity Sunday, 22nd Mat 2005.
‘I wouldn’t.’
And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is a major part of our Christian understanding. Not articulated in a formal way in the Scriptures, it represents an understanding arrived at in the early centuries of Christianity after fierce debate over the nature of Jesus. In that debate, there was a struggle between those who emphasised the divinity of Christ over his humanity and those who emphasised the humanity of Christ over his divinity. By the time of the Nicene Creed, it was beginning to be generally accepted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We could experience God as Father, Son and Spirit. Whilst today we often make the Trinity seem like a lifeless doctrine, we do well to appreciate that it came into being out of the dynamic experience of early Christians and from their passionate grappling with the search to understand that which God is about.
The God of the Trinity is experienced by us in a range of ways. Psalm 8 points us to God as the loving Creator to whom we owe our lives and the good gifts of creation. Some of you will be aware that I regard the hymns of Charles Wesley as amongst Methodism’s greatest treasures, I agree with the Congregationalist scholar Bernard Manning (no relation to the Mancunian comedian) that it is Wesley’s hymns that are the greatest thing that Methodism can bring to the ecumenical dialogue. Yet the one thing, I struggle with in Charles Wesley’s hymns is a tendency to refer to humanity in terms such as 'worms'. I hope I have misunderstood Wesley because I think Psalm 8 calls us to see humanity in a much higher context than that. This Psalm which points us to the majesty of God, tells us that God has created humanity with status, the status of being cared for by God, the status of being but a little lower than the Divine and ‘crowned with glory and honour.’ Out of this has come responsibility for caring for the created order, a sharing in the very work of God.
I wonder if we take this seriously enough. Too often we interpret the term ‘dominion’ which is first used in the Genesis 1 creation narrative to imply that we have a world to do with as we wish and this irresponsible attitude is increasingly lead us to the point of environmental crisis. Only a few weeks ago, a gathering of climate scientists meeting in Exeter at the request of the Prime Minister, concluded that the threat of climate change is so great that amongst other things;
- in the next few centuries, the sea level will rise by twenty feet wiping out whole communities
- sand eels have left the warm waters of the North Sea causing a collapse of the bird populations that have fed off these eels
- the increasingly acidic seas will lead to the destruction of all the world’s coral reefs within 35 years.
And if all that is not enough, the Independent Newspaper on Friday estimated that at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon Rainforest will be no more within 50 years.
Such environmental disasters are a consequence of our failing to appreciate that Biblically ‘dominion’ is about following the example of God whose ‘dominion’ is exercised in loving care and servanthood. And what our world needs now is not a theology that justifies the ravaging of God's gift of this incredible planet but a theology espressed in the exercising of loving care of our planet in partnership with God.
So this morning, we see a challenge to not only appreciate that this world and our lives are the gift of God, but also that we are called to live out our high calling in harmony with that God.
But then we come to the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. I have always like a quote from David Jenkins from the time when he was Bishop of Durham. This is what he said;
‘God is. He is as he is in Christ. Therefore there is hope.’
What Dr Jenkins is saying here is that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look at Jesus. Gaze at Jesus and we begin to see what unconditional love is about. This is the one who turns the world right side up. Jesus continually challenges our smug norms. He finds value in the most unlikely of places and people. He crosses the barriers of religion, race and gender to bring a message that to him all are special and loved by the Divine. Every prejudice of his day and by implication of our day also, is challenged with a message that our responsibilities are not just for those who are as we are but for people in all their diversity. For Jesus, our calling is not just about me and mine but also for those who in our dark moments we see as beyond the pail. And for this humanity which he meets at its very worse in his Passion, he gives his all and cries ‘Father forgive.’
But more! On Trinity Sunday, we recall that that Jesus is enthroned, is interceding for us, able to fully empathise with us in the weaknesses of our humanity for such has been his experience. And because he still is, there are those times when we sing aloud that which we can at all times sing in our hearts;
‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’
Note, it is 'What a friend we have in Jesus' not 'What a friend we had in Jesus.' For this Jesus lives and is for us in the present as much as in the past.
Last year one of my courses was in 20th Century Christology. We looked at how a range of 20th Century theologians interpreted the significance of Christ. One of them was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian. I found him rather difficult and didn’t dare attempt an essay on him in the examination at the end of the year. And yet one thing about Barth I find endearing. Towards the end of his life, after a lecture he was taking questions when a student asked him which of his theological discoveries was the most important one. Without hesitation Barth who had written thousands of pages in his 'Dogmatics' replied,
‘Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.’
And those words which many of us remember singing in a Sunday School chorus say it all!
But we can not leave the Trinity without touching on the third person. Last week of course was Pentecost when we recalled the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. This Holy Spirit totally transformed the closest friends of Jesus from the cowards of Gethsemane to courageous pioneeers of the Gospel, lions for God. In the Spirit we see God’s continued engagement with the world. Through the Spirit, God prods, rebukes, encourages and strengthens us so that the story of God goes on through the lives of those who follow God. The Spirit challenges our baser thoughts and lifts them to a higher plain where we can truly begin to respond to the vision of the Psalmist in which we care for the world, engaging in God's work. The Spirit is God at work in our world yet taking the risk of daring to trust in people to be partners in that work. And indeed it is through the Spirit that we know that we are not alone for to turn to the great hymn, ‘Hallelujah! Sing to Jesus’ we find that incomparably great line;
‘Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.’
So on Trinity Sunday, we come not to meditate on dry words but instead to encounter a living truth of a God who is for us in differing ways - Father, Brother, Spirit. And who is probably experienced in many other ways too. That is the magnitude of our God who is all that we need God to be and so so much more.
And in Trinity, God is revealed as community, dynamic community and that is also our calling to be a community of diverse peoples in relationship to one another, constantly being patterned in God’s image so that we might take God’s togetherness into the world and in the words of Bishop Spong be those who are;
‘Living life to the full
Loving wastefully
And being all that we possibly can be.’
AMEN
This sermon was preached at Alwington on Trinity Sunday, 22nd Mat 2005.
posted by Rev Paul Martin at 12:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home