The Big Picture
Texts: Psalm 8;
Genesis 1:1-2:4b;
Matthew 28:16-20
I have a confession to make: I am a geek... I have been since I was at least seven years old. Well… that’s how old I was when the original Star Wars was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and certainly an unwary boy with an overactive imagination. My parents had primed me in my early years with both J.R.R. Tolkien and CS Lewis, so I took to this space fantasy like a duck to water. Fortunately, I am not alone, and millions of people trundled off to the theatres this weekend to see the most recent and most likely last of the Star Wars cinematic franchise. In some respects there is a certain sadness to what may well be the end of an era, but at the same time this long-awaited picture brings a sense of completion to one of the best known Epics of post-modern culture. The storyline is now complete; all the pieces now fit, we now have the big picture.
It’s kind of an odd coincidence, or perhaps grace, that this Sunday serves as a glimpse of our own big picture. Today is the first Sunday after Pentecost. This is the first Sunday after all of the major church celebrations which have kept us occupied since early December. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost have all come and gone, and it seems that at least this cycle of stories is now complete. As we move into the longest season of the Christian calendar, of the life and work of the church, we pause for a moment to get a glimpse of the big picture. Today is often called “Trinity Sunday;” in essence, we get a chance to step back for just a moment and ponder the really big picture: the mystery of God.
The trouble is, no amount of language that we have can fully capture or define our understanding of God. Somehow it will always fall short. In fact, the only way we can understand is through what glimpses God actually gives us. I spent quite a bit of time this week staring at the blank screen of my computer trying to find ways to fully explain the mystery of the Trinity. In this process I realized that any amount of language that I used would ultimately fall short… and I ran the serious risk of boring all of you to death.
It’s not that the Trinity is impossible to understand. We do have simple, traditional language that we use every Sunday:
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise him all creatures here below,
Praise him above the heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”
When we baptize, we do so as directed from the gospel of Matthew from this morning’s reading:
“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The benedictions I pronounce, and the prayers that we offer all use Trinitarian language. They give voice to, but in many ways skim over the intangible mystery of God. They give us brief pause to consider the whole, but don’t give much opportunity really look at the big picture.
The truth is that God is far beyond our ability to truly understand. Any language that we have to speak about God cannot fully encompass all that God is, and therefore is inadequate for the job. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The most traditional and perhaps concrete language is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” From the traditional hymn “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”
But even this has its limits.
When I was a student in Vancouver, I offered to run a Bible study at the church that I was presently attending. I was still in school, studying for my M.Div. and thought that this might be a good and healthy experience… That is, until I began to receive some very odd remarks from the minister and the congregation.
“Good luck!” some people were heard to say. Others would come up to me and ask, “Is it true you’re going to be doing the Bible Study this fall?” When I nodded, they would give me a handshake with two hands to say, “Bless you…” I was beginning to get a bit worried. Had I wandered into a minefield, and they were all trying to warn me about something? As the fateful first day approached, I began to hear more and more odd comments about “the three…”
Admittedly, I was nervous… but also a bit naïve, I think. I had done all of my preparations, and had pulled everything together, notes, display pieces, study guides. I was ready, but I was still puzzled by this new-found sympathy that I had gained from the congregation. Then the fateful night arrived. I had a reasonable turnout of about nine people, including a trio of rather severe looking ladies, all armed with their own well-thumbed Bibles. Unsettling… but still workable.
Then it started. We had hardly gotten into the text when it began.
“What’s all this about the Trinity?” One would pipe up. “I don’t get it” another would snipe. “It’s tritheism! Aren’t we supposed to be monotheists?” Another would gripe armed with twenty dollar words… The banter went on, back and forth… and it really felt like I had lost all semblance of control… Worst of all, there didn’t seem to be any room for discussion.
I should also say at this point that this Bible study was supposed to be on the parables of Jesus. I doubled checked my own lesson plan, and there was no mention at all of the Trinity whatsoever. I didn’t understand how they had gotten off on this stunning tangent.
I was left there to sit in awe and wonder… but not in a good way.
After this first experience, I went to the minister with all the wind out of my sails… I wasn’t quite ready to resign, but it was certainly a demoralizing experience. He chuckled a bit, and asked me if I now understood the unusual level of sympathy that I had received. I nodded. Apparently these three ladies were legends in this congregation. Somehow, they would manage to turn every Bible study they were a part of into a tirade centered around the Trinity.
It took me a while to figure out why. These three wanted a nice, neat package where they could place God into a box, which they could fully understand. As concrete as even the most traditional forms of the language were, to them not all of the pieces fit, and they were ready to throw out this part of the puzzle in frustration, and ignore the big picture.
The Trinity has never been about fully understanding God. Rather, it is an invitation to consider the infinite mystery of God… to wonder about the big picture, but knowing full well that as human beings we have our limits.
Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us hanging. Over history, God has revealed to us brief glimpses through which we might gain some further understanding. We see God acting in retrospect, and over time people noticed some trends. God chooses to act in many different ways, but they can be distilled down into three different aspects of activity without actually being separate from each other: one that creates, one that redeems, and one that continues to sustain and support. God is one, but we understand and see God working in three different ways… three different “personas” or roles.
Think of it like light hitting a prism. When a beam of white light hits a prism, the beam fans out and against the wall we see a progression of colours… the spectrum. We most often see this in rainbows: Rainbows are created when light from the sun hits tiny droplets of water. When the light passes through the droplet of water, it acts like a prism, and suddenly we can see this spectrum of colour against the background of dark clouds. The light is still coming from one source, and yet we suddenly see all the different colours that make up the light. I think it’s also appropriate that no matter how much we try, rainbows always seem to be just beyond our grasp.
This metaphor works, yet like chasing rainbows, the Trinity is not something we can really get our head around. Instead, God invites us to do more than just ponder the mystery of the big picture, but to actually live out God’s three-fold activity in our own lives: being an active participant of God’s creation, to participate in Christ’s reconciling ministry in the world, and to be encouraged that God sustains through the Holy Spirit. God invites us to be a part of the big picture.
Amen.
Sermon preached Trinity Sunday, May 22nd, 2005,
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church; the Rev. John Crowdis
Genesis 1:1-2:4b;
Matthew 28:16-20
I have a confession to make: I am a geek... I have been since I was at least seven years old. Well… that’s how old I was when the original Star Wars was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and certainly an unwary boy with an overactive imagination. My parents had primed me in my early years with both J.R.R. Tolkien and CS Lewis, so I took to this space fantasy like a duck to water. Fortunately, I am not alone, and millions of people trundled off to the theatres this weekend to see the most recent and most likely last of the Star Wars cinematic franchise. In some respects there is a certain sadness to what may well be the end of an era, but at the same time this long-awaited picture brings a sense of completion to one of the best known Epics of post-modern culture. The storyline is now complete; all the pieces now fit, we now have the big picture.
It’s kind of an odd coincidence, or perhaps grace, that this Sunday serves as a glimpse of our own big picture. Today is the first Sunday after Pentecost. This is the first Sunday after all of the major church celebrations which have kept us occupied since early December. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost have all come and gone, and it seems that at least this cycle of stories is now complete. As we move into the longest season of the Christian calendar, of the life and work of the church, we pause for a moment to get a glimpse of the big picture. Today is often called “Trinity Sunday;” in essence, we get a chance to step back for just a moment and ponder the really big picture: the mystery of God.
The trouble is, no amount of language that we have can fully capture or define our understanding of God. Somehow it will always fall short. In fact, the only way we can understand is through what glimpses God actually gives us. I spent quite a bit of time this week staring at the blank screen of my computer trying to find ways to fully explain the mystery of the Trinity. In this process I realized that any amount of language that I used would ultimately fall short… and I ran the serious risk of boring all of you to death.
It’s not that the Trinity is impossible to understand. We do have simple, traditional language that we use every Sunday:
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise him all creatures here below,
Praise him above the heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”
When we baptize, we do so as directed from the gospel of Matthew from this morning’s reading:
“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The benedictions I pronounce, and the prayers that we offer all use Trinitarian language. They give voice to, but in many ways skim over the intangible mystery of God. They give us brief pause to consider the whole, but don’t give much opportunity really look at the big picture.
The truth is that God is far beyond our ability to truly understand. Any language that we have to speak about God cannot fully encompass all that God is, and therefore is inadequate for the job. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The most traditional and perhaps concrete language is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” From the traditional hymn “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”
But even this has its limits.
When I was a student in Vancouver, I offered to run a Bible study at the church that I was presently attending. I was still in school, studying for my M.Div. and thought that this might be a good and healthy experience… That is, until I began to receive some very odd remarks from the minister and the congregation.
“Good luck!” some people were heard to say. Others would come up to me and ask, “Is it true you’re going to be doing the Bible Study this fall?” When I nodded, they would give me a handshake with two hands to say, “Bless you…” I was beginning to get a bit worried. Had I wandered into a minefield, and they were all trying to warn me about something? As the fateful first day approached, I began to hear more and more odd comments about “the three…”
Admittedly, I was nervous… but also a bit naïve, I think. I had done all of my preparations, and had pulled everything together, notes, display pieces, study guides. I was ready, but I was still puzzled by this new-found sympathy that I had gained from the congregation. Then the fateful night arrived. I had a reasonable turnout of about nine people, including a trio of rather severe looking ladies, all armed with their own well-thumbed Bibles. Unsettling… but still workable.
Then it started. We had hardly gotten into the text when it began.
“What’s all this about the Trinity?” One would pipe up. “I don’t get it” another would snipe. “It’s tritheism! Aren’t we supposed to be monotheists?” Another would gripe armed with twenty dollar words… The banter went on, back and forth… and it really felt like I had lost all semblance of control… Worst of all, there didn’t seem to be any room for discussion.
I should also say at this point that this Bible study was supposed to be on the parables of Jesus. I doubled checked my own lesson plan, and there was no mention at all of the Trinity whatsoever. I didn’t understand how they had gotten off on this stunning tangent.
I was left there to sit in awe and wonder… but not in a good way.
After this first experience, I went to the minister with all the wind out of my sails… I wasn’t quite ready to resign, but it was certainly a demoralizing experience. He chuckled a bit, and asked me if I now understood the unusual level of sympathy that I had received. I nodded. Apparently these three ladies were legends in this congregation. Somehow, they would manage to turn every Bible study they were a part of into a tirade centered around the Trinity.
It took me a while to figure out why. These three wanted a nice, neat package where they could place God into a box, which they could fully understand. As concrete as even the most traditional forms of the language were, to them not all of the pieces fit, and they were ready to throw out this part of the puzzle in frustration, and ignore the big picture.
The Trinity has never been about fully understanding God. Rather, it is an invitation to consider the infinite mystery of God… to wonder about the big picture, but knowing full well that as human beings we have our limits.
Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us hanging. Over history, God has revealed to us brief glimpses through which we might gain some further understanding. We see God acting in retrospect, and over time people noticed some trends. God chooses to act in many different ways, but they can be distilled down into three different aspects of activity without actually being separate from each other: one that creates, one that redeems, and one that continues to sustain and support. God is one, but we understand and see God working in three different ways… three different “personas” or roles.
Think of it like light hitting a prism. When a beam of white light hits a prism, the beam fans out and against the wall we see a progression of colours… the spectrum. We most often see this in rainbows: Rainbows are created when light from the sun hits tiny droplets of water. When the light passes through the droplet of water, it acts like a prism, and suddenly we can see this spectrum of colour against the background of dark clouds. The light is still coming from one source, and yet we suddenly see all the different colours that make up the light. I think it’s also appropriate that no matter how much we try, rainbows always seem to be just beyond our grasp.
This metaphor works, yet like chasing rainbows, the Trinity is not something we can really get our head around. Instead, God invites us to do more than just ponder the mystery of the big picture, but to actually live out God’s three-fold activity in our own lives: being an active participant of God’s creation, to participate in Christ’s reconciling ministry in the world, and to be encouraged that God sustains through the Holy Spirit. God invites us to be a part of the big picture.
Amen.
Sermon preached Trinity Sunday, May 22nd, 2005,
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church; the Rev. John Crowdis
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