The Holy Trinity. In some ways I’d rather begin by saying nothing, for a sermon about the Trinity is a sermon about God’s own self. But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Lent, and so this morning I will try to talk about the trinity in different way.
When we get over our compulsion to do a lot of talking and explaining about God we come to realise that our first and best response before God is simply to stand in wonder and awe of his love for us.
Or, as the Orthodox Church puts it, to stand with the mind in the heart before God.
This morning we’ll touch on the necessary tension between human reason and Scripture and have a glancing look at Baptism – all whilst standing with the mind in the heart before God.
Now I baptise everyone, including babies, most Anglican priests do. Some people believe that baptism is unnecessary as we are saved by grace through faith alone.
In all the liturgical denominations and in many free churches, the way people publicly confess their faith (or their sponsors do if they are infants) at Baptism is through the Apostles’ Creed.
The Apostles’ Creed is one of three we use. All of them are a declaration of who Christians understand and believe God to be; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Through the statements of the creed we enter a doorway through which we can partake most fully of the great vision of God; Father Son, and Holy Spirit.
But the great failure of our vision is often not being able to truly see the unlimited resources of energy and love to which the believer has access, when the [triune] life of God is felt as fullness. A failure to see the very fulness of God.
Now I’m using the word fullness, but the word is ‘power’. I use fullness because it takes away all connotations of having a power like having some sort of Holy Spirit super power.
No, this is the fulness of powerful life which comes from the fullness of the Triune God himself.
The Westminster Catechism teaches that the job of all of humanity is simply to glorify and enjoy God. Enjoy God. This is what the fulness of God is. God is very much for us.
We also access to this fullness of God through prayer and worship together every week and through personal prayer; we participate in the great vision of God and the living mystery which is the creating, redeeming, and sanctifying God among us now. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The creating, redeeming and life-giving power of God are not static. They are active and constantly at work. The creative, redeeming, and sanctifying power of God which we know in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are fully accessible to us now.
All that is required, is that we consent to enter into this life of God and the trinity is power to persevere, to hope, and to know.
We are called to share in God’s own enduring. Every aspect of God’s creation endures, and we can share in creating that durability for our lives, our ministries, and our parish family.
What can impact our participation in the fullness of God is an over reliance on our own God given ability to reason, and to place it over the truth of Scripture.
God speaks in words we can understand. We know God by what he says to us. If we did not have the ability to reason, we would not be able to know what God says to us.
Many people believe that baptism is not required and that we are saved by grace alone through faith. They are correct up to a point, but they are missing the fullness of God the Holy Trinity.
I am giving the baptism example because it shows how easy it is to place our reason above our faith, and so missing the full blessing of the Lord God Almighty. What does our Scripture today say, the word of truth?
E.g., Jesus says today “I tell you; no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (v.5).
The Bible teaches that that which is born of the flesh is flesh. It teaches that baptism is how God brings about the new spiritual birth.
That is truth – whether you can reason it or not, it remains truth.
If we cannot understand how the Holy Spirit can regenerate a soul, Jesus points out that neither can we understand the wind. But we know it is blowing, don’t we?
We don’t understand the things of this world and yet we accept them. In the same way, the Holy Spirit does what he does without our understanding how.
Now reason, our ability to think things through and come to a conclusion, is a wonderful gift from God. God gives us the ability to figure things out. We learn cause and effect. We learn how this fits with that.
We learn language, history, mathematics, music, geography, and how to construct a sentence. The ability to reason is a wonderful gift from God. The ability to use human reason is especially important when it comes to our Christian faith.
This sounds very simple, but it’s deceptive.
By using our reason we can conclude that Jesus is talking about baptism. There is no other possible interpretation of his words. Water and Spirit are joined together. (There is only one verb and one preposition).
Now if errors like thinking baptism is unnecessary are in the body of Christ, we aren’t surprised that human reasoning in non-believers has reasoned God out of all existence.
Their minds refuse to believe the miraculous and so believe nothing that can’t be touched and measured.
But look what happens when we place our God-gifted reason under Holy Scripture, which the apostle John told us two weeks ago is the very word of God (John 17:17). We are then being taught by God and our reason once again becomes a wonderful gift.
We can receive holy mysteries from God in sincere faith alone. We can believe that the Father who sent his Son is God and that the Son who was lifted up on the cross is God and that the Holy Spirit who gives us the new spiritual birth and ushers us into the kingdom of God is God.
And yet they are not three gods, but one God. We can know this precious mystery of the Holy Trinity because God’s word teaches it to us, not because we can understand through reason.
We stand with the mind in the heart before God.
But when we place our human reason over the Bible as its judge, dismissing divine mysteries on the grounds that we cannot figure them out, then our reason is the path away from God and will make a shipwreck of our faith.
All of us can be affected by what we think is impeccable spiritual logic. The body of Christ itself can be deformed in places because of an incorrect understanding of the Holy Trinity due to human reasoning over faith.
Ango-Catholic churches can be too focussed on the Father at the expense of the grace of Jesus and the power of the Spirit.
Likewise evangelical churches can focus too much on the Son, almost forgetting that Jesus did nothing unless directed and told to by the Father.
Pentecost Churches can be so waiting for the Spirit, that they can miss the reality that Christ is most easily found amongst the poor and the suffering.
Jesus says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (vv.14-15).
Jesus was lifted up. There, he bore our sins according to the will of the Father. We who sin against God every day are saved by looking up to Jesus on the cross. The Holy Spirit opens our eyes of faith. He tells us that our sins are forgiven, that we have eternal life, and are marked as God’s own forever.
This is what God wants us to know and confess. This is the fullness of life in the Lord God Almighty, Father, Son, and Hoy Spirit. Let me pray ...