The Fullness of God

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday May 18, 2008, Trinity Sunday.

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States. Since he died before any of us was born, all that we know about him comes from what we learned in American History or heard from our parents and grandparents. He was truly the late 19th–early 20th Century version of the American Renaissance man. In his public life, he was a statesman, politician, president and public figure. In his life in the American West, he was a sportsman, hunter, explorer and soldier. His letters to his children show him as a winsome, lovable, gentle father, husband and family man. If we didn’t know, we might think that these are three different people, but we know him as one particular person.

You see where I’m going with this on Trinity Sunday, don’t you. Roosevelt in his way was three in one. Each one of these portraits was true to who Roosevelt was. We know enough from each one of them to know something. But even when we put them all together, we still don't know everything there is to know about who he was.[1]

I’m having trouble getting a handle on Trinity Sunday, especially since our gospel reading, the Great Commission, is perhaps the most evangelistic reading in the Gospel. So on this Trinity Sunday, what do we say about the Trinity?

Let’s begin here; the word “Trinity” is not found in scripture. It’s a theological term. It’s a way people describe God based on the witness of scripture. One of my theological dictionaries calls the Trinity “The coexistence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the unity of the Godhead. While not a biblical term, ‘trinity’ represents the crystallization of New Testament teaching.”[2] That’s as good as any place to start.

The trinitarian formula used most frequently in our worship, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is found in scripture. It was in today’s readings from 2Corinthians and Matthew. In 2Corinthians it is a blessing, a benediction to the benefit of the recipient. As we prepare to leave the sanctuary, I use this same benediction. In Matthew, it is used to describe the one God in three Persons we worship as we welcome new members into the community in the waters of baptism.

Of course, this formula is not without its critics. As humanity has explored the diverse possibilities for trinitarian images, there is a temptation to try to bring the mystery of God under our control.[3]

Some say it is gender specific; too male, not enough female. Even though we confess that the First Person of the Trinity is a most pure spirit without body, parts, or passions;[4] people get touchy about the maleness or femaleness of God. The quantity of masculine words to identify God in scripture only adds to the controversy.

Others note that people whose fathers weren’t present or were abusive have difficulty seeing God as the figure of a good Father, father with a capital “F.” I can’t disagree with this, after all, earthly fathers are a sin-soaked people; just like everyone else. But unfortunately, our earthly perceptions of fathers infect our perception of God the Father who we confess is infinite in being and perfection.[5]

Another issue with the history and theology of the Trinity is that some considered Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit to be secondary deities, subordinate to the First Person of the Trinity. But the church affirms that Jesus and the Spirit are not some lackey or servant gods to a supposedly supreme God when in truth all three persons of God are equal to one another.

Additionally, some have renamed the persons of the Trinity based on what we think are their usual roles. The most common of these is “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.” This isn’t good because it tries to cubby-hole the works of God into a specific person of God. This is not the nature of the Triune God. For example, our Genesis passage this morning speaks directly to the Spirit’s role in creation as the wind that swept across the face of the waters. Our Psalm sings of God the Great I AM as the one who protects and sustains us.

All three persons of God create, redeem, sustain, and so much more. We need to remember that naming the Triune God by roles hides the truth of the scriptural witness and the nature of the fullness of God.

Our human efforts to tame the names of God have helped humanity homogenize God into compartments based on our perceptions of what God does. It has helped us put God into a hierarchy that would make a business tycoon proud. It has helped us infect the glory of God by our individual perceptions. By speaking of the Three Persons of God in these ways, in a very human way, we limit God. But the Triune God is not contained by human frailty.

Two years ago, the General Assembly voted to accept a report on this issue,[6] a Presbyterian look at the Trinity. It included this great truth: “Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are, together with God the Father, fully and eternally God. As the Nicene Creed affirms, Jesus Christ is ‘God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,’ and the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped and glorified as ‘the Lord, the giver of life.’”[7]

All three persons of the Triune God are eternal and equal. As the Triune God, the three persons cannot be separated from one another yet they are distinct from one another.

Now, if you think this is beginning to sound more like three Gods than one God in three persons, I can’t blame you. Perhaps one of the most important things we can say about the Trinity is that the concept of “Trinity” is a model, a way of explaining the mystery of God.

The PC(USA) Trinity Report puts it this way, “The mystery of the Trinity is an open and radiant mystery. It is the mystery of the truth that God is holy, abundant, overflowing love both in relationship with us and in all eternity. We meet God’s threefold love in astonishing faithfulness of the Holy One of Israel, in the costly grace given to us in Jesus Christ our Savior, and in the new life in communion with God and others that has come to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit.”[8]

The best way I have found of describing how to imagine the Trinity comes from the Swiss theologian Karl Barth who said “in it we are speaking not of three divine I’s, but thrice of the one divine I.”[9] There is one divine presence who has been shown to us in three distinct persons, shown to us in scripture, and still being shown to us today by grace. God in three persons is diverse, and in one, the Triune God is united.

The question becomes “What do we do with this knowledge?

One of the places we can find the answer to this question is in our Prayer for Illumination:

God, whose fingers sculpt sun and moon
and curl the baby’s ear;
spirit, brooding over the chaos
before the naming of the day;
Savior, sending us to the earth’s ends
with water and words:
startle us with the grace, love, and communion
of your unity and diversity,
that we may live to the praise of your majestic name.[10]

Excepting the prayer’s creeping modalism, it gives us an important clue. There are two distinct motions to this prayer, remembering what we know about the one who creates us and showing how we are to respond to God in praise and to creation in love and service.

The love of the Triune God overflows from the relationship of the three persons. We were created to share in that love, that wonder, that joy. We can’t repay God for the love we are shown; so what we must do, all we can do, is love in return. Love God and love one another in word and in deed.

When we claim the overflowing love of the Triune God we are called to respond. “[The doctrine of the Trinity] must be put into practice in our everyday life. It has its roots in the proclamation of the gospel and in the church’s life in prayer.”[11]

And as our reading from Matthew teaches, we follow the command to make disciples; sharing this love by going into the world, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching obedience to everything the Lord has commanded.

This is a daunting command, but with this command we are given the assurance that Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, will be with us to the end of the age. Rely on this and rely on the overflowing love in the fullness of the Triune God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[1] Homiletics Online, attributed to Harry Emerson Fosdick with an editorial contribution, http://www.homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?item_topic_id=902, retrieved May 16, 2008.
[2] “Trinity,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
[3] Office of Theology and Worship, PC(USA), “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.” PC(USA): Louisville, KY, 2004,, lines 354-355
[4] Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter II, Paragraph 1. In the PC(USA) Book of Confessions this is found at 6.011.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Note that I wrote “accepted” and not “approved.” Because of the controversial nature of this report the General Assembly of the PC(USA) did not approve this report but instead voted to accept it.
[7] Ibid, Office of Theology and Worship, lines 217-220.
[8] Ibid. lines 245-249.
[9] Barth, Karl, “Church Dogmatics.” Volume I.1.Edinburgh: T & & Clark, 1975, page 351.
[10] Reprinted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, Year A, Trinity Sunday, Prayer of Illumination, copyright 2002.
[11] Ibid, Office of Theology and Worship, lines, 483-484.