Symbols of the Faith

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Marshall, Texas on Sunday June 19, 2011, Trinity Sunday.

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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

Marie and I went to the Christian store in Longview last week to get Lea and Jerry’s wedding present. While there, I found a couple of neat things at the cash register. Ah, the joys of retail, put it near the cash register and let the impulse buying begin.

What I found were these things, they are a color coded ways to explain the Christian faith. They explain the faith using several concepts with a different color for each. This is the “God’s Plan for Salvation: Bookmark.” On it, sin is represented by the color black; the blood of Christ is red; faith is blue; forgiveness is white; life is green; and heaven is gold.  With each of these colors and concepts there is a scriptural verse.

The other one is called “Colors of THE WORD, A Wordless Book.” On it, sin and the blood are still black and red, but after that it gets different. With this one, white stands for purity and blue stands for baptism. The green and yellow are almost the same. Where green stands for life on the bookmark, on the Wordless Book it stands for new life in the other. Where the yellow means heaven on the one, on the other it represents living forever. I guess if you want to say that there’s no real difference between the green and the yellow I wouldn’t disagree with you. But it makes me wonder whether their respective designers would agree that it’s just splitting hairs.

These tools are given to the people of God as symbols of the faith. These are two ways to tell the story of God, the story of salvation, using colors instead of words.

Symbols are used extensively to help us understand and explain the faith. Our most common symbol is the cross. You’ll notice that in Protestant churches the cross is empty. The body remains on the symbol we call a crucifix. Neither the crucifix nor the cross can be a witness to Christian faith without the other, but the differences between these symbols point to the differences between the Roman, Orthodox, and Reformed churches.

The importance of these symbols to these faiths is tremendous. The crucifix points to the ultimate sacrifice of the Passion of the Christ. The empty cross’ distinction is that it certainly points to the death of the Christ, and even more it points to the resurrection and that death cannot contain God. Artistically it’s one small distinction, theologically it’s tremendous. The difference lands us on different sides of Good Friday, Easter, and the Reformation.

It’s like the two different color coded gospel things; they’re quite similar, but the differences make them distinctive.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) symbol is a cross with its own distinctive elements. Of course it is a cross that points toward the death and resurrection, but on either side of this cross are flames which represent the Pentecost. When you look at the stylized elements of the cross you can find a bird sweeping down from above toward the crossbar which represents the Holy Spirit and the Baptism of the Lord. Below the bird itself is a pulpit that represents worship and the Word of God proclaimed in the church. The crossbar itself is a book that represents Holy Scripture.

Within the dove is a fish, the symbol of God’s plenty from the feeding of the multitudes. The fish was also the earliest symbol of the Church as a worshiping body. In the middle of the pulpit to the spine of the book is a cup representing the Lord’s Supper. Finally, the weakest of the symbols in the PC (U.S.A.) seal is the invisible lines that form a triangle from the tip of the bird’s beak to either side of the flames connecting along the base of the symbol. This three sided shape represents the Trinity.

Of course it might be appropriate that symbol of the Trinity, arguably the most cryptic symbol of basic theology, is the weakest and least obviously definable piece of the denomination’s seal.

I always have trouble getting a handle on Trinity Sunday, especially since our gospel reading, the Great Commission, is perhaps the most evangelistic reading in the Gospel. Celebrating Trinity Sunday with Father’s Day adds its own quirks. So on this Trinity Sunday, what do we say about the Trinity? On this Father’s Day, what do we say about the Father?

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.”[1] That’s as good as any place to start.

The trinitarian formula used most frequently in 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 benefit 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.[2]

Some say it is gender specific; too male, not enough female.  Even though in the Westminster Confession we declare the First Person of the Trinity is a most pure spirit without body, parts, or passions;[3] 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.”  On Father’s Day, this is particularly poignant. 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.[4]

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. 

Five years ago, the General Assembly voted to accept a report on this issue called “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.”[5] 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.’”[6]

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 (U.S.A.) 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.”[7]

The best way I have found of describing how to imagine the Trinity comes from the Swiss theologian Karl Barth who said “in [the Trinity] we are speaking not of three divine I’s, but thrice of the one divine I.”[8]  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?” The answer is found in our gospel reading, we follow the Great Commission.

The Great Commission tells the church to, go and make disciples. It even tells us how to go and make disciples, by baptizing and teaching. But what shall we teach? I’m pretty sure none of us want to teach people the symbols of the faith using this Trinity-weekend-seminar-jammed-into-seven-minutes I’ve just given you. But there are other symbols.

Today’s Children’s sermon is a great example, by connecting Father’s Day and our Heavenly Father, Al taught the children about who God is. Honestly, because of time restraints and trying to teach kids and youth from Pre-Kindergarten through Junior High; Children sermons are great examples of what and how we should teach.

We have a symbol of the faith we share in the simplest of crosses. We teach that the instrument of the most degrading death the Roman Empire could inflict on another person is the empty threat death has on our lives. The cross is empty; God in Christ has defeated death.

We even have the symbol of the creation story from Genesis 1 that we read today. This story is rich in symbols and symmetry. This story, never meant to be a scientific description of creation, still contains more truth than facts can ever portray. It’s a story that links the creation of our cosmos with the creation of life, all under the gaze of the ever watchful Spirit of God.

The love of the Triune God overflows from the relationship of the three persons.  We were created to share in that love, that glory, 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 and share God’s love.  Love God and love one another in word and in deed. This is what we can surely teach. In sharing God’s overflowing love we baptize not with water, but with the love of the Triune God.

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.

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[1] “Trinity,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible

[2] Office of Theology and Worship, PC(USA), “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.”  PC(USA): Louisville, KY, 2004,, lines 354-355

[3] Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter II, Paragraph 1. In the PC(USA) Book of Confessions this is found at 6.011.

[4] Ibid.

[5] 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.

[6] Ibid, Office of Theology and Worship, lines 217-220.

[7] Ibid. lines 245-249.

[8] Barth, Karl, “Church Dogmatics.”  Volume I.1.Edinburgh: T & & Clark, 1975, page 351