May 18, 2008 Sermon
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Trinity Sunday - A
8:00 a.m. Sermon
May 18, 2008 Allan Conkling
Trinity Sunday is one of those times when we stand, looking in multiple directions. Think of Janis, the Roman God with two faces. Everything we know (or don't know!) about God is contained in the belief in the Holy Trinity. And, all of the volumes of our history as followers of the Triune God are contained between the bookends of Genesis and Matthew.
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth..." the very first words of the Bible.
"Go and make disciples of all nations..." the very last recorded words of Jesus in Matthew.
You and I see just from one horizon to the other, one day at a time, one crisis to the next, but God's vision is so much grander than ours. God is perfect harmony. There is nothing beyond God's own perfect Trinity that requires anything else. God needs no company. No consort. God creates for the simple act of creation.
When the world was made and people were made it was done out of love. As the story goes, we then tried to put ourselves in the driver's seat. As a result of our sinfulness, God came to the world in Jesus. Why? Because God loves us. All that we have and all that we are and all we can ever hope to be is from God. Even our works and words and worship we do are not ours, but are initiated and brought about by the workings of the Holy Spirit. As the old Baptist song goes:
"O how I love Jesus, because he first loved me."
I say all of this because so often it seems as though this life is only filled with suffering, pain, and heartache. Even in our "Christian" nation today we are in some of the most vacuous times of our spirituality. Many say that God is either distant or nonexistent. Even in the church we seem at times to be drifting, separated from a firm foundation. So how does God speak today?
Well here's the clincher: God's silent witness is in creation, but when God speaks it is with our voice. When God acts it is with the hands of our church. When God comforts, he goes into the world with our feet. When god loves it is because we love. In short, God in the perfection of the Trinity may not need us, but the world in its imperfection certainly does. This is our call. It is "meet right and our bounden duty..."
When Jesus says, "Go into the world and make disciples" it is not because God needs it. Rather we need God. In stretching ourselves to be more than we are, we believe that the same Spirit that was present at the foundation of the world is in us right now. We don't have to understand everything about God in the story of Genesis. We don't have to agree about all the finer points of the Bible or church doctrine, or even be on the same side of major issues in the church. In the Trinity, we affirm that in the midst of our less than perfect lives God is here. God love us and has a plan for our lives.
They say that Trinity Sunday celebrates not an event (like Christmas or Easter) but the fact of who God is, and who we are in God. Kierkegaard said,
"Life is lived forward, but it is understood backward."
Thank God we have a God who loves us and cares for us and calls us to serve others in God's name.
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Revised: 05/25/08