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Six-year-olds ask great questions. One of my favorite is Calvin's question. You remember Calvin and his tiger friend Hobbes. One day in school, Calvin's first grade teacher, Miss Wormwood, said, "OK, class, if there are no questions, we can move on to the next topic. "I have a question!" said Calvin, shooting his hand into the air. "Yes, Calvin, what is it?" "What's the point of human existence?" he asked. "I meant a question relevant to today's class work," replied Miss Wormwood. "Oh," grumbled Calvin, "but frankly I'd like to have an answer to my question before I spend any more energy on with all this stuff." Calvin wants his question resolved before he spends any more energy on reading, writing, or arithmetic or other such stuff, because Calvin's is the question that gives meaning to all the other stuff. It's the first question and the last question, the theological question, the question of God. What's the point of it all? What's the point of human existence? Today is Trinity Sunday, God Sunday as my friend calls it. It's a feast that reaches back only to the fourteenth century, but a thousand years before that, and earlier, the Church struggled with the question of God. Who is God? And in the 4th century, St. Athanasius said that "whoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.... And the Catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.... The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal...." And that's only the beginning of the Athanasian Creed! But let's start with what we can know for certain, which is, as St. Augustine said, that if we know it, then whatever it is, it is not God. That's the only thing we can know for certain - that God is beyond our knowing, mystery, and that, as Augustine added, we Christians use the concept and the word "Trinity" to talk about God only because "it is a little better than saying nothing, when one has to say something." Augustine, it is said, was strolling on the beach one day, contemplating the mystery of the Trinity, when he came upon a small child who had dug a hole in the sand. The child kept going back and forth to the sea, scooping out cups of water and pouring them into the hole, one at a time. Augustine asked the child what he was doing. "I'm putting the ocean into the hole on the beach," said the child, "one cupful at a time." Augustine told the child that he would never be able to drain the ocean that way, and the child replied that he would be able to drain the ocean before Augustine would be able to understand the Trinity. It is said that a theologian is someone who is answering questions nobody is asking. But every six-year-old asks them. What is the point of human existence? Which is a question that can be broken into two more specific questions: Where do we come from? and Where are we going? Every six-year-old asks these questions, and you probably do, too, or you wouldn't be here this morning. They are questions for Trinity Sunday. Dorothy Sayers had a go at the Holy Trinity in her book The Mind of the Maker. Asking how God is three and yet only one, she says, is like asking the author of any creative work - the author of a novel or play or poem - how the whole of his novel or play or poem is related to its parts. Before a novel is written, for example, it is first conceived in the mind of the author. Then, over a period of time - sometimes a very long period of time - the author works to bring the novel into shape, writing and rewriting, arranging material and rearranging it, editing and reediting. Finally, after the writing if finished, the book is published, and it is read by hundreds or thousands of people and through the printed words meaning is conveyed from the mind of the author to the minds and hearts of the readers. Sometimes, through the printed words, meaning that was not even originally conceived of by the author is conveyed to the reader. And if you were to ask which of the three parts of the novel - the original Creative Idea of the story, or the Creative Energy the author spent in writing and editing it, or the Creative Power, or Meaning, that moves from the printed page to the reader when he reads it - is the "real book," one would be at a loss to say, because, on the one hand, each of the three parts is the book separately, but on the other, in the complete experience of the entire creative act all three of them co-exist. "All three [parts] are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without the other." The Creative Idea is nothing without the Creative Energy and the Creative Power, or Meaning. The Creative Energy is nothing without the Creative Idea and the Creative Power, or Meaning. The Creative Power, or Meaning, is nothing without the Creative Idea and Creative Energy. This Sayers offers as an image of the Holy Trinity. When we ask, "Where do we come from?" we asking about the Creative Idea, about God the Father, who brought the world into being in the beginning with his Word and his Spirit : "And God spoke his Word and said, 'Let there be light, and there was light' (for the Word was there with God in the beginning, 'eternally begotten of the Father,' as we say). And again God spoke his Word: 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, so that dry land may appear.' And it was so. And again he said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their various kinds,' and 'let us make human beings in our own image, after our likeness....' And it was so." And then, in another Scriptural image, we hear that God's Spirit, his living breath, was also there in the beginning, for the Spirit hovered over the chaos and separated the waters from the waters. And in still another image the Lord God shaped man from the dust of the earth, and breathed his Spirit into him, and man became a living creature. So when we ask, "Where do we come from?" we're asking a theological question, a question answered by the Bible with an unambiguous theological response: we come from God, who had the Creative Idea of our existence in the beginning and who, through his Creative Energy - through his Word and through his Spirit - spoke us into being, and breathed into us, and gave us life. But the moment in the beginning when God spoke his Word was not, of course, the end of us. That was where we came from, but it was not where we were going. The fact that we had come into being did not answer the question of what we would become. What is the point of it all was still in question; our destiny still had to be worked out. For no sooner had we been created in the image and likeness of God than we began to act as if we weren't. Adam and Eve, men and women, you and I began to show a preference for life on our own terms. Adam ate the forbidden fruit and blamed it on Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. And Cain, jealous that maybe God loved his brother Abel more than he loved Cain, killed his brother and asked God why God thought Abel should be of any concern to Cain. And we remember how God fretted over his creation like a writer over his story as we lived our way through centuries of bondage to jealousy and deceit and murder and mayhem only to find ourselves in further bondage as slaves in Egypt. And we remember how God brought us out of Egypt and how, on our way back to freedom, God reworked the story and sent us his prophet Moses. And we remember how Moses gave us a new glimpse of the image we were created to live in, how he brought us God's Ten Words to live by, and how through these Ten Words God worked mightily to reshape us so that we might remember that we do not have to misuse the life we have been given. Part of the divine energy we came from is the freedom not to violate or kill other children of God, or to lie or steal or covet things that belong to others. Our destiny is to live the way Love lives, and part of the energy we came from is the freedom to do so. And we remember how, after Moses, we continued to prefer life in the image of gods other than the Lord who created us. We remember how we preferred to live in images other than the image of love. We remember how we created our own gods, golden calves and other dead gods like nations and flags and gold and silver and boats and wardrobes and careers and success, and other images in our own likeness and desires, gods with no breath of life in them. And we remember how God continued to write and rewrite, to edit and reedit, to shape and reshape his creative work. We remember how he sent us his Word through his servants the prophets to bring us back to life lived in his image. And we remember how the Word who was with God in the beginning became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of light and truth. And we remember how he lived and how he died, not for himself, but for us, because the Creative Idea of God in the beginning and the Creative Energy of God in history both convey the image of Justice and Mercy and Love, the image of One who reaches out from self for the sake of the other, the image of what creation and life are all about. And we remember, finally, how on Calvary he said, "It is finished; the Creation is complete, here on the Cross," which is where the Author of Life shows us in all clarity how God lives when a human being on earth lives the life God destined for him. We remember Calvary, where God points us to our destiny, points us to where we are going when we live in his image, the image we were created in. Do you know why Shakespeare couldn't spell? It was because there was no dictionary in the 16th century, because words were alive and constantly changing. It was only later that we wrote the great dictionaries and began to try to capture and freeze and fix and standardize and absolutize the spelling and meanings of words, as if, in words and in life, what once was always has to be. Jesus himself warned us not to get too set in our ways, warned us that what is is not what always will be. On the night before he died, the One who was with God in the beginning told us that there was more for us to grow into. "I have much more to say to you," he said, "more than you can now bear. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth. God, through his Spirit, will continue to guide you into all truth." Jesus knew that revelation is a continuing process, an ongoing process that will continue even after he himself had died, because life is a continuing process. One cannot fix or package or box up life and love, any more than we can fix and box in the meaning of a word, because life and love, like language, are living, growing experiences, not static things. William Willimon says that today's Gospel reading reminds us that all of us must steadfastly guard against the conceit of acting "as if we have arrived in our faith," as if there is no more growing or becoming for us to do, as if the work of the Spirit of truth has been completed in us, as if we now have God in a box. There are, he suggests, things about God and life that Jesus cannot lay on us today, because we simply couldn't bear them now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead us into all truth. So don't be surprised when your understanding of God changes, when it grows. When that happens, it means that you are alive. Despite our attempts to freeze life and reality and to package religion into creeds, into what we think we can absolutely know, it is a futile effort, just as it is a futile effort to try to freeze the meanings of words in a dictionary. Trying to define God is like trying to empty the ocean a cupful at a time. Life is always changing and growing, because the Creative Action of God is always calling us not to the static state of death, but to life lived in his Creative Meaning, always calling us to become as well as to be by becoming all that he created us to be. "It is finished, completed," said Jesus. The fullness of Creative Love is completed in Jesus on the Cross, because all the fullness of love incarnate is found there. The Cross is the end of the Creative Idea and the Creative Energy of God the way the publication of a novel is the end of the Creative Idea and the Creative Energy of an author who has to meet a deadline with his publisher. But that is not the end of the story, because the Creative Meaning of Love is not finished, any more than the novel is finished once it is published. Because God is not finished with us. Because we still have to hear and respond to the story, because it is not in the nature of the Creative Meaning of God to stand still. It is in the nature of Creative Love not just to BE, but to BECOME like the one in whose image we are created. So, as we hear and remember the story, and as we appropriate the meaning for us in our own hearts and minds, the Creative Meaning continues. And when we ask the question, "Where are we going?" we ask the same theological question that Athanasius and Augustine and Jesus and all the prophets have asked throughout the ages. Calvin wants to know the point of it all. What's the point of human existence? And we ask, "Where do we come from?" and "Where are we going?" and it all amounts to the same thing. And everywhere around us God the Creative Father, and God the Creative Son, and God the Creative Spirit is whispering Justice, Mercy, and Love, life in the image of God. And when we say this image is "The Holy Trinity" we mean something like this - that the One who was in the beginning is also the One who is now and also the One who will be who he will be. When we say that God is "Holy Trinity" we mean something like this - that the God whose love led him to reach out from himself in the beginning to create us, and the God whose love has led him throughout history to reshape and renew his creation, and the God whose love continues to lead him to reach out toward us now to convey the meaning of the Cross in our own lives, when we say that God is "Holy Trinity" we mean that all three - the original Idea, the historical Energy, and the contemporary Meaning, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - are the same God. What is the point of human existence? The answer of the Church is that there is one, and it is God, and the living of God's Creative Love in human life, which is justice and mercy. Where did we come from? "In the beginning, God." Where are we going? "The moral arc of the universe is long," said Martin Luther King, Jr., "but it bends toward justice." And, I would add, toward mercy, toward the Cross, where justice and mercy kiss. And when we call God "Holy Trinity" in order to try somehow to communicate God's Creative Idea from the beginning, his Creative Energy in history, and his Creative Meaning unto all ages, we need to be careful not to presume that we have found God, that we have defined God and fixed him in his place. When we say that God is Three-in-One, it is only because it is a little better than saying nothing when one has to say something. But perhaps our best response, and our best message to the world as well, is simply to sit loose to our rational attempts to capture God with words from the dictionary and to let the experience of God's trinitarian reality breathe joy and peace into our worship and into our lives. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |