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After the positive response from my last sermon series I thought it would be a good idea to do another one. I looked at the calendar and found these three Sundays in November. "Three Sundays," I thought. "A series on the Trinity. That’s what I’ll do. Surely people have questions about the Trinity." So I announced this series BEFORE I did my study. It was a dangerous thing to do, for it meant that I had to commit myself to this before I had any idea of what I would say. I began my research and discovered more questions than answers. And then last Sunday our superintendent, Milo Thornberry, said that he admired me for tackling such a deep subject. I began to get really nervous. Generally, I like to help people understand God, not confuse them. But then I am comforted when I hear stories like this one. One of the great early church leaders, Augustine, while puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity, was walking along the beach one day when he observed a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth to pour water into a little hole. Augustine asked, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole." Put the ocean into a hole in the sand? It was then Augustine realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind. There is a part of us that wants to understand the mysteries of God. At a church planning retreat a long time ago I remember a teenager saying, "I want answers." Our minds are like the hole in the sand and we want to put the ocean into it. But like Augustine we need to realize that we will not fully comprehend the mystery of the nature of God. But that doesn’t mean we should give up trying. Let’s start with a bit of history. The Trinity asserts that God is one in essence, but three in "person", Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word "Trinity" does not appear in the Bible. It was an effort by early church leaders to weave together into one confession all the several threads of the biblical description of God. One thread is the Old Testament idea of the oneness of God. There is no better place to capture the essence of the oneness of God than the Jewish Shema in Deut. 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. " The New Testament thread has a different emphasis and seems to conflict with this unity concept because it talks about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Despite this apparent contradiction it is important to note that neither Jesus nor his early followers intended anything they said about their new revelation to contradict the idea of God as one. As Christianity grew the early Christians spoke to and about Jesus in titles that put him above the merely human; they ascribed to him powers and works that transcended the natural realm; they sang to him "as God," as their Roman enemies reported. They were also aware of a presence and power of God in their midst that was distinct from, yet not alien to, Jesus Christ and the one whom he had taught them to call his Father. This was the Holy Spirit, whose coming was connected with the celebration of Pentecost. Nevertheless, the awareness of these implications did not spring into the Christian consciousness all at once but developed over several centuries and through many controversies. When Christians taught Greek and Roman pagans their faith they felt the need to justify the Jewish idea of the oneness of God with the new revelation of God in Jesus Christ. So they taught that the divine Christ as the Word of God was subordinate to the Supreme Deity. It was not until the 4th century that these two teachings of subordinationism and unity was brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of "one essence and three persons." The Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. established this with a formal creed. The Apostles’ Creed is a shortened version of the Nicene Creed, both of which we have in our hymnals. Having shared this brief history I want to focus on the first person of the Trinity. What is your image of God as Creator? We may be tempted to dismiss this question but our images of God do matter. How we image God shapes not only what we think God is like but also what we think the Christian life is about. For example, if you think of God as a warrior then may become a warrior yourself. I have a sense that this warrior image of God is in the minds of the Israeli and Palestinian people as they call for a holy war. People who think God is angry at the world are likely to be angry at the world themselves. Look at the white supremacist groups and their teaching of hate which are often grounded in religion. People who think God accepts all people into heaven will probably not feel any urgency to be evangelistic. People who think God is the number one male of the universe may use biblical, male language to dominate women. The point is that it does matter how we image God. In his book, "The God We Never Knew", Marcus Borg describes a traditional image or model of God. He calls it the monarchical model which clusters together images of God as king, lord, and father. God is seen as a male authority figure who is ruler of the universe. This biblical model of God was designed to bring order to society. Earthly kings were supposed to be the power that protected people and made them feel safe. But this image of God as king was used in a very different way. It was used, not to bring order to society, but to subvert it. It was used to dominate women and children. It was used to justify the crusades. It was used to discriminate against minorities. Let’s be honest. It is a fact that much of what the Bible says about God is filtered through the lens of a male dominated culture. This is easy to understand. Your image of God has been influenced by the culture in which you grew up. So has mine. But it is possible to deal with the cultural influences. Sound theological thinking is needed in the church today to attempt to lift cultural layers that can obscure the true image of God. It’s really about trying to see God as God really is. Let me share with you a personal journey of how I faced the way my upbringing shaped my view of God. I grew up in Ohio, in churches where the primary image of God taught was that of our heavenly Father. Since I had a fairly good relationship with my dad this image of God as Father was a comforting one for me. I liked calling God, Father. As I went to college, then as a teacher, and then to seminary I discovered that people did not have the same upbringing as me. They did not have the same image of God as Father. I heard women share their pain of being forced to relate to a male God when it had been males who had dominated and abused them. I read in the Bible that in addition to being seen as male, God is also viewed as having feminine qualities. There are images of God as a mother hen and a mother eagle. I thought to myself, "Could my God, the one I have called Father all these years, be more than male?" It took awhile but the answer was YES. God was not exclusively male. Can you imagine the awkwardness when I first began to pray using new words for God? It felt weird and strange. But in time I became comfortable with the new language. It helped me expand my image of God. There was a new freedom as I allowed God to be more than my confining image of God. And it also helped me in evangelism. It helped me talk about God with words people could understand. I haven’t given up my image of God as Father. I still see God as my heavenly Father. But it is not the only image I use. What is your image of God as the first person in the Trinity? Father, Creator, Mother? Are you so tied to your image that you find it hard to see God in a new way? Do you remember the Indian folk tale of the blind men and elephant? One blind man had wrapped his arms around the elephant’s legs and declared that elephants were thick and round. Another blind man had hold of the tail and announced that elephants were hairy like a rope. Another blind had grabbed the tusk and stated that elephants were hard and smooth. All these pronouncements did not change the fact that elephants were more than they said. Isn’t there some blindness in our minds about how we image God? When you stop and think about it every thought we have about God is an aberration. Every image in our minds is somewhat of a distortion. We may have part of the truth of God, but we don’t have it all. God will always be more than our thoughts of God. So the question for us is: Do we want to cling to a God who matches our cultural background or do we want to know God for who God really is? Author, Gabriel Vahanian, once said, "If anyone claims to be an atheist, I always ask, 'What God is it you don't believe in?' In other words, 'Are you a Roman Catholic atheist, a Baptist atheist, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod atheist, or what?' From there, I probe to discover what affirmation lies beneath the denial -- and almost invariably there is a profound theological truth and a deep faith at the heart of this self-described atheist. Because what was rejected was not God but an inadequate image of God – in effect, an idol." My prayer is that you and I take the time to read, study, and think about our images of God. In the end it is not about our images. It is about who God really is. My guess is that each one of us, upon entering the glory of eternal life, will be surprised that some of our images of God will not match who God really is. I hope that when my time comes to have someone light a candle for me that I won’t be too surprised. I hope that I will be able to recognize God for who God really is. |
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11/05/00 - Trinity Series: Images of God
