Trinity Sunday - Sunday 30th May 2010 - St Laurence`s 10 am
The God who is personal
Romans 8: 9-17 and John 14: 15-24
I would like you to imagine for a moment you have been asked to complete a checklist of things to believe as a Christian. So you go down the list and tick the various boxes; Creation - yes; Incarnation - yes; Salvation - yes; Resurrection - yes; Trinity - yes. Hang on a minute why did you tick that one? Well that's what the Church teaches isn't it? - Yes but what difference does it really make to our Christian life and understanding? And it's when we get to this point that we often get stumped.
This is what one writer says: "For many Christians, the Trinity has become something akin to their appendix: it is there but they are not sure what it's function is; they get by in life without it doing very much; and if they had it removed they wouldn't be too distressed."
The difficulty, of course, is that many Christians find the Trinity perplexing and somewhat remote from ordinary life - even though it's a core Christian belief. It's the belief that God reveals himself in Scripture as the one true God who exists as three persons. (God in three persons blessed trinity as we sang in our opening hymn) And it is, of course, difficult for us as finite beings to imagine how God can exist in more than one way as we do - but then God is God and we have to let God be God and not try and make him in our own image.
So how do we picture God I wonder - as something or someone rather distant and remote or as someone, as I believe who we can know and relate to in a personal way? So what I want to look at this morning is how as human beings we can have a personal relationship with a God who reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and to offer some brief reflections on each one. So, firstly, if we could spend a few moments looking at God the Father.
1. God the Father
So what we need to recognise at the outset is that the God we worship is not some impersonal force or power that pervades the universe but a God who is personal. He is, of course, the infinite eternal God and I suppose, by definition, beyond what our human language and imagination can capture - yet in Scripture he reveals himself as someone who wants to relate to us, his creation in a personal way.
If we look into the Old Testament we see that he was known by ancient Israel as Yahweh; a name that was so sacred that the people were afraid of taking it in vain. And even today many orthodox Jews will not even pronounce his name. Yet, in the New Testament, Jesus comes along and does the unthinkable and shocks everyone by calling him 'Dad' (or 'Abba' as it is expressed in the original Aramaic.)
But it's more than that. Jesus does not just refer to Yahweh as his father. He says, "Look, when you pray say: 'Our Father.'" He did not just say my Father but our Father - he is ours as well as his. But, it seems we can go further as we too can also call him 'Abba' or 'Dad.' Look at verse 15 in our first reading: For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, and by him we cry, "Abba! Father!"
It is, of course, very difficult for us to try to visualise what God the Father is like. In fact, when we look at parts of the Old Testament he can seem quite scary. For example when Moses encountered him in the desert we are told he hid his face because he was afraid to look at God yet at the same time the Old Testament also likens him to a mother comforting her child
But as we take Scripture as a whole, what emerges is a picture of God as a loving heavenly Father; one who cares and understands; one who has feelings and expresses emotion. Look; for example, at one of the most well known verses is the Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." God loves us - we can relate to a God like that - in fact he loves so much that he is prepared to enter his creation through Jesus the Son. And it's Jesus that brings us to our next heading.
2. God the Son
Like God the Father, God the Son is also personal and, of course, that is easier for us to grasp as Jesus is fully human as well as being fully God. One of the reasons he came is to show us what the Father is like. The book of Colossians tells us that: "He (that is Jesus) is the image of the invisible God."
But Jesus came not only to show us what the Father was like but he also came to open the way for us to be in touch with the Father through what he did on the cross. The writer to the Hebrews paints a wonderful picture of Jesus as one who represents us before the Father. Jesus who knows what it is to be like to be human with all our weaknesses and frailties is there now in the Father's presence interceding and praying for us. And it's as we pray that our prayers are joined with his as he intercedes on our behalf before the Father.
Let me share with you a story I came across recently. There was a little girl who was learning to play the piano, but her musical skills were still very limited. One day she was playing some notes on the keyboard whilst staying with her family in a hotel in Norway. Unfortunately her constant 'plink; plonk; plink; plonk' on the keys was beginning to get on everyone's nerves. But after a while, a man came and sat beside the girl, and started to play alongside her. And the result was quite astonishing - wonderful music came from the two of them, the little girl playing as before, with the man supplying all the other notes. The man, in fact, was the girl's father, the nineteenth-century Russian composer, Alexander Borodin.
It's the same with our prayer and worship; just as the great composer was able to transform his little girl's playing into something beautiful, so Christ receives all that we offer to the Father and converts it in himself and presents it as something perfect and wholly acceptable to the Father.
We often struggle don't we in trying to relate to God because we feel our own words and prayers are inadequate and a bit like the little girl's plink plonk on the piano. But let me encourage you with you some words I came across from St Therese of Lisieux. This is what she says: "I can't face the strain of hunting in books for splendid prayers - it makes my head spin. There are such a lot of them, each more splendid than the last; how am I to recite them all, or to choose between them? I just do what children have to do before they learn to read; I tell God quite simply, without any splendid turns of phrase, and somehow he always manages to understand me."
Yes - our prayers are joined with those of the Lord Jesus as he represents us before the Father, which is, of course, why we pray in the name of Jesus, and it's through him that our worship and prayers, if sincere are made acceptable to the Father. "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" says the Apostle Paul in his letter to Timothy.
3. God the Holy Spirit
Yes - God the Father is personal; God the Son is personal and we now come to God the Holy Spirit who is also personal. And if we look at all the things attributed to the Holy Spirit in Scripture we see that they all reflect his personality: for example, he speaks searches, cries out, prays, teaches, forbids. And again we can see all the things done to him are things that can be done to a person and not a thing, for example: we can grieve him, lie to him, resist him, and blaspheme him.
In a way he is the rather shy member of the Trinity and in the passage from Romans read to us earlier he is identified as both the Spirit of the Father and as the Spirit of Christ. But what these few verses also tell us is that if we belong to Christ then the Spirit of God lives in us and I particularly like the way the way the New Jerusalem Bible translates this verse. It says that "if we belong to Christ then we live not by our own inclinations, but by the Spirit, since the Spirit of God has made his home in us." That's an amazing statement isn't it?
Just think about it for a moment. The Holy Spirit of the living God has made his home in us! - If that's the case it is going to make a difference in us and those around us. In fact, it was because of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those followers of Jesus in the early church that they were able to turn the world upside down.
The Holy Spirit makes his home in us. If you like he comes to live with us, if he is invited. This is what Jesus promised when he said he would ask the Father to send the Spirit in his name that he would be with us and in us. He doesn't come to boss us around he, comes to dwell in us. One writer put it this way. "His presence is more like that of a guest in a house. He affects our relationships. His views and attitudes have to be taken into account when making family decisions. He changes people and he changes situations, simply because he is a person himself."
There is one more thing and that is that it is the indwelling presence of the Spirit that inspires genuine and sincere worship within us and helps us in our praying. And it's as we begin to grasp the depth and extent of the Father's love for us and all that he has done for us that something begins to well up in our own hearts in response and it's that indwelling presence of the Spirit that causes us to cry 'Abba; Father.'
So let me try and draw things to some sort of conclusion. I am sure that we are all familiar with the often quoted statistics that the number of people attending church each week is in constant decline- yet journalists and others often express surprise that other statistics show that something like two thirds of the general public still believe in God. But what sort of god do many of these people believe in? Well this is what Bishop Tom Wright says: "The 'god' the great majority of people believe in is, pretty certainly, the Deist god....distant remote, and uncaring. It's not surprising that people who believe in that sort of god don't go to church except now and then. It's hardly worth getting out of bed for a god like that."
And I would want to add that we do not serve a god like that; the God of the Bible is personal and wants to relate to us in a personal way; he is the one true God who reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; a Trinity who exist in an eternal relationship of love and who want to lift us up and invite us to share in that love relationship. And as I stop and reflect on the wonder of it all I think: "Wow - now that is a God worth getting out of bed for!"
Philip Newell
Licensed Reader
