The Holy Trinity /
Gen 1:1-2:4a; Ps 8; 2 Cor
Rev. Gayle M. Highness
Our
God Is an Awesome God!
In honor of Trinity Sunday, I will
give a three-part sermon this morning based on a very deep and profound
three-part theological principal that goes like this: 1. God is God. 2. We are not. 3. Deal with
it.
Part I: God is God.
When Moses encountered God in the
burning bush, and God told Moses to go to
God’s name is “I AM.” God is God. Or for short, God just IS. God defies categorization. God is beyond
comprehension. God’s name is a verb: “I AM.”
We get to know God only inasmuch as
God reveals himself to us. Over time, we have come to know God as three-in-one:
Father – Creator and source of life; Son – Savior, God incarnate, God with us
in the flesh, and Holy Spirit – Sanctifier, Teacher, Advocate, Helper, God with
us in Spirit.
Sometimes when you try to describe
an event to someone and you find the description falls short, you shrug and
say, “I guess you had to be there.”
That’s sort of how it is with God.
Describing God doesn’t quite do it – we have to experience God for
ourselves to even begin to know him.
In our first reading from Genesis,
where we hear about God the Father and Creator, we get a glimpse of how amazing
our God is – this God who simply spoke the whole universe into being. But when
we experience God’s creation through all our senses, we really begin to appreciate the wonder of the Creator.
Look at these beautiful irises next
to the pulpit and think about the intricate process that brings them to life
season after season. Then think about the thousands of varieties of beautiful
flowers that fill the earth right down to the little violets that poke through
the cracks between the sidewalk and the foundation of the parsonage. Our God is
a God of plentitude – effusive, overflowing with life and beauty and goodness.
We experience God in the world
around us:
▫ as we feel the breeze or the warmth of the
sun or the silky smoothness of a baby’s cheek
▫ as we smell the scent of lilacs or wild plum
blossoms or freshly turned soil wafting in the air
▫ as we hear sharp cracks of thunder or the
cheerful chirping of birds
▫ as we taste the goodness of fresh produce,
like a spear of
▫ as we see the vastness of the star-filled sky
out in the country on a clear, dark night.
We can identify with the psalmist as
he addresses God, saying: “When I
consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you
have set in their courses, what is man that you should be mindful of him, the
son of man that you should seek him out?”
And that brings us to the next
amazing thing about God – the almighty creator God is a personal God – a God of relationships. In fact, God IS a
relationship – a three-way relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, all bound
together in love.
This relational, loving God reaches
out to connect with and encompass and unite with his creatures, especially us
humans, created in God’s likeness to be in relationship with God.
This is where the Son comes in –
Jesus, God’s Word made flesh, come into the world to restore the relationship
between God and God’s creation that was broken by sin.
In Jesus, we see God emptied of
heavenly glory, come to be in solidarity with human beings – to live and breathe
and walk in our skin; to experience our joys and sorrows and even death itself,
in order to break the hold that sin and death have over us. Jesus’ death and
resurrection was sufficient for all creation for all time, and yet his physical
presence is limited by time and space.
And that’s where the Holy Spirit
comes in – the presence of God who fulfills Jesus’ promise to be with us
always, to the end of the age.
The Holy Spirit fills us with the
very life and love of God the Father and Son, and incorporates us into that
life. The Holy Spirit is the God in which we live and move and have our being –
the God whose presence we can sense intuitively – who brings the Words of
Scripture to life in us and gives them meaning, and who prays to the Father on
our behalf in words we cannot express.
God is God – Father, Son, Spirit –
three expressions of ONE God. And now,
Part II: We are not.
That sounds so obvious … SO obvious.
But it’s necessary and important to let this sink in because, whether we
realize it or not, our greatest temptation is our desire to make ourselves into
gods. Not that we want to rule the
universe or even the world, but that we want to rule our own selves. We want to be the boss of me – to be in
charge of our own lives. We want to make ourselves number one and give our
allegiance to our own desires and needs.
Sin came into the world when the
serpent tempted Eve by saying, “You will
not die by eating the forbidden fruit, for God knows that when you eat of it
your eyes will be opened and you will be like God.”
It’s especially important for us
here in this setting to understand the truth that God is God – a triune,
3-in-one God – and we are not, because this gets at the deep and profound
difference between our beliefs about God and the teachings of Mormonism. For
us, God is very much “other.” God is
creator and we are creatures – created in God’s image to be in a loving
relationship with God, but not created to become gods.
By faith in Christ’s death and
resurrection, we can enter into relationship with God and, through the power of
the Holy Spirit, our lives are transformed and we can and do grow in grace and
likeness to God – not by the good works we do, but by giving our wills over to
God and letting God have God’s way with us – by emptying ourselves – giving up
our rights to ourselves – continually repenting and receiving forgiveness – by recognizing
how helpless we are to be “good” on our own.
Now Part III: Deal with it. We deal
with the knowledge that God is God and we are not by accepting and living in
the truth that we are sinners saved by God’s grace. We deal with it by
realizing and trusting that God the Father, creator of the universe, made us
for himself and loves us so much that God the Son came in person to save us
from sin and death and that God the Holy Spirit is here with us to help us know
and understand and experience the love and power of God in our lives.
And then we deal with it by
responding in obedience to God’s commands, including the command spoken by
Jesus to his disciples in our gospel reading today, to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to
obey everything that I have commanded you.”
The Spirit of God – by whose power
alone we are even ABLE to accept and receive and understand and trust and
respond to God’s love – the Spirit of God which fills us is a living, moving,
effusive Spirit that cannot be contained.
The news that God is God and we are not
becomes Good News when the Spirit reveals to us how much God loves us and
desires our company. This is news that God commands us and equips us and
empowers us and motivates us to share. The more we give our lives and our wills
over to God, the greater will be our desire to share God’s love with others.
And as you do so, may the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be
with all of you, always, to the end
of the age. Amen.