Three Threes for Trinity Sunday

Three Threes for Trinity Sunday (John 16:12-15) (also Rom 5:1-5)

Truth is mentioned in John’s gospel more than in any other book of the Bible. It is one of the key ideas

Three words describing the attitude we need in order to understand the truth God reveals:

·         Humility – As modelled within the Trinity. Everything the Father has is given to the Son. The Spirit does not do his own thing, he communicates what he has heard from Jesus and glorifies Jesus. The disciples do not know it all yet (16:12) and need to be guided into the truth (16:13).

·         Hunger – Jesus is encouraging disciples to hunger for understanding; the understanding they need in order to continue God’s mission of salvation.

·         Honesty – With ourselves, each other and God. If truth is the goal, we need a truthful approach. Be honest about the fact that we need to be saved from our selves and our sins, and that Jesus is our Saviour and Lord, not just a good example.

Attitudes are not much use unless they are translated consistently into actions which live out those attitudes …

Three actions we need to keep on doing if we want to grow as christian disciples:

·         Listen – The Spirit will speak, but that won’t help us unless we listen. How good are we at listening? How can we create times and places with the silence and concentration to really listen to the Spirit?

·         Love – All the “yous” in the passage are plural. Learning God’s ways is done in community, modelled on the first community which is the Trinity. Love of God and neighbour (including enemy). Love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5) but without being put into action, love dies. No good if it is just an ideal or an empty sentiment.

·         Learn – Learn from what God teaches you (Billie’s catchphrase Learn from this!) That means growing up, not staying infantile or keeping on repeating mistakes or habitual sins.

Three qualities we need:

·         Prayer – You need a structured and disciplined prayer life, of a kind which suits your personality type but also stretches you. Give it time.

·         Practice – Put what the HS is teaching you into practice, with reflection, supported by other christian friends who are on the same journey.

·         Perseverance – (Rom 5:3) Don’t expect it to be easy.

Conclusion

·         The Trinity is Truth and can be defined by three simple truths:

·         1.There is only one God.
2. The Father is fully God, the Son (Jesus) is fully God and the Holy Spirit is fully God.
3. The Father is not the Son, and neither the Father nor the Son are the Holy Spirit.

·         I think the value of this doctrine for the Church is that it affirms along with other monotheistic faiths that there is only one God, all powerful and all loving. But unlike the others Christianity insists that God is not distant and separate from the worls but is also fully and actively involved in it, in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

·         So the atoning death of Christ is God’s atoning death. And the Spirit living within and inspiring us is the Spirit of God.

·         It actually is not at all difficult to define. But our task as christians is not to define or even to value the Trinity – it is to live and breathe it!

·         The definition is not the point. Truth is not an academic goal. The point is to do all of the above  (HHH, LLL, PPP) in order to be drawn into the Trinity’s workings and participate in the redemption drama, bringing glory to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

·         Where do you start? That depends on who you are and where you are in your spiritual journey. Which attitude, action and quality would I pick out as those which most need to be worked on? Honesty … Listening … Prayerfulness.

·         Come to our Church Family Retreat (14-15 June) and let’s work on them together.

Sermon - Matthew 22.34-46 The Sound of Silence

Matthew 22.34-46

·         Thanks for the 24-7 Prayer Room experience. Hard to explain unless you were there to experience the context and interpret the silence. A very positive experience of a rich silence, filled with faith and love and the presence of God.

·         Silence also begins and ends our Bible reading, but a different kind of silence, thick with  tension. There’s  a lot of unspoken emotion  – a bit like a couple who are angry with each other and heading for a big row. Different groups are trying to discredit Jesus in front of the crowds. Verse 34 tells us he has just silenced the Sadducees. By verse 46 (read it out) he has also silenced the Pharisees and all his other opponents.

·         On the surface, not much happens. Two fairly standard questions are asked; the first by a Pharisee to Jesus, the second by Jesus to the Pharisees. Each question  receives the normal, expected reply and it all seems quite low key. Yet the tension clearly escalates, setting up Jesus’s lengthy denunciation of the Pharisees in ch 23 and paving the way for the events leading to Jesus’s arrest, trial and execution  a few chapters later.

·         So what is going on? Is it possible for us to understand the context and interpret the silence which ends this pivotal passage of scripture? Let’s take a look…

Question 1 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

·         From the Pharisees’ point of view, Jesus was both a lawbreaker and a maverick teacher with no qualifications or authority. Yet the crowds of common people loved him and followed him. How frustrating that must have been for the Pharisees and other experts in religious law, especially when Jesus told parables which turned the crowds against them! So their question is designed to expose and undermine Jesus in front of the crowds.

·         But the question is not a hard one. And the answer Jesus gives, linking the commandment to wholeheartedly love God (from Deuteronomy 6.5) and the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself (from Leviticus 19.18), is the exact reply which any respectable Jewish teacher would give. We see this in Luke 10, when the same question was posed by Jesus, and a Legal Expert gave the same answer.

·         Jesus answered correctly; so what’s the problem? What is going on in this uneasy silence? Well, perhaps Jesus is implying a criticism of the Pharisees who, as he will spell out vividly in the next chapter, did not practice what they preached. Many in the crowd would have experienced the lack of love and mercy which marked the way that the Pharisees imposed the Law on their fellow Jews.

·         And of course their definition of who counts as a neighbour was not very wide. In the Luke 10 passage, the Lawyer wanted to limit the extent of his responsibility for others, but Jesus

·         challenged him, through the parable of the Good Samaritan, to see that all people were his neighbours, especially those in need and even including sworn enemies.

Question 2 “What do you think about the Christ (or Messiah)? Whose son is he?

·         The question Jesus puts to the Pharisees is also quite straightforward and presents no difficulties. Whose son will the Christ, the Messiah be? The son, or descendant of King David, of course. The standard, text book answer comes back, quick as a flash!

·         The crowds and people hoping to be healed have already been calling Jesus Son of David, and perhaps they are hopeful that he will now directly claim the title for himself – opening himself up to arrest for treason against the Roman occupiers.

·         He doesn’t do so directly, but indirectly he goes even further, reminding them of Psalm 110.1 in which David is inspired to refer to his coming descendant, the Messiah, as his Lord. Just as he did in the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus is claiming to be none other than God’s son. This challenges the very foundation of the Jewish faith – “Hear O Israel: the LORD our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6.4). It either has to be true or the most preposterous lie ever told. The Pharisees understand the implications of what Jesus is claiming and are stunned into silence.

·         If this is God standing in front of them, they need to love him with all their heart, soul and mind. Well, you know how the story ends…

Application

·         We need to know God’s love for us so that we can truly love God and others.

·         God’s love for each one of us is unfailing but it is not a soft love which just overlooks all our faults; it is a tough, challenging, purifying love. It homes in on our deepest weaknesses and rebellious character traits and heals us of them or burns them away, over time.

·         The best comparison I can come up with is that God is like a Best Friend who we have known for a long time and trust completely. A friend who can say “that hairstyle really  doesn’t suit you” or “you need to do something about your smelly feet” or “You were rude to that teacher and you should go and apologise” or “you have to stop using alcohol or people the way you do” – Best friends can say these tough things to each other and still be completely secure in their love for each other. Knowing the friendship will never die even when tough, corrective things have to be said – in fact it will get stronger.

·         If you have a best friend like that, you are very lucky. But only God is willing and able to be the perfect best friend to each and every one of us. To every person sitting here today. And

·         to Col Gaddafi … and to the man who fired the shot that killed Gaddafi. God is the best “best friend” possible.

·         The Pharisees reduction of holiness to a rule-based separation from others had actually taken them away from God’s friendship. To the point where they couldn’t recognise God, even when he was standing in front of them. I like a recent comment by an American Pastor called Steve Brown, to the effect that “ The only people who get better are people who know that, if they never get better, God will love them anyway.”

·         Maybe the Pharisees, and others like them (which can apply to any of us), just didn’t trust God enough and came to trust themselves and their ability to follow rules, too much.

·         But the commandments were never just a set of rules. If you try and reduce them to that they become cold, harsh and empty. They can only be understood in the context of God’s love. “I love you. Remember how I rescued you from slavery,” says God, at the beginning of the commandments, “So trust me, live my way. Be my people by living in a distinctive way in the world – so that I can use you to rescue other people and make the world what it should be.”

·         That is what holiness really means – not separating from the world but living distinctively as God’s people in the world, as salt, as light, as a hopeful sign and a healing presence.

·         Jesus loved his neighbours, the Pharisees and Lawyers and all the rest, enough to challenge them and tell them the truth – but they refused to accept his tough love. It seems that sometimes the only way to show people how much you love them is to let them crucify you. And he loved them and us enough to go even as far as that.

I want to end with a quote from Marcus Borg: “The christian life is as simple and challenging as this: to love God and to love what God loves.”