"Who Is God?"
Rev. Kathryn Threadgill
Proverbs 8:1-4; 22-31; John 16:5-15
May 30, 2010
I asked the youth, last week during Sunday School, to tell me… “Who is God?” Their answers varied greatly from things like love to omnipresence….from Savior to Aquafresh toothpaste…Now, before you all go worrying about what in the world I’m teaching these youth, let me just explain….In the 1st term of Confirmation this Spring we took the everyday item of Aquafresh toothpaste…at least, I hope it’s an everyday item….and we used it to compare the 3 colors – each with its distinct task upon our teeth, and yet it still remains the same substance of toothpaste….and we compared it to the 3 distinct Persons of the Trinity– Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet still remains of the same substance.
I’ll admit, maybe Aquafresh is not as elegant and poetic as the Proverb this morning, but let’s be honest….this is no easy doctrine to explain… How do you understand the Trinity? How would you explain this triune God to others? If we’re being completely honest this morning, this is not typically the conversation that makes you the life of the party. I don’t imagine you all are fighting to share this doctrine with coworkers or friends……or maybe you do…I can see it now….huddled around the punch bowl or the coffee pot…and you say, “Hey, so the God I worship and serve is 3 distinct Persons in 1 substance! You should come check Him out sometime!” No, don’t imagine so…because, in truth, this is the hardest mystery humanity has ever known…we thought Pentecost and the Holy Spirit were confusing enough last week…well, you add the Spirit to the Son, begotten by the Father, to make the one true Godhead…and you’re left with the greatest, most confusing mystery of our Christian Faith!!
However, this mystery is the foundation to everything we believe in, everything we live and stand for….this is the truth of our God! So, who is this triune God? How do we understand the Godhead? How do we begin to comprehend this great mystery, let alone share this wisdom and truth with others? Christ says, in John’s Gospel this morning, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Or, as Rev. Jensen so poetically said to me in discussing this topic this week… “Sometimes we’d rather scratch around in the dirt like chickens, than to look up at the wonder and mystery of God.”
So, maybe, this is a lost cause. Maybe, our feeble human minds will never be able to grasp an understanding of Trinity’s mystery. Maybe, we can never fully walk in true wisdom and truth of who God is…after all, didn’t Adam and Eve lose this privilege for us in the Garden?
Well, our Proverbs text this morning says YES, actually we can! It says Wisdom is calling; understanding raises her voice and cries out to God’s people. “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.” See, God’s not playing Hide & Seek with us…He doesn’t think we’re a lost cause…God, wants to be known…God wants to be understood…God wants us to hear the voice of true wisdom and be brought into genuine relationship with the 3 in 1. Why else do you think the Father sent His only begotten Son to bridge the gap once and for all between us and God? Why else do you think the Son poured out the Spirit of truth? Because, our Triune God longs to be known by all that lives.
So, how do we know God? How do we grasp this wisdom and mystery? Or does it even matter? John Calvin says, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.”See, to grow in true wisdom of the Triune God, is to grow in knowledge of who we are created & called to be. Without a knowledge of God, there can be no true knowledge of ourselves. Phillis Tickle, a professor at Mars Hill College, says it in this way, “we become what we fall down before and worship; and we, as Christians, worship the mystery of the Trinity…we must hold on to this mystery which defines us.”
This makes sense, right?! I mean, in order for any of us to know where we are going, we have to know where we have been. In order for tomorrow to come, we have to live for today. In order to know creation, we must know the creator. But, it got me wondering….If it’s truly about growing in wisdom of God, and hearing His voice call out to us in truth…..what prevents us from hearing and understanding? How often do we get it wrong? How often is our wisdom unsound and untrue? We can immediately think of suicide bombers who claim their actions are in the name of God, or those who practice grave injustices against innocent people, because they believe they are called by God….but what about us….What about even in our best intentions of trying to understand and name the mystery of God, we get it wrong? See, my intention this morning is not to explain away the Trinity. I do not want to reduce the mystery of God to naming God by His works, or by our human experiences. I think we run into a real danger when we attempt to explain away the mystery of God…even in our best intentions….I think this is where we’re left scratching around in the dirt rather than looking up and marveling at the mystery.
Christian Smith and Melinda Denton are sociologists from Notre Dame and Clemson University who have the latest research out on adolescents and religion or spirituality. In their book, Soul Searching, they conclude that adolescents today reduce religion to what they term…Moralistic Therapeutic Deism…basically, that is a god of good morals and good feelings. Smith and Denton say, “The God of contemporary Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is not Trinitarian, he did not speak through the Torah or the prophets of Israel, was never resurrected from the dead, and does not fill and transform people through his Spirit. This God is not demanding. He actually can’t be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination of a Divine Butler and a Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”
Now, I would argue that this grave mistake is not merely descriptive of adolescents. Today, I think how often do we all fashion a god that fits into our own understandings or limited experiences? How quickly do we reduce the nature of God to good feelings and good morality? We need a god – whether 3 in 1 or not – who works comfortably alongside us in love, blessings, and joy. It’s honestly a mistake we all make, in a culture that tells us to do whatever feels good, look out for ourselves, search for self gratification and happiness – however that’s defined…and if you have time, you might think about helping someone other than yourself.
I wonder, where is the mystery of our God in this? Where is the search for true wisdom? Can we even hear the voice calling God’s people…are we even listening? The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…3 in 1…triune God longs to be known and loved by us all, yet what if…even in our best intentions….we fail to hear the cries of wisdom and ignore the Spirit of truth poured out upon our hearts?
Towards the end of the 1960’s, there came an era amidst theologians and philosophers in American culture where they claimed “God is DEAD!” This view came in light of the events of the Holocaust, where it was believed that God must be dead if the chosen people of God were suffering and dying in such horrendous ways. Shirley Guthrie addresses this issue in his book Christian Doctrine where he asks, “Which God is dead? Which God are you talking about? The god who was there to answer all our questions, solve all our problems, protect us from the hurts and hard knocks of life, make our lives warm and safe and comfortable…The God who made no demands of us but was there to do everything for us and give us everything we want. The God who automatically forgave us, no matter how we disobeyed that god and ignored or hurt other people. That god is dead….in fact, that God was never alive in the first place.”
How do we understand the mystery of our triune God? Where is the true wisdom in the mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Beyond our wants and desires…beyond our limited knowledge and selfish ambitions….beyond our fashioned and manageable ideas of God…it’s here that we encounter a God who longs to be known…and it is here…in this marvelous mystery of God, that we find a knowledge of God & ourselves. Christ said, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you….and when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…for he will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
See, I believe the Spirits leading into all wisdom and truth is a lifetime….it’s a journey. The wisdom of the Spirit in Proverbs says that daily the Spirit delighted and rejoiced in Him…daily the Spirit delights in earth and the human race…and perhaps herein is the true wisdom to the mystery of the Trinity. Perhaps, Christ gave us this Spirit so that we too might daily delight…daily we might seek wisdom and understanding….daily we might cling to the mystery and marvel at the truth…daily we might long to know and encounter the triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I never knew what daily looked like, until I met Beth in Kenya. Beth was small in stature and feeble in demeanor. When I first met her, she was hunched over in the church courtyard, cutting the overgrown grass with a simple machete. Her 4’10” frame hardly seemed capable of such manual labor, and yet when I first laid eyes on her, she seemed to be smiling from the soul outward in her work. I approached her to introduce myself, and her smile radiated through to my heart as we embraced. I asked an elder of the church what was her story….and she told me that Beth worked odds and ends jobs wherever she could find them, because her sister had died of Aids, and Beth took in her sister’s 5 children…raising her family total to 10. For the next several months I was in Kenya, Beth came over to my house each week, and I would give her work to do, because she insisted on working, and in exchange….I would give her food…eggs, vegetables, maze corn, rice, and meat to feed her 10 children and herself.
In my final week there, she asked me if she could bring her family over to meet me, so that they could thank the person who had been helping to feed them. The day we planned on visiting, I ran to the market…had friends prepare dinner…and sat around with Beth and her 10 children. When Beth began to say farewell, she cried with a smile of true joy on her face. And, after marveling at this woman of God all summer long, I couldn’t help but finally ask her how she was able to smile…how she was able to delight daily…and she said to me, “Kathryn, I have to seek God each day. I have to give thanks to Him every day. I have to trust in Him each day…..and so do you.” To this day, Beth works odds and ends jobs to provide for her 10 children and she does so with true rejoicing and delight. Daily…walking with God…Daily….clinging to God’s mystery…daily…coming to grow in wisdom and truth to the triune God and of ourselves.
Who is the God of the Trinity? How do we grow in true wisdom of such a great mystery? Maybe, it’s not by trying to explain it away or name it in through God’s works or our own experiences… Who is the God of the Trinity? How do we grow in true wisdom of such a mystery? Maybe, it’s by…taking our heads out of the dirt…and delighting in the mystery daily.
In the name of the triune God….Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.