The Triune God

Introduction

I can’t sing. I wish I could but I can’t.

When I was in high school my best friend would sometimes turn the music off in the car because he was tired of hearing me sing along.

Also in high school, I was in a musical my church youth group put on. Our youth group was small enough and I was charasmatic enough on stage that they wanted me to be a part of it.

So they cast me in a role that only had speaking parts. No solos for me.

Not only that, whenever we had a group number the director made sure I was nowhere near a microphone lest anyone hear me.

I’m just not a singer but I own this.

I’m also not a musician. No one in my family was a musician.

Some families are all about making music together. One of my favorite holiday parties ever was thrown by a family from First Presbyterian Church where they invited everyone to bring a musical instrument and we got together and everyone played and sang Christmas songs.

That wasn’t my family. At all. But I developed a love of music all the same. My dad was a huge fan of 50’s and especially 60’s rock and I became a fan.

I’ve never really stopped loving music. I became a voracious listener of anything under the pop/rock/r&b/umbrella.

But because we weren’t a family of musicians and my dad was mostly a rock guy there were blind spots in my musical education.

I knew nothing about jazz music. About 10-15 years ago I decided I needed to change that. I couldn’t continue knowing nothing about jazz so I decided to immerse myself in that world.

I started with the king of the early 60’s: Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. I moved into his earlier work and out to his later even more experimental work.

I listened to John Coltrane, Duke Ellington. I loved the fierceness of Charles Mingus. Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakely were all favorites.

It’s not like I became a jazz head or anything. I mostly stuck to the canon of capital B, big names but I developed a deep appreciation of the music. I tried to read about it. I watched Ken Burns documentary on it. I got to the place where I could recognize songs on their own.

I think the thing that I appreciated most about Jazz is the interplay. You could listen to a trio and really zero in on one instrument. As you listened to that instrument it felt like the instrument was on its own planet doing its own thing. And then you’d move to another instrument and it was doing its own thing. And then another.

But then you could hold it all together and there was a single movement the song moved and glided. It went somewhere together. And each instrument would step aside for each other in support of what they were hoping to accomplish as a whole.

This also came at a time where I was knee deep in my theological studies. For a solid ten year stretch I read any theological treatise I could get my hands on. I willingly presented papers at academic conferences. I wrote theological blogs and book reviews. I was strongly considering a PhD.

And it was in jazz music that helped inform my understanding who God is. Our confession of God is of a God who exists three in one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. These aren’t three separate Gods but one God with three modes of being.

There is a mystery and beauty to how this God exists and moves and acts and it’s a mystery a the center of our Christian faith.

Exegesis

I don’t want your pity when I say what I’m about to say but I’m going to say it anyway.

The hardest part about preaching is jumping into the middle of a text.

A few minutes ago we heard Psalm 8. Hearing the Psalms are great. They’re poems. They’re self-contained.

Then a few minutes ago I read Romans 5:1-5.

We’re jumping into middle of a letter in the middle of a multi-chapter argument Paul is trying to make.

I’m incredibly thankful when serialized television show have a “Previously On...” stinger before the show starts. Even if you just watched the episode its nice to know what happened in the previous episode.

There’s alot of TV shows I couldn’t imagine dropping in on in the middle of a run without knowing what happened in the episodes before it.

Could you imagine picking up a novel midway and starting reading?

That’s what I feel like anytime I stand up here.

And this week we start with a doozy. The very first word we here is “therefore”. It assumes you know what happened before.

(There’s an old joke in studying the Bible. Anytime you read the word “therefore” you need to ask yourself: “what’s it there for?”)

In this instance starting with a “therefore” is like picking up a new episode of television that’s following a cliffhanger.

In this instance, the “therefore” is referring to Romans 3 and 4.

In those chapter Paul essentially argues that all people, not just those who are genetic descendents of Abraham, have access to God and are made right by God not through rigid observance or keeping the Old Testament Law or by heredity but by faith, specifically faith in who Jesus Christ is and what Jesus Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection.

He summarizes all that with a few words: “Therefore since we are justified by faith”

and then moves into the benefits or results of this justification:

The New Revised Standard Version Results of Justification

5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

To Paul there is a three-fold benefit that spans both past, present, and future:

We have been justified

We have peace with God

We hope for the sharing of God’s glory

Who we are: the three-fold benefit

This three fold benefit is who we are in God.

We have been justified

This looks to the past. It speaks of a completed action.

We are justified in Jesus Christ.

In the letters of Paul justification is a declaration. It’s a statement of fact. It means to declare someone or something as righteous. That is innocent, right, good, acquited, vindicated.

We bear no guilt before God. This is the heart of our prayer of confession every week. We confess knowing that we have been justified. There is a confidence in our confession. Whatever enmity or separation there was or is between people and God has been made right through Jesus Christ.

We have peace

If justification speaks to what has happened, the word peace speaks to our current experience. We experience peace with God through Jesus Christ.

If you’re like me you’ve watched the Russian invasion of Ukraine and have wished, hoped, and prayed for a swift and bloodless resolution and peace.

In situations like this we typically use the word “peace” to mean “absence of war.” But even if Russia were to withdraw troops it wouldn’t make things right. The damage would be done.

In the Bible, peace is a far more encompassing term. It’s roots are found in the Biblical word “shalom”. Here peace means well-being, prosperity, and salvation of his people. It’s positive facing. It’s all-encompassing.

Going back to our real-world example, peace would involve reconciliation, forgiveness, restoration.

It moves beyond a silent argument of simmering resentments into something more positive and fulfilling.

We hope to share in the glory of God

The third benefit of who we are in Jesus Christ is hope in sharing of the glory of God.

There is always a tension to our experience. While we have peace and shalom with God in a once and for all way that can be experienced today we hope and yearn for something more. We hope for the coming of God in glory.

We hope for the sharing of that glory. It’s a joyful anticipation of fully belonging to and experiencing God.

In the gospel of John, there are a series of episodes in the life of Jesus that serve as signs. The first of these is the wedding at Cana where Jesus turns water into wine. Throughout the Bible and the ancient world, wine was a metaphor or image of the goodness or fullness of life. It was the experience of a celebrated or shared life. By turning water into wine, Jesus turned water into the symbol of God’s goodness, graciousness, joy and celebration.

This is what we anticipate. We’re anticipating the celebration or feast of all celebrations. We’re like kids waiting for Christmas.

Our hope

And it’s this experience of hope that dominates the second half of the paragraph:

The New Revised Standard Version Results of Justification

3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Paul is realistic enough to realize that although we experience God’s shalom now, life can be hard.

We suffer. We experience setbacks and challenges.

It would be wrong and callous to tell people in Ukraine, don’t worry, you’re experiencing God’s peace and expecting that to be received as good news.

For Paul suffering is real but as we experience it we deep down experience God’s faithfulness which leads to an experience of endurance.

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Or maybe another way of putting it: suffering can become a community event. A former co-worker of mine shared this idea this morning and it really resonated with me.

When one suffers, we all suffers and we’re able to enter into the suffering of another and it becomes a shared experience.

This shared experience becomes a community of love that walks along and supports one another.

This endurance produces character and character produces hope.

Hope is this tangible thing that holds onto the belief that things won’t always be this way.

And hope in God is the greatest of all because God’s love will not fail. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great enemy death has been defeated by the saving power of God’s love.

And this same love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. We experience the perfect love God.

Conclusion

Throughout this Lenten Season, we here at Saint James, and the rest of the Presbyterian churches in the area will be walking through the Apostles Creed.

As a congregation we’ll be reciting it together every week. And as a congregation we’ll be learning what it is when we confess our faith.

The Apostles Creed is both the shortest and oldest of our Confessions.

The earliest confession of faith was short and simple: “Jesus is Lord”.

But in the early 2nd century the teachings of a man named Marcion took root.

Marcion believed the Old Testament was about a tyrannical God who had created a flawed world. Jesus though was good God of love and mercy. Jesus was not the Messiah proclaimed by the prophets, and the Old Testament was not Scripture. Marcion proposed limiting Christian “Scripture” to Luke’s gospel (less the birth narrative and other parts that he felt expressed Jewish thinking) and to those letters of Paul that Marcion regarded as anti-Jewish.

In response, Roman Christians developed an early form of the Apostles’ Creed to refute Marcion. They affirmed that the God of creation is the Father of Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried and raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where he rules with the Father. They also affirmed belief in the Holy Spirit, the church, and the resurrection of the body.

Candidates for membership in the church, having undergone a lengthy period of moral and doctrinal instruction, were asked at baptism to state what they believed. They responded in the words of this creed.

One thing notice immediately about the Apostles’ Creed is its trinitarian structure.

We confess in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The central mystery and confession of the Christian Faith is that God is three and God is one. God is one and God is three.

We do not confess three different God but God who exists as three different modes of being.

The Greek term used to describe this is periochoresis. It’s a dynamic mutual indwelling of the three divine persons whose life is eternally one of shared regard, delight, fellowship, feasting, and joy.

The challenge of understanding this is that God has revealed himself in history and the Bible is our authority as a witness to this revealing of God.

But the Bible doesn’t attempt to prove God. The Bible isn’t a philosophical tome that attempts to get into the metaphysics of God. It’s a history book that tells of God’s wonderous acts.

We see this in our text today, God ultimately acts as a trinity:

We have peace with God the Father

This peace comes through Jesus Christ

The love of God the Father has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit

This is a mystery that we confess and so we resort to metaphors and images hoping to describe.

In many ways we’re a host of blind men and women touching an elephant together and trying to piece together an image of the animal.

Earlier I shared the image of Jazz music.

Another image I like to think of dancing. People have described the trinity as an eternal dance of three persons.

Yesterday morning Lindsay and Max watched the new adaptation of “West Side Story”. The dance pieces were incredible.

If you zoomed out the dance pieces looked like one organism acting and moving as a unified whole.

But if you zoomed in you’d notice that each of the dancers had their own role and part, they were acting as an individual but it held together as a whole.

Extended Prayer Time

Marina nasal cancer. Surgery yesterday.

Milt Shayes. Hospice

Jim Cosa.

Ukraine

trans laws

Communion

Invitation

Jesus said: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

The Great Thanksgiving

B The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Eternal God, holy and mighty, it is truly right and our greatest joy to give you thanks and praise, and to worship you in every place where your glory abides.

Words of Institution

We give you thanks that the Lord Jesus, on the night before he died, took bread, and after giving thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he took the cup, saying: This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.

Prayer

Eternal God, we give you thanks for this holy mystery in which you have given yourself to us. Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.