I was listening to a lecture this week while folding
laundry and the person speaking said something to the effect that when people
come to church they are coming to hear the word of the Lord “for them”. They want to hear God speak to them about the
situations of their own lives. They
need, they expect a word from the Lord.
But then we rather foolish irrelevant preacher types stick to the theme
of the day, and today it is Trinity Sunday.
How in the world could the Doctrine of the Trinity in any kind of way
speak a word of the Lord that’s relevant to anybody’s life situation?
Well, it did for me.
In 2001 I began working on a Doctor of Ministry degree. I was one of a group of students who were
charged with the task of trying to teach a congregation that God is Trinity. God is a communion of persons (the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit) who give themselves to one anther in mutual,
unconditional love so perfectly that they are one. The question we sought to answer was what
difference would it make in the life of a congregation if the people understood
God as Trinity rather than just simply a Unity – a singular being whom we
regard as Santa Clause with a judgemental streak who will bless us if we’ve
been nice or get us if we’ve been naughty, a predicament which we can magically
avoid by believing the right things about Jesus.
In 2001 I also fell into the thralls of a
divorce. Oddly, studying the Doctrine of
the Trinity in that D. Min. program proved remarkably helpful. It kept my mind busy and gave me a new way of
understanding God that kept me from throwing myself into the hands of an angry
God and judgementally beating myself into a living Hell of self-condemnation. Occupying my mind with the Trinity helped me
to internalize the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love, the agape love,
the unconditional love of God the Father, the love that changes us.
This new understanding of God was accompanied by the
fact that everyday God did something that for me at that heart-breaking, gut-wrenching
time of my life said; “’I the Lord of sea and sky’ have heard my child cry.’ He let me know he was with me and would work
this tragedy into good. Divorce is like
the death of spouse. Fortunately, they
aren’t dead, but you still grieve the same.
God’s was for me, in my corner (my ex-wife’s too)
through it all and he proved it doing things like showing me a Scripture or
somebody being at the right place at the right time to say the right
thing. And then in time God brought
about healing in me, healing of a good deal of the brokenness I had experienced
in life as a child of divorced parents.
God used my own divorce to heal me of the effects my parent’s divorce
had on me. That may sound weird but God
does work all things to the good for those who love him (cf. Rom. 8:28).
When we talk about grace we need to talk about it in
those terms: God being with us, God
being for us, and God working things to the good for us. One of the most misunderstood words in the
Christian faith is grace. We tend to
narrow our definition of grace down to it being God saving us from Hell when we
don’t deserve it because of Jesus paying a penalty of death for us.
Yet, if we take a trip through the Bible looking at
the word grace and examples of it and also pull out a dictionary of New Testament
Greek, we find that grace is the joyous beneficence of a king. It involves being summonsed into the presence
of the king, the king extending his favour to us, and the king acting benevolently
on our behalf according to his will. The best example of grace I can think of
is in the Book of Ester. You W.M.S.
ladies are likely to know the story of how Ester got summonsed into King Ashuerus’
chamber, and he showed her favour and promised to act on behalf of her people
and he saved them from genocide.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is being brought
into his presence and experiencing his favour, which is also part of what the
fellowship of the Holy Spirit means. Encountering
his presence in the Holy Spirit makes us to know the love of the Father, makes
us to know ourselves to be beloved children of God the Father, loved by the
Father as much as he loves his own Son Jesus and we know this because of the
personal fellowship the Holy Spirit creates between us and the Father and the
Son.
One last thing about the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit – yes, he makes us to experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the love of the Father, he makes us to experience fellowship with God, but
also, he makes us to experience fellowship with one another. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is embodied
in the body of Christ, in the fellowship of believers. As a minister going through a divorce in the
Bible Belt in the States, I was overwhelmed by how my congregation loved and
supported me. I was expecting to be
judged and to have a few people saying, “if he can’t manage his own house he
shouldn’t be a minister.” – that old stigma that divorced people can’t be
ministers because it’s a bad example to the church. The people of the Marlinton Presbyterian Church
loved me unconditionally, held me up, understood, kept me from being
alone. My relationships with so many in
that church grew because of that divorce.
In the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is embodied the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and, indeed, the love of God the Father.
We are gathering around the table of the Lord this
morning to share his Supper. I invite
you this morning to ponder this meal and try to see in it a living picture of
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit. The Trinity is with us in
this meal, in us gathered around this table.
We are here because in God’s love the Trinity has called us, summonsed
us to be in his presence to be assured that we have his favour, and to welcome
his promise that he is working all things to the good for those who love
him. He did it for me. He will do it for you. Amen.
