Divine Community of Love. Sunday 6/11/17 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Matthew 28:16-20. 

God is hard to figure out: even so we make our attempts.  One young boy was overheard trying to explain God to his sister by saying, “You don’t have to be afraid of the Holy Ghost.  It’s just God with a sheet over his head.”  The Church takes its stab at it too with the doctrine of the Trinity.  And here I offer you the Trinity in a nutshell: God is One who is known to us in three persons: Father, Son and Spirit.  Here’s where it gets tricky: the Father is fully God, Jesus the Son is fully God, the Holy Spirit is fully God and at the same time they are all one God.   It’s hard to get your mind around it.

But here’s a fun fact for you to take home today.   You know the Nicene Creed?  What we stand and proclaim together after every sermon?  Well, that Creed was born out of a big controversy about the Trinity back in the 4th century.  In trying to figure out God, some were teaching that Jesus did not have full God status because God the Father, at some point in time, had created Jesus and, therefore, Jesus, was less than the Father.  The powers that be called this heresy and meetings were held - which they called councils.  What came out of those councils was the Nicene Creed explicitly affirming the Trinity, and in particular that Jesus the Son has always existed and is just as much God as the Father is.  Hence the language: 

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
    the only Son of God,
    eternally begotten of the Father,
    God from God, Light from Light,
    true God from true God,
    begotten, not made,
    of one Being with the Father.

So the next time you’re lacking for conversation all you’ll need to say is, “Let me tell you about the origins of the Nicene Creed” and, no doubt, you’ll be the life of the party!  But really, so what?  What does to it matter to us in our daily lives with all the concerns or burdens we carry that the Church proclaims that God is Trinity, Triune, three persons yet one God?

Actually it matters a lot.  Because how we relate to God is shaped by our understanding of who God is.  If you believe in a God who is not Trinity, rather a Solitary One, that leads to a relationship that is fundamentally different than if you have faith in a self-giving, self-sacrificing God who exists in a community of oneness.  If transcendence - being beyond this world - and power and perfection are the core attributes of God, then such a solitary God is much more concerned about performance, not relationships, obedience, not intimacy.  Connection with that God is centered around keeping the rules, behaving correctly, and getting things right. That’s a totally different relationship than the one offered by a God who is Triune - a God whose very essence is a divine community of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Scripture tells us that God is love.  But a solitary God of One cannot be Love.  Such a God can be loving, but can’t be Love itself because love requires an object, something or someone to love. Love is not able to exist without relationship.  Our God is Love and from before time the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have been in community, in relationship, being Love itself.  That reality is not a riddle to be figured out, but a life-giving truth be lived.   

And here’s why all of this really matters.  The love that the Trinity is not a closed system.  We are not just spectators of that magnificent love.  On the contrary – we  are invited, more than invited, desperately wanted to be part of and participants in that mutual sharing of love, of life, of joy.  God is communion inviting us into that same communion. We are loved by God with the same holy, passionate love that the Trinity has for one another.   Believing and trusting in such a God means that our relationship in not rooted in a code of conduct or checking boxes - I went to church today, check.  I was nice to someone, check.  I gave some money away, check.  Therefore, I am accepted and loved by God.  Or, sometimes it goes in the other direction. God gave me a good job, check. God blessed me with good health, check. God gave me what I hoped for, check.  Now I love God.   That’s not love.  That’s some kind of twisted relationship based on performance and conditions.  God does not operate like that. God does not seek relationships like that.  That is not our triune God.

God is Love and Love loves.  Period. No matter what.  Recognizing that we live and move and have our being in God, in Love itself, allows that holy Trinity love to flow in us and through us. And that’s when growth and change, surrender and service, healing and wholeness happen. 

This goodness, this fullness is what the Triune God whom we confess in the words of the Nicene Creed wants for all of us.  So much so that this is what Jesus communicates at the very end of the gospel of Matthew.  Go, he says, go and make disciples.  Share this good news with everyone.  Invite them into the most meaningful relationship they will ever have.  A relationship of love that will hold in any storm, that will never fail, that will never end.  Go and invite everyone into the holy and life-giving embrace of God, baptizing them in the love and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  For it is this Trinity God of Love who seeks us and knows us and speaks into each one of our lives, “Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  And ultimately, that is the only thing that truly matters.