What kind of God?

Read: Athanasian Creed

 

Holy Trinity - May 26, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

This is perhaps the most mystifying or most wonderful day of the year for a person to visit a Christian congregation, the day when we call special attention to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Oh, the Trinity is always present, shaping our life and worship, but on this day we especially point out how it functions in our life together.

And as a part of the process, we pull out the Athanasian Creed (page 54) this one day a year.

It always provokes a bunch of questions:

--Why is it so long?

--Why does it have things that I find

hard to understand?

--I wonder why it even has some of

those sections?

--Why does it make me

uncomfortable?

--Why was it included in the book?

The short answer is that it is one of the three ecumenical creeds, that is, it was written before the church was divided into eastern and western halves a thousand years ago,

and our governing documents say that we believe what it says,

so we had better use it once in awhile so that we can know and appreciate it.

We won't be asking anyone to memorize it but we can learn to read and pray it.

Why is it so long?

One of the things that parents and teachers learn sooner or later is that one has to become very explicit with expectations.

--"You didn't say that I had to mow the whole yard, right now."

--"You didn't tell us that we couldn't have

2 ½" margins on all 4 sides of the composition page!"

It is to deal with student objections that this creed was needed.

The Athanasian Creed grew up in the midst of the Christological controversies of the 4^th and 5^th centuries.

The big question was:

Who is Jesus?

Is Jesus God?

Is God Jesus?

Or is he something less?:

-a divinized human, as the Roman

emperors were regarded?

-a convenient vehicle for God to

"slum it" awhile with humans?

-a failed revolutionary?

-a nice moral teacher?

-a prophet?

"Who do you say that I am?"

Jesus demands an answer from Peter, and from us.

"Who do you say that I am?"

"You are the Christ, the Messiah of God,"

blurts out Peter,

and he has thus taken the first step in building the creed.

As the years go by,

this person and that raises objections:

"Does that mean that...."

"Surely you don't think that...."

"What about....?"

The Nicene Creed worked out some of the implications when it was written in 325 and improved and ratified again in 450 AD.

The Athanasian Creed is another part of that process.

We notice that each of the things that it says about God, it says 3x.

It does so because someone along the way raised a question about each idea.

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus says, "All that the Father has is mine."

Someone will then ask how the Spirit fits into that, and the Creed replies: What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Spirit.

And we can go on and on with questions and responses like that.

It sounds like a classroom, doesn't it?

Just so!

A place to wrestle with those ideas and probe the mysteries.

But a classroom is not where we live the rest of life.

Sometimes sermons give us an encouraging word, a good moral example, a helpful nudge to help us along in the normal day to day parts of life.

Congregations generally like that kind of sermon because we like to think fo ourselves as basically good people who are making progress, who just need a little encouragement to live the lives that we are quite capable of living on our own.

But what about those circumstances in which we are completely helpless to live our lives as we ought to live them?

When we come up against a locked door, the end of our rope, our resources exhausted, what then?

A classroom discussion is not enough.

William Willimon wrote about visiting a little village in Honduras where malnutrition stalked the streets.

He worshiped with the people there, and what they received was not 6 hints for successful living, but instead they received the Lord Jesus in Word and Sacrament.

The whole service was Jesus, who he is and what he does and promises.

In that crisis, they had to be clear.

Out in Oklahoma this morning, I suspect it will be the same.

The tornado swept the town so badly this past week so that residents couldn't identify where their own streets were located.

In that crisis of death and destruction, they need to hear that Jesus is present with them.

We have the luxury of pondering the mystery of
Almighty is the Father
almighty is the Son
almighty is the Spirit,
and yet there are not three almighty beings but one who is almighty.

The folks in the crisis need the mystery of the Trinity in action and not in words alone.

They desperately need the love that the Father has for the Son to be shared by means of the Spirit.

They need the God who rhymes the origin and the goal of life in the present.

What they need is not a hypothetical schoolroom exercise but those words coming to life in their experience.

They need to hear that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, is both God and man...existing fully as God and fully as man.

That he understands and has experienced all of the pain, loss, and humiliation that can come to mankind.

But it is not simply solidarity with us; the point is that Jesus came among us to transform the dead-end which our lives would otherwise become.

Death and destruction does not win, now or eternally.

That's the doctrine of the Trinity at work, doing its job of tying together the hopes and fears of mankind with the promises of Jesus.

That is what they need in Oklahoma this morning, ...and also right here at home.

Things here may not be as dramatic as the devastation of that storm, but they are deadly in other ways.

--Mysterious ailments have been threatening Jim and Russ for months.

--Job insecurities cause anxieties that spill over into family tensions for others.

--A nut-case is setting fires in the west end of the city and the hydrants won't be upgraded for another two years.

--We've been naming two of Becky's relatives in the Prayer of the Church for some time now: one was severely injured in Afghanistan, and the other is a small child injured in a mowing accident.

--We have senior members slipping quietly into feelings of uselessness and despair.

--We know that so many try to hide from pain, sorrow, and sadness behind the mask of drugs or alcohol.

No, it is not because of a tornado, but we do have the same need of Good News as our countrymen in the mid-west, to hear that He suffered death for our salvation...and rose again from the dead.

So with confidence, let's turn to Page 54 in the front of the Lutheran Book of Worship and rejoice that, through the Creed, we have the luxury of a few moments to revel in the mystery of God made flesh.

He is the One who invites us

to listen to the Word,

to share the meal of his presence,

and in prayer to share conversation with himself that begins now and will continue forever. Amen.