Buy One, Get Two Free

June 3, 2007
Trinity Sunday
Text: John 3:1-17

Preacher: The Rev. R. Bruce Todd

A lady wrote to Reader's Digest recently. She wanted to tell about an experience she had taking a young girl from India to church with her. It was the 11-year-old girl's first exposure to Christian worship. The young lady's parents were traveling on business and left her with their American friends. The little Hindu girl decided on her own, to go with the family to church one Sunday. When they returned home, her host's husband asked her what she thought of the service. "I don't understand why the West Coast isn't included, too," the little girl replied. When they inquired what she meant, she said, "You know, in the name of the Father, the Son and the whole East Coast."

I can see why she was confused. There are some parts of our faith that are difficult to understand or explain. One of these is the Trinity. How do you explain the Doctrine of the Trinity - how God can be Three things at once? We’ve done the Water - Ice - and Steam thing.

I’ve used a man and pointed out how he can be a Son, a Husband, and a Father - all at the same time, while still being one man. All of these attempts at explaining the Trinity still can’t come close to satisfying the question.

St. Augustine, one of the most astute thinkers the Christian Church has ever produced, was walking along the seashore one day while pondering the doctrine of the Trinity - Father, Son, and the "whole East coast." He seemed to hear a voice saying, "Pick up one of the large sea shells there by the shore." So he picked it up. Then the voice said, "Now pour the ocean into the shell." And he said, "Lord, I can't do that." And the voice answered, "Of course not. In the same way, how can your small, finite mind ever hold and understand the mystery of the eternal, infinite, triune God?" That’s the dilemma every preacher faces on this day.

Many Christian churches will be celebrating today the doctrine of the Trinity. It is one of the most prized Doctrines of the Christian faith. "God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”

I'm glad we're Trinitarians. Believing in Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. But if I had to adequately explain the Trinity to a five year old, or even to a fifty-five year old, I would be in trouble. How can you pour the ocean into a mere seashell? How do you explain the grandeur of God to minds as limited as ours? God in three persons. What does it mean? The word Trinity does not even appear in the Bible. Why did the church Fathers formulate such a difficult and confusing doctrine?

It leads to all kinds of difficult questions. How could the babe in the manger control the movement of stars? Was Jesus merely quoting Psalms when he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me...?" These are questions for which we have no answers. But in our Creeds we affirm that the doctrine of the Trinity is the very heart of everything we believe as followers of Jesus Christ. It says that God is beyond the categories by which we humans classify reality. J.B. Phillips was right. Our God is too small!

Look around. As Psalm 19 tells us, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” And the glory which they describe is breathtaking. In 150 BC there lived a man named Hipparchus who said there were exactly 1,026 stars in the universe. Fifteen hundred years later Galileo, using the newly invented telescope, looked into the sky and saw many times that number. Now we know there are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone and there are billions of such galaxies besides ours! Can you deal with that? Billions and billions of solar systems like our own? How big is this universe? An astronomer observed with his naked eye the explosion of a distant supernova, a blast so powerful that it released as much energy in one second as our sun will release in ten billion years. The startling fact is that this supernova exploded 170,000 years ago. It took that long for the light generated by that faraway event, traveling almost 6 trillion miles a year, to reach us. Can you imagine the magnitude of a God who is bigger than all that?

Is our God big enough? Can you imagine a God for whom time does not even exist?

We talk about `forever.' People say, "Forever is a long time." That's not it at all. Where God is, there is no time. As Augustine taught us, God created time just as He created space. There is no tomorrow or yesterday in heaven. It is always now! Can you get your minds around that?
Eternity is timeless.

In Los Angeles there is a fossil museum beside the La Brea tar pits. At the entrance of the museum is a painting of a ribbon, eighty five feet long, representing five billion years of the earth's history. One inch equals five million years. Do you know how much space on that ribbon belongs to the history of the human race, from the cave men to the astronauts? Less than one half inch! As one author asks, “What was God doing the other 84 feet 11 ½ inches? "

It is good to remember when we wonder why God doesn't keep our timetable - that time is nothing to God. Time is a convenience by which we measure things, not God. Many of us have a God who is too small. We want to create God in our image, but God is the Divine Other Being. He is beyond our imagining. When we say, "God in three persons," we are affirming that God is beyond the categories by which we humans classify reality. God knows we are not capable of totally understanding who God is or how God works.

So how did God build a relationship with us? God visited our world in the life of a humble carpenter. Notice I did not say in the guise of a humble carpenter. I said in the life of this carpenter. Jesus was not God masquerading as a man. No, God emptied Himself, removed his Godly powers, and became fully human when Christ was born in the manger of Bethlehem.

He cried real tears, sweat real sweat and bled real blood. He was a real man, and yet God was in Him, "reconciling the world unto Himself." Ho could God become man and dwell among us while still being God the Father in Heaven, not to mention being the Holy Spirit at the same time? If I could answer that - I’D be God.

We keep making our God too small. But we probably keep doing that so we can exist in God’s presence. Otherwise we’d be too overwhelmed to even pray to God. If we really began to understand the awesome power of God, we would be too intimidated to even speak God’s name God would seem so huge and we would seem so insignificant, that we would feel that God is too far away to even hear our prayers.

There is an old story of a conversation between former Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Jimmy Carter. It was during one of Begin's visits to America. Begin questioned Carter about his platinum, red, and gold phones in the Oval Office. "Tell me, what are they really for?" he kidded the president. "Well, the platinum phone goes to Plains so I can keep track of Billy. The red phone is a hot line to Russia so I can keep track of what's happen-ing there. My gold phone is a direct line to God." "How much does it cost to call God?" Begin asked. "Ten thousand dollars," Carter replied. "But it's worth every penny."

Later when Carter was visiting Begin in Israel, he asked the same question. "What are your three phones for?" Begin replied, "One's a hot line to Egypt, another's a hot line to Parliament, and the third is a hotline to God." "How much does it cost to call God from here?"

Carter asked. "Ten cents," Begin replied. "It's a local call."

The confusing doctrine of the Trinity says that the same God of a billion galaxies, who emptied Himself and walked the dusty roads of Galilee, is a local call. God is here, and he is available. If we have a need, God is our Provider. If we are heartbroken, God is our encourager. If we have wandered far from the path of righteousness, he is our Savior. Everything we ever need, we find in God. We can’t explain it. At least - through the life of Jesus Christ - we are able to experience God’s love. And if you can buy the one form of God - you get the other two for Free! God in three persons - Father - Son - Holy Spirit - Blessed Trinity. Amen.