An Old New Idea
The ancient world was a very different place from the world we know today. We have technologies that they couldn’t have possibly imagined. We have completely different societal structures. Different systems of government. Different ways of doing just about anything.
Even our thinking is different.
We know that God is unchanging. God’s substance, God’s essence, God’s divinity never changes. But the way we perceive God is vastly different from how our Christian ancestors perceived him.
This morning we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
And truthfully, the concept of the Holy Trinity is a difficult one to adequately explain. In fact, I've heard it said that it's impossible to preach a non-heretical sermon describing the Trinity. It simply can't be done.
Irish Christian tradition says that St. Patrick used the three-leafed clover to illustrate the trinity. One plant with three leaves.
Another illustration is that of water. Water can take three different forms, ice, liquid, and vapor… yet it is always the same substance.
Or perhaps the Trinity is like an egg. With shell, white, and yolk, yet still one egg.
But none of these are perfect.
While they can be useful, these analogies force us to envision God in three separate parts. But we know that God is one indivisible being. We cannot break God apart, taking him in three different forms, when we know the three persons of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, co-exist at the same time in the same place.
We’ve had 2,000 years to think about this. And all of our best analogies, and there are some good ones, still manage to fall short.
We find useful ways to talk about God. But none of them seem to be perfect.
This was a much more difficult thing to consider 2,000 years ago. When this Holy Triune of Father, Son, and Spirit comprising One God, was a brand new idea.
Consider the world the early Christians lived in.
We might consider that monotheism would have been natural to the ancient Hebrews. All of the Old Testament confessions and commandments say that the Lord is One.
Yet they say that in a decidedly pluralistic world.
Israel has One God. But everyone around them has their own gods too. The Hebrew people were commanded to worship only the Lord their God. But that doesn’t mean that the other Gods… the Gods of Canaan and Babylon, the Gods of Greece and Rome, the Gods of Egypt and Persia… those gods - or the idea of those gods - still existed for them. They just weren’t allowed to worship them.
Today, we take monotheism for granted. We have one God. All powerful. Who does everything.
Our spiritual ancestors wouldn’t have known what to do with that statement.
They were oddballs in a pluralistic world. Yes, they worshipped one God. But they always had the option that if they decided they didn’t like our one God… if there was a drought and their crops failed; if their city lost a war; if their family were plagued with illness… they always had the option of choosing another god to worship.
“Welp… the God of Abraham didn’t help me. Let me give Ba’al a try. Or let me give Marduk a try. Or let’s see if Zeus or Hera or Apollo can give me a hand.”
That was a real environment in which they lived. And some people did. During the time of the Babylonian exile, many Jews assimilated into the Babylonian culture, adopting their ways, their language, and their religion.
So when we read the Ten Commandments and we hear God’s Word, “I am the Lord your God, who led you out of Egypt – you shall have no other Gods before me.” And, “You shall not make any graven images, and you shall not bow down or worship them, because I am a jealous God.” Well… that’s exactly what God is warning against.
We were a monotheistic people in a polytheistic world.
Well, ok… cool… but so what? What does that mean for us?
It means that every attribute that every other religion gave to many Gods, we saw revealed in one, single divine being.
So while the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians had their individual Gods… Gods of the Harvest, Gods of War, Gods of Wisdom, Gods of Love, and so on… we have one God doing all of those things.
Which really affects how we think about sacrifice.
Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love, is the daughter of Zeus. A distinct being.
Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of Love, is the daughter of Ra. A distinct being.
Zeus and Ra and Jupiter and all the other head honcho type Gods can do a lot of things. They can punish their gods of Love. They can banish them. They can give them tasks to do. They can do all kinds of things to make their lives miserable. But as distinct beings, it doesn’t affect them at all.
The Holy Spirit is our God of Love.
Jesus Christ is our God of Love.
The Holy Father is our God of Love.
And we can’t separate or distinguish them out.
So when John says that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”
That’s God’s own self that God is giving.
It is a self-sacrificial love. A love that says that God puts his own being, his own essence, his own existence, on the line for us.
God cannot outsource his pain for us.
What happens to Jesus on the cross happens to Father and Spirit. It’s a deep, indescribable bond of love between God and Creation that we simply don’t have the words for. The closest we can come to imagining it is the love between a parent and child, but even that falls short. The Hebrew word for it is hessed. And it’s a different word than the word for a love between a parent a child. That’s rahad. And it’s a different word that the love between a husband and wife. That’s ‘aheb. We can’t translate hessed. We have no word for it. We can only describe it as complete and total faithfulness, love that is unyielding and unconditional, born of pure devotion. The scope and power and depth of love that can only come from God. Hessed.
It’s what God shows us when God sacrifices his own son, his own being, on the cross. For God so loved the world. With Hessed.
And even though we can’t fully comprehend the Trinity. Even though we can’t fully understand the love, the hessed that God feels for us… even though there is a lot about God that will always be mysterious to us… those mysteries also make God more like us than we can imagine.
This weekend, between our parties and our barbecues, we’ll hopefully be taking the time to honor those men and women in our lives, who answered their country’s call to service, and sacrificed the only life they had so that the rest of us can live in peace and freedom. The people we honor this Memorial Day couldn’t outsource their pain. Couldn’t send someone else to die in their stead. Didn’t choose to just stay home and let someone else fight in their place.
We honor them, because we respect that sacrifice.
The same sacrifice that God made for us, in his death on the cross.
For God so loved the world.
I feel like I’ve covered a lot of different ground in this sermon, hopefully at least somewhat successfully. Or you might be thinking that I got lost in the weeds on this one a little bit. So I’ll close by saying this.
That it is nothing short of an absolute miracle of faith, and God’s own work in our world, that we have the understanding of God that we do today. There have been countless times over the past 2 millennia, when God’s people could have packed their bags and found someone else to pray to, to worship, to heap their praises on. And yet, we’ve stuck around.
And it is nothing short of a miracle of love that God gives us grace. That God’s love for us is indescribably deep, and impossibly wide. That God so loved the world, that he was willing to put himself through the pain of death, walking through literal hell, to come out on the other side, conquering the grave in his testament of his ultimate love for us.
And finally, that it is in this love for us, this hessed, that we understand that sacrifice. God is omnipotent – God can do anything. God could have chosen to send a stand-in, gotten a deferment, or simply said we’re not worth it. But didn’t. God took the only self he has, and let it be beaten and battered and bloodied and crucified. In a sacrificial act that carries us into God’s presence, even today, and for generations to come.
For God so loved the world. Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy Lord, we are here today because of your great mystery. We often don’t know how to conceive of you, how to make sense of your presence in our lives, or how to discern your Spirit… yet we put all our faith and our trust in you. Holy God, we are grateful for your continuing and steadfast love in our lives. You bless us beyond what we deserve, and you lift us up to heights we cannot imagine. We lack the words for your love, yet we feel it and praise you for it. Lord, we look to you this morning in gratitude, for all that you have done for us, and for the continuing promise of your eternal glory that awaits us. Continue to show your love to a world that needs it. Heal our brokenness, comfort our afflictions, and ease our pains, as you have done so many times to so many people. Lord our Creator, Holy God of Love, we pray this to you in humble thanksgiving. Amen.
The ancient world was a very different place from the world we know today. We have technologies that they couldn’t have possibly imagined. We have completely different societal structures. Different systems of government. Different ways of doing just about anything.
Even our thinking is different.
We know that God is unchanging. God’s substance, God’s essence, God’s divinity never changes. But the way we perceive God is vastly different from how our Christian ancestors perceived him.
This morning we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
And truthfully, the concept of the Holy Trinity is a difficult one to adequately explain. In fact, I've heard it said that it's impossible to preach a non-heretical sermon describing the Trinity. It simply can't be done.
Irish Christian tradition says that St. Patrick used the three-leafed clover to illustrate the trinity. One plant with three leaves.
Another illustration is that of water. Water can take three different forms, ice, liquid, and vapor… yet it is always the same substance.
Or perhaps the Trinity is like an egg. With shell, white, and yolk, yet still one egg.
But none of these are perfect.
While they can be useful, these analogies force us to envision God in three separate parts. But we know that God is one indivisible being. We cannot break God apart, taking him in three different forms, when we know the three persons of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, co-exist at the same time in the same place.
We’ve had 2,000 years to think about this. And all of our best analogies, and there are some good ones, still manage to fall short.
We find useful ways to talk about God. But none of them seem to be perfect.
This was a much more difficult thing to consider 2,000 years ago. When this Holy Triune of Father, Son, and Spirit comprising One God, was a brand new idea.
Consider the world the early Christians lived in.
We might consider that monotheism would have been natural to the ancient Hebrews. All of the Old Testament confessions and commandments say that the Lord is One.
Yet they say that in a decidedly pluralistic world.
Israel has One God. But everyone around them has their own gods too. The Hebrew people were commanded to worship only the Lord their God. But that doesn’t mean that the other Gods… the Gods of Canaan and Babylon, the Gods of Greece and Rome, the Gods of Egypt and Persia… those gods - or the idea of those gods - still existed for them. They just weren’t allowed to worship them.
Today, we take monotheism for granted. We have one God. All powerful. Who does everything.
Our spiritual ancestors wouldn’t have known what to do with that statement.
They were oddballs in a pluralistic world. Yes, they worshipped one God. But they always had the option that if they decided they didn’t like our one God… if there was a drought and their crops failed; if their city lost a war; if their family were plagued with illness… they always had the option of choosing another god to worship.
“Welp… the God of Abraham didn’t help me. Let me give Ba’al a try. Or let me give Marduk a try. Or let’s see if Zeus or Hera or Apollo can give me a hand.”
That was a real environment in which they lived. And some people did. During the time of the Babylonian exile, many Jews assimilated into the Babylonian culture, adopting their ways, their language, and their religion.
So when we read the Ten Commandments and we hear God’s Word, “I am the Lord your God, who led you out of Egypt – you shall have no other Gods before me.” And, “You shall not make any graven images, and you shall not bow down or worship them, because I am a jealous God.” Well… that’s exactly what God is warning against.
We were a monotheistic people in a polytheistic world.
Well, ok… cool… but so what? What does that mean for us?
It means that every attribute that every other religion gave to many Gods, we saw revealed in one, single divine being.
So while the Greeks and the Romans and the Egyptians had their individual Gods… Gods of the Harvest, Gods of War, Gods of Wisdom, Gods of Love, and so on… we have one God doing all of those things.
Which really affects how we think about sacrifice.
Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love, is the daughter of Zeus. A distinct being.
Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of Love, is the daughter of Ra. A distinct being.
Zeus and Ra and Jupiter and all the other head honcho type Gods can do a lot of things. They can punish their gods of Love. They can banish them. They can give them tasks to do. They can do all kinds of things to make their lives miserable. But as distinct beings, it doesn’t affect them at all.
The Holy Spirit is our God of Love.
Jesus Christ is our God of Love.
The Holy Father is our God of Love.
And we can’t separate or distinguish them out.
So when John says that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”
That’s God’s own self that God is giving.
It is a self-sacrificial love. A love that says that God puts his own being, his own essence, his own existence, on the line for us.
God cannot outsource his pain for us.
What happens to Jesus on the cross happens to Father and Spirit. It’s a deep, indescribable bond of love between God and Creation that we simply don’t have the words for. The closest we can come to imagining it is the love between a parent and child, but even that falls short. The Hebrew word for it is hessed. And it’s a different word than the word for a love between a parent a child. That’s rahad. And it’s a different word that the love between a husband and wife. That’s ‘aheb. We can’t translate hessed. We have no word for it. We can only describe it as complete and total faithfulness, love that is unyielding and unconditional, born of pure devotion. The scope and power and depth of love that can only come from God. Hessed.
It’s what God shows us when God sacrifices his own son, his own being, on the cross. For God so loved the world. With Hessed.
And even though we can’t fully comprehend the Trinity. Even though we can’t fully understand the love, the hessed that God feels for us… even though there is a lot about God that will always be mysterious to us… those mysteries also make God more like us than we can imagine.
This weekend, between our parties and our barbecues, we’ll hopefully be taking the time to honor those men and women in our lives, who answered their country’s call to service, and sacrificed the only life they had so that the rest of us can live in peace and freedom. The people we honor this Memorial Day couldn’t outsource their pain. Couldn’t send someone else to die in their stead. Didn’t choose to just stay home and let someone else fight in their place.
We honor them, because we respect that sacrifice.
The same sacrifice that God made for us, in his death on the cross.
For God so loved the world.
I feel like I’ve covered a lot of different ground in this sermon, hopefully at least somewhat successfully. Or you might be thinking that I got lost in the weeds on this one a little bit. So I’ll close by saying this.
That it is nothing short of an absolute miracle of faith, and God’s own work in our world, that we have the understanding of God that we do today. There have been countless times over the past 2 millennia, when God’s people could have packed their bags and found someone else to pray to, to worship, to heap their praises on. And yet, we’ve stuck around.
And it is nothing short of a miracle of love that God gives us grace. That God’s love for us is indescribably deep, and impossibly wide. That God so loved the world, that he was willing to put himself through the pain of death, walking through literal hell, to come out on the other side, conquering the grave in his testament of his ultimate love for us.
And finally, that it is in this love for us, this hessed, that we understand that sacrifice. God is omnipotent – God can do anything. God could have chosen to send a stand-in, gotten a deferment, or simply said we’re not worth it. But didn’t. God took the only self he has, and let it be beaten and battered and bloodied and crucified. In a sacrificial act that carries us into God’s presence, even today, and for generations to come.
For God so loved the world. Amen.
Let us pray.
Holy Lord, we are here today because of your great mystery. We often don’t know how to conceive of you, how to make sense of your presence in our lives, or how to discern your Spirit… yet we put all our faith and our trust in you. Holy God, we are grateful for your continuing and steadfast love in our lives. You bless us beyond what we deserve, and you lift us up to heights we cannot imagine. We lack the words for your love, yet we feel it and praise you for it. Lord, we look to you this morning in gratitude, for all that you have done for us, and for the continuing promise of your eternal glory that awaits us. Continue to show your love to a world that needs it. Heal our brokenness, comfort our afflictions, and ease our pains, as you have done so many times to so many people. Lord our Creator, Holy God of Love, we pray this to you in humble thanksgiving. Amen.