Dean Peter’s message centres on the importance of knowing God as a Trinity.
Once there was a village where all the inhabitants were blind. One day a man passed through riding an elephant. A group of the villagers cried out asking the rider to let them touch the great beast. They had heard about elephants, but had never been close to one. Six of them were allowed to approach the animal. Each was led to touch a different part of the body. After a while the rider left, and the blind men hurried back to the village to share their experience. “What’s an elephant like?” the crowd asked them. “I know all about elephants”, cried the man who touched the elephant’s side. “He’s long and narrow, and built like a wall.” “Nonsense”, shouted the man who touched the elephants’ tusk. “He’s rather short, round, and smooth, but very sharp. An elephant is like a spear.” A third man had touched the ear and he joined in: “It’s nothing like a wall or spear. An elephant is like a gigantic leaf, made of thick wool carpet. It moves when you touch it.” “I disagree”, said the man who handled the trunk. “An elephant is rather like a large snake.” A fifth man shouted his disapproval. He had touched the leg of the great beast. “None of you has described the animal accurately. It’s round and reaches toward the heavens like a tree.” The sixth man had been placed on the elephant’s back. He cried out, “Can none of you accurately describe an elephant? He is like a gigantic moving mountain!” Well, to this day the argument hasn’t been resolved, and the people of that village have no idea what an elephant looks like.
Now you may have suspected that today’s sermon isn’t about elephants. Our basic question today is, “How do we know God?” From time to time I have had someone say to me, “I’m not religious” – which usually means that they don’t go to church; don’t pray on a regular basis and don’t read the Bible … It comes as a shock for them to learn that God isn’t religious either! These same people often hold high moral principles, have deep respect and care for others – in fact, they embrace a whole set of values which shout that there is a great deal more to life than self, and more meaning to existence than physical reality.
I believe there is a God and there is within us all the capacity to respond to the reality and presence of God. We all have a deep need to know God and to worship, love and obey him. There are, of course, good reasons why so many people fear God or choose to live without reference to Him. All of us in various ways have disregarded God and quietly rebelled against Him, and the thought of now being accountable to God is rather intimidating. After all, God knows all about us and has the final say on right and wrong in the world. As sinners, we aren’t always very happy approaching the One who is the Standard of perfection and the Judge of us all!
A number of world religions have expressed this fear with grossly horrible depictions of deities which strike terror to the human heart. A whole series of religious rituals are designed to keep such deities at bay – to pacify them so they don’t interfere with the practical affairs of life. Other religions seek to tap into divine power for personal benefit and gain.
A few centuries back, the British Parliament was debating revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. During one of the breaks in the debate, one MP emerged muttering, “I don’t see what all the debate is about. Surely we all believe in some sort of something.” Now some folks would sympathize with this man and agree that if everyone believes in some sort of something – then that is all that matters. The blind men, we might argue, were describing their different experiences of the same elephant. But their different explanations not only seem contradictory, all of them represent a misunderstanding of what an elephant is. Even if they could be persuaded to sit down amicably and discuss it all together, there’s still no way they would come up with a true description of an elephant.
God is not only there – He has spoken – He has revealed Himself , as Francis Schaeffer used to say, not exhaustively but sufficiently. He has taken the guesswork out of things. It is not simply a question of our varying experiences of something spiritual, of the transcendent. Our experiences and guesstimates can be measured and judged by an objective revelation. For God has spoken!
In our day of hyper-tolerance, of openness and dialogue, some are offended that Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” But Jesus wasn’t here to share experiences of the divine. He is the second person of the Trinity; so He could say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!” Jesus was among us to reveal the nature and reality of God. The words I say to you, said Jesus, are not just my own. Rather it is the Father living in me who is doing His work.
The Sunday after Pentecost is always Trinity Sunday. The belief in the Three-in-One God arose from how God has revealed Himself to us. The Old Testament clearly teaches that there is only one God. Yet the New Testament has shown us that Jesus Christ is God and that the Holy Spirit is also God. In seeking to teach clearly what God has revealed of Himself, the Church has formulated the doctrine of the Trinity – not the three gods of Mormonism, nor Jehovah plus a lesser “god” called Jesus and an impersonal force called The Holy Spirit as Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, but One God in Three Persons. Both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds have a Trinitarian framework. The vast majority of Anglicans worldwide see the use of these creeds as acts of allegiance to the Holy Trinity.
The belief that God is one, personal and triune is central to the Christian faith. It relates closely to the belief in the personal nature of God, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the life in the Spirit, and finally to the relation of the redeemed to God in Christ. Trinitarian faith does not come from the early Church Fathers; it comes from the faith and teaching of the apostles. The definitions produced through the debates of the first four centuries were the attempts of the Church to grasp and express adequately the truths of divine revelation, and to guard against false teaching.
What is known as the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6, is recited by the Jews as part of their daily prayer. It begins with the words, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This is a clear and strong monotheistic assertion (meaning that there is only One God). It is reaffirmed many times throughout the Old Testament and is regarded as foundational for the Hebrew people. In the New Testament that Oneness of God is reaffirmed. The words of the Shema are quoted approvingly by Jesus.
Yet Jesus Himself was revealed to us as “God in the flesh” and Christians faced the need to distinguish Jesus from the Father, yet to identify Him with God. While Jesus said “I and the Father are One” and “anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father”, His prayer to the Father was nonetheless real, and His experience of separation from the Father on the cross was authentic. The doctrine of The Trinity originated from the truth of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is truly and distinctly God the Son.
Following Pentecost comes the understanding, not simply that the Holy Spirit is divine, but that He is personal, distinctly personal! To sin against the Holy Spirit is an eternal sin, we are told. When the disciples were brought before the authorities, the Holy Spirit taught them in that very moment what they should say, just as Jesus had promised. Jesus spoke about Him as “The Counsellor … the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father. … He will testify about me.”
Jim Packer in his excellent book Knowing God has written: “Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, so we are cruel to ourselves when we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it."
The world becomes a strange, mad, and painful place, and life within it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God. Disregard the study of God and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. God HAS revealed Himself. We know about him so that we can personally come to know Him.
The Father has loved us with an everlasting love, revealing His nature in creation and history. The Son came into our stream of history to bear the penalty of our sins and open the door of forgiveness for us. The Spirit comes to indwell us – to apply the words and work of the Son to our lives and to empower and direct us as His body. As John says, “God is Love”. Love is the very nature of God in his Three-in-Oneness. He has made us in His image – with a capacity and need to love and to be loved. As we come to know Him, His character will be revealed in our lives. So then, let us love God, love one another, and reach out with caring and redemptive love to others.
Amen.
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