“A Bigger God”
Romans 5:1-5
Shhh!!!! I have a box.
It's a very important box. It's important
because God is in it. Yes! I've managed, after 42 years of life, and
too many years of higher education and ½ a dissertation and 19 years
of marriage and 15 years of parenthood, I've finally got my mind around
God.
And he's in this box!
Let me tell you about him. He's male
most of the time. Female some of the time. He's progressive in politics.
She never misses a jump shot. Loves Dogs, and chocolate cake and ice
cream. God is a New York Football Giants fan! And a Laker fan who thinks
the Jazz are ok too, and is commiserating with you Jazz fans and Suns
fans in your time of mourning.
Can your God fit in a box?
What does your God look like?
Republican? Democrat? American? White?
Male? Heterosexual?
Is the God in your box just a bigger
and better version of you, or the a bigger version of the person you
want to be?
It's a natural tendency. In the Reformed
tradition, this is called the human tendency toward idolatry, but that's
a subject for another Sunday.
For now, suffice it to say that we have
a tendency to picture God as we want God to be, doing the things that
what we want God to do. Instead of discovering how we are created in
God's image, we create God in our image.
When we do this, attempt to box God
up-when we try to contain God, at some point we learn that God is not
the one contained. God is not the one bound. We are.
When we create God in our own image,
we don't contain God, all we do is limit ourselves.
Today is Trinity Sunday. This is the
one Sunday during the Christian year when we celebrate not an event
in Jesus life, but a doctrine - a teaching of the church, an expression
of our experience and understanding of who God is: One God in 3 persons,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost using traditional language. The trinity
is at the bedrock of our faith. We reference it constantly in our worship.
All of our creeds implicitly or explicitly express it. Our tradition
recognizes a baptism not on the basis of the theology of the pastor,
or the style of haircut of the person baptized. A baptism is recognized
if it is with water and in the name of the triune God - Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit.
In our context, the trinity takes on
added significance, because though it stands at the center of our own
theology, it is a doctrine that we do not share with the LDS faith,
which holds the godhead as three individual beings rather than as one
God. Belief in the trinity, then sets us apart. It is appropriate then,
that we spend time reflecting on it, and learning it.
There is one problem, however. This
doctrine of the trinity - One God in Three persons - defies neat, logical
explanation. We know from our first math classes, that one and three
are not the same. They are not equal. You are either one or three. Yet,
this is the trinity, one and three. God knows that both people of faith
and academics have tried long and hard to figure it out.
The continual need to explain something
that is intended itself to explain something about God tells us something:
that in the end, it is a mystery. Despite our natural human tendency
to try and reduce God to a known quantity, to explain neatly and rationally
who God is, to draw a little box and put God into it, it remains a mystery.
I know that there are many who like
having all the answers, who like everything spelled out clearly and
precisely. We like that. It can be a little disconcerting that a fundamental
belief of our faith defies neat, easy explanation.
I have come to the discovery that the
biggest gift of our belief in the triune God is that it remains
a mystery. To me, it is a gift that it defies our attempts to completely
lock it down. It is a gift that we can't neatly and thoroughly grasp
it because it leads us to the discovery that God is bigger. God
is bigger than the mind can comprehend. God is bigger than gender. God
transcends political affiliation. God defies the hard and fast boundaries
that we seek to draw to keep us in and others out. God, though it pains
me to say it, transcends even allegiance to the Lakers and the New York
Football Giants.
As a mystery, the trinity continues
to stretch our imagination and our intellect. It keeps us searching
and striving to discover living truth of God's love for us, not in some
hidden code, not in some philosophy, not in some completely defined
doctrine, but in our souls in ways that go deeper that words, and in
the community of faith as our faith seeks understanding together.
It keeps us striving to move forward.
As a mystery of faith, it is an invitation
to dream and imagine in the Spirit. Our God is bigger: awesome yet loving,
transcendent yet imminent, wounded by our thick headedness and rejection
yet ready to forgive, patient, patient, patient yet eager to renew and
enjoy a living and loving relationship with us.
Our God is an awesome God who goes beyond
all of our understanding-beyond our comprehension-and who defies all
of our attempts to domesticate her.
Yet, like a loving father, this awesome
God is always running out to meet us-is always rushing toward us with
open arms waiting to welcome us home with a warm embrace, a loving word,
and a party.
This is our God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit
and yet more than these human words can hold. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,
and yet more than these actions can express.
This morning, at this worship party
(that's what worship is, you know), God the loving parent watches with
hope and anticipation as God the Son invites us, with a twinkle in the
divine eye, to open our boxes and free ourselves.
The lectionary leads us Romans. I believe
it does not just because it is one of the biblical texts that mentions
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in close proximity, but because it proclaims
God not as an abstract doctrine, but God in three persons who is all
about leading us toward hope. Hope in a new reality, a new world, and
in new possibilities.
What am I inviting you to do this morning?
Imagine. Imagine that God is doing something new in your life right
now. You may see it and feel it, or you may not; but imagine, just for
moment, that the Holy Spirit, in Paul's words, is pouring peace and
hope into your life. Imagine a loving, all powerful God reaching out
to you, actively moving ahead of you, behind you, and all around, to
guide you, step by step to the full flowering of the wonderful child
God created you to be. Imagine.
Imagine, a bigger God that calls us
to new solutions, new ways to express God's love. In a world where the
best solution to terrorism is to kill terrorists, to carry bigger and
more of the same weapons they carry, a bigger God calls us to imagine
a better way.
In a society that teaches us to consume,
and to consume to the point that the creation is being choked, a bigger
God calls us to imagine sharing, and giving.
In a world that tends to isolate and
alienate, a bigger, triune God models community, and fellowship, and
self-giving love.
When you open the box of your faith,
when you realize and believe in faith that God is active, and powerful,
and loving, and calling you forward. When you follow this God, You can
hope again. You can discover peace again. We can come up with new ideas.
We can make wiser decisions. If we just imagine, in prayer every day,
and in song, and in hearing scripture, and in working for justice and
peace, and in having fun, if we look for God's activity we will begin
to see and understand more and more.
I have a problem as a parent. I have
two kids, Lydia & Eric, and the problem is that they keep growing!
I want to keep them in a box! I don't want them to grow up and become
more independent. When we are in the car, I have begun to catch sidelong
glances from Lydia, now 15, and I realize that she is thinking about
driving and I want to keep her in a box! I think Eric riding off into
traffic on his bike, and I fight the temptation to follow him to make
sure that he is alright. There he goes, off on his own. I want to keep
him in a box.
But all of you know, we can't keep our
kids in the box, try as we might.
All they do is get bigger and they force
us to let go.
And you know what, as I am forced to
let both Lydia and Eric go, they find new ways to make me proud. They
find new ways to teach me and force me to grow as a parent. As they
grow, and make their own mistakes, they invite me to trust that God
is with them, and they remind me that God will guide and protect them
better than I ever could.
Such is the doctrine of the Trinity.
We can't nail it down completely, it grows. It is ever fresh. It causes
us to grow, and learn, and think, and imagine.
Is your God in a box this morning?
As I thought about this box, it occurred
to me that the metaphor of a box is well-worn, and clichéd.
You know what? Our God is bigger.
June 3, 2007
Rev. Paul Heins
First Presbyterian Church
Logan, Utah