A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (28/06/20): Abraham's Faith - the Binding of Isaac

Abraham’s Faith - the Binding of Isaac

Genesis 22:1-14

Often when God speaks in the Bible it is to set a test. God speaks to Abraham, but what is the test which God sets? God said:

“Abraham, Abraham!” . . . “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

God does set out to test Abraham. The ancient rabbis turned this encounter into a conversation. They add Abraham's responses to God’s increasingly exasperated instructions:

“Take your son” says God

“Which son?” says Abraham, “I have two.”

“Your only son.” says God

“Both sons are the only sons of their mothers.” evades Abraham

“Whom you love” says God

“I love them both” replies Abraham sincerely

“Isaac!”

The test hinges on the sacrifice of Isaac, that is plain enough. What is not actually clear is how the test will be passed. The answer which is usually given is that Abraham’s unswerving and unquestioning obedience to God’s command was the right answer. Yet Abraham has not always between at all reluctant to challenge God’s decree. If anything, up to now, Abraham’s relationship with God has tended to be one in which Abraham argues back, one in which he pleads a case. At Sodom and Gomorrah he argued against God’s destruction of those notorious cities. Cities who had committed terrible crimes even against Abraham himself and against his family. He spoke up for people who we know were irredeemably violent. Yet Abraham argued against God slaying everyone, the innocent with the guilty. The question that arises at this point Abraham’s life, with God demanding the death of Isaac: should he speak up for his own innocent son? Abraham’s lack of resistance at this point is almost surprising.

But Abraham has other “form.” He has also proved himself willing to give up his family when his own safety appeared to depend upon it. He handed his first wife, Sarah, over to other men, not once but twice! He cut himself off from his second wife, Hagar, and cast her and her/his son, Ishmael off, sending them into the desert without apparent hope for survival. So what was God testing? What did God want to hear in reply?

“Take me God, I am old. I am the past, the future is my son not me”

“Far be it from you, O Lord, to treat the innocent as if they were guilty”

Or given Abraham’s previous performance was God seeking to find out just how far Abraham would go. Would he sacrifice even his own future and the promises that had been made concerning Isaac?

Calling is critical to the life of faith. We make that explicit in the way in which we test preachers and ministers. There has to be some sense of calling, that it is God who has asked and we have responded. But it is implicit in all of our lives of faith and our relationship with God. Discipleship consists in a sense of trying to do what God calls us to do. There is a sense in which we are all being tested. But how can we know the call is genuine? And how can we know our response is the right one? There is no check which is reliable:

Our willingness to respond and to do? Couldn’t that be just self-indulgence rather than calling?

Our unwillingness, the difficulty we find, to respond and to do? Isn’t that just contrariness and even masochism?

The experience of God may be clear, though perhaps seldom as clear and direct as it was for Abraham. The experience may be clear but what is almost never clear is how we should respond. The personal experience of God is, obviously, subjective. The problem is, how do we know when it is genuine, and even where it is, what should we do? What manner of response should our trust in God and our obedience take?

What is the faith which Abraham possesses? Abraham, of course, is taken to be the exemplary man of faith. He is the father of faith and of the faithful: for Jews, Christians and for Muslims. St. Paul in particular takes Abraham’s faith, far more than his obedience, to be the decisively important feature of his life story. But what does that faith consist of?

Abraham decides to respond. So he loads his donkey up early in the morning. But right away that seems suspect. The ancient rabbis smelled something fishy. They again observe in their commentary on the story: A man of great wealth, loading his own donkey?! And so early in the morning? Such a lack of dignity! There is clearly something not right here. There is some suggestion that even Abraham grasped that those around him wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t agree with what he felt called to do. Was he trying to avoid the fury of his wife Sarah:

“You heard what?”

“You are going where?”

“To do what?”

Isaac is as much a fulfilment of a promise to Sarah as he is to Abraham. Her future is Isaac as well. She surely would have something to say about this. And as Abraham approached the place that God had indicated to him, with his donkey, with his son and with two servants, he leaves the two servants behind. Again suggesting that Abraham doubts that others will see things as he does. He removes potential resistance and eventual witnesses to what he believes he is about to do. He reassures the servants with what from his perspective is surely an untruth:

“We will come back to you.”

But as they approach the place itself, chosen for the sacrifice, Isaac poses an entirely natural and innocent question:

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice.” 

It is Abraham’s answer to that question that is seen as the measure of his faith:

“God will provide”

Or literally: ‘God will see’. What did Abraham’s faith consist of? The answer usually given is: his complete trust in God even when God’s words seem contradictory. Usually Abraham's faith is portrayed as an unshakeable belief in God’s goodness and in God’s fidelity to his promises even when God’s purposes and actions seem obscure. There is certainly some merit in that. God certain will always remain largely a mystery to us. His ways are not our ways. Faith consists of trusting in the goodness of God.

But is God really that obtuse and confusing. True, each time he has tried to sacrifice a member of his family Abraham has been met with the intervention of God. So twice Sarah was returned to him unharmed. And the lives of Hagar and Ishmael were protected after Abraham has cast them out. So does Abraham’s faith consist of him simply banking on his chosen status? Does Abraham simply rely on the thought that since God has chosen him, God will always intervene on his behalf? This is exactly something which Jesus much later warns Abraham’s descendants against doing! Or does God act to set things right each time Abraham goes wrong. God each time intervenes to increase Abraham’s family, through whom the world will be blessed, each time that Abraham has tried to decrease it? God again and again steps in the renew the call and the promise which he has given. Maybe the faith that is present in Abraham’s story is as much God’s keeping faith with Abraham as it is anything that Abraham himself has.

One of the things that it is almost impossible to know is whatever God accomplishes around us  is because of what we do, or in spite of what we do? God does things and sometimes we are fortunate enough to find ourselves caught up in them. It might be easy to presume that we had a decisive instrumental role in what God did. But we can never be quite certain that it wasn’t God acting to go around us that was what actually happened! The truth perhaps is that God keeps faith with our stumbling and sometimes confused and even faulty steps in faith and obedience. We must always remember that God sent Christ into the world not reward those who were successful but to call and rescue those who are lost, defeated and even rebellious

But in the end, what is the outcome of the test which Abraham has been set? At the end of the story it is not altogether clear whether or not that test has in fact been passed! Abraham and Isaac come to the place. In the spiritual geography of the rabbis they identify this as the self same mountain upon which Solomon would later build the Temple. Isaac, the rabbis note, was not at this stage the curly haired child that some of us might remember from pictures in Sunday School books. They reckoned that Isaac was now a fully grown man. He was more capable of carrying firewood than the very old man who was his father. And he was certainly more than an old man could have tied up unless Isaac himself were a volunteer. Hidden inside the story of Abraham’s faith is Isaac’s faith in his father and in his father’s God. The sacrifice is prepared, the knife is raised in Abraham’s hand, ready for a swift and decisive stroke. Neither he nor Isaac may hesitate or struggle. When:

The Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham!”

"Stop!" Has Abraham passed the test? The usual answer is, yes, of course he did. He has shown his unfaltering confidence in the goodness of God. His willingness was sufficient to pass the test without having to carry through with the deed. So, is it the case that Abraham had believed all along that God would bail him out in the end? This is what God had done before. In which case, how much of a test was it? Or, did God step in to save Abraham from the disastrous consequences of what he thought God was calling him to do? And for whose benefit was the test in any case? Surely God already knows the content of Abraham’s heart as he knows the content of every heart. God doesn’t need a test to find that out. Perhaps God wanted Abraham to find out something about himself. At the end of the story God’s response is impossible to decipher:

Now I know that you fear God.

And Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.

It turns out that Abraham’s answer to Isaac’s question “God will provide” was accurate. The ram substitutes for Isaac in the sacrifice. Christians have always seen the connection between the ram caught in the thicket and the one whom we call the Lamb of God. The Cross is critical for our understanding of how God acts. The ram substitutes for Isaac, whose death would have been the destruction of Abraham’s future, but also more importantly the end of God’s promise of blessing for the whole world. At the cross God himself steps into our willingness to destroy our future, our hopes and our blessing. God stands in our place to prevent us from destroying ourselves. The story, Abraham’s story, our story, is not about us. The story is never just about us. The story is about God. Not what humans do  but decisively about what God did, and does and will do. We don’t actually know whether Abraham passed the test. What we do know is that God chooses to bless him anyway. God has faith in Abraham and in humanity. God has provided. In Christ, his death and his resurrection, he keeps faith with his children. And gives them the means to pass beyond their many shortcomings

Amen

Abraham's Faith - the Binding of Isaac by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (21/06/20): Jesus Brings a Sword

Jesus Brings a Sword

Matthew 10:24-39

Jesus repeats the most frequent commandment of the Bible. He says:

Have no fear

Typically for Jesus’ commandments, it can be read also as a promise or as an assurance. “Don’t be afraid, because you have no need to be afraid.” The context of Jesus’ commandment/assurance is the expectation that the Church will be persecuted. Jesus observes that followers can’t expect to be treated better than their leader. Jesus has received all kinds of abuse. He has been pilloried for spending time with lepers, prostitutes and tax-collectors. His miracles have been dismissed as nothing more than displays of demonic power. And of course we know that eventually he will be betrayed, arrested, rejected and crucified.

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul how much more will they malign his household?

What Jesus endured, his followers should expect to have to endure, and worse. Jesus and the first Christians assumed that they would be persecuted. And indeed they were. The message of Jesus, that God’s kingdom is at hand, provoked the power of empire against him. The message of those Jesus sends out after him remains the same. The apostolic mission of the Church is to announce God’s rule. That message, truthfully proclaimed, must provoke the power of this world against its apostles. The bottom line is, the faithful church is a persecuted church

Now this is not to say that a persecuted church is necessarily a faithful church. There are lots of ways for Christians to make trouble for themselves. And many of those are manifestly unfaithful to the message of Jesus. It is not that the Church should be going out looking for trouble to prove its fidelity. Or that it should be taking some masochistic pleasure in every insult and rejection it experiences. But as it was for Jesus, so it will be for his faithful followers. Those who faithfully fulfil the mission Jesus has given to them, those who truthfully announce that the kingdom is at hand, and that Jesus is Lord, the people who do that cannot fail to provoke the anger of the power of this world.

The thing is, Jesus’ commandment/assurance sounds hollow or redundant to us. What have we to be afraid of? When was the last time we really, consistently had to suffer persecution for our faith? We might occasionally have to suffer a snide joke. We put up with the consistent misrepresentation of Christian faith and values from some quarters. But no one is trying to strip us of all our possessions. No one is trying to send us to gaol. No one is trying to nail us to crosses or feed us to lions. For the longest time Christians and the Church, in this country at least, have not been genuinely persecuted. We are not afraid because we have nothing to be afraid of. 

Indeed it is difficult for us to imagine how or why the Church might be persecuted in our society. In part because the Church is woven into our society in so many ways. Even if now it is being largely ignored and forgotten. Christianity in Britain and much of the west has stood as one of the pillars of social order. The Church had a role in society, as one of the guarantors of peaceful and orderly social relations. The Church has been part of what is called “dominant ideology.” Our way of thinking was used to support the way things are, to reassure everyone that this is the way things should be. Far from being persecuted by the powers of this world, the Church had become allied to them, indeed it has been one of them. For the longest time the Church here has been assimilated and accommodated to the world. We have pictured Jesus as the defender of the peaceful ordered society which we enjoyed.

Alongside this we have been seduced by the idea of religious freedom. The idea that nobody, whatever they believe, should have to suffer for their religion. It’s not just that we are not persecuted for our religion, and don’t expect to be persecuted for our religion. We in fact have managed to create a situation where it would/should be illegal for us to be persecuted that way. But I called religious freedom a “seduction.” Religious freedom disallows persecuting people for their “beliefs.” Which in reality is part of our accommodation with the world. Religion is free from persecution so long as religion stays in the realm of “belief.” You can hold whatever private opinion you like, so long as you don’t insist on demonstrating it in public. We have allowed our faith to be reduced to a private matter. Our lack of persecution and especially our willing acceptance of the terms of religious freedom should worry us. It should worry us because it is an indication that we are not being as faithful as we should be. Our faith is not a private matter. What we proclaim is necessarily a public truth. “The kingdom of God is at hand and Jesus is Lord.” Our task is to make that message heard. It is clear that even in a place that guarantees religious freedom, on the basis that it is a private opinion, the mission of the Church must be provocative. Even here, the faithful church is a persecuted church.

From where we are now some of the things Jesus says seem to make no sense. We struggle to understand why we have to be reassured not to fear the persecution we aren't suffering in any case. But some of the things Jesus says are likely to horrify us:

Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

The degree to which our view of Jesus has become accommodated with the way the world is, and assimilated with the powers that be, can be measured by how shocking we find Jesus when he says that. This is not “gentle Jesus meek and mild.” This is not Jesus the guarantor of a peaceful, complacent social order. This is the authentic Jesus who turns the world upside down; who throws the money changers out of the Temple and who consorts with the poor and the outcast, who welcomes lepers, prostitutes and sinners, and who dines with tax-collectors. The Jesus who outrages the powers of this world, and who is persecuted for it. 

The presence of Jesus in the world creates a crisis, a moment of decision against which judgement will stand. Are you with Jesus or against him? Because Jesus announces that the kingdom is at hand; and because he is shown to be Lord; he has all the authority in the world, loyalty and obedience are owed to him. This is not a claim which those who would claim authority for themselves in the world can tolerate. This is the sword which Jesus brings. And it is a sword of truth, and it cannot be kept as private opinion.

The crisis which Jesus creates is a question of loyalty and commitment. What are we committed to? Committed to Jesus? Committed to his vision of the world freed from evil? Committed to an end to violence, injustice, poverty and hatred? Committed enough to the kingdom of God to act on it? Or do our loyalties and commitments lie somewhere else? Do we find we obey someone other than Jesus? Jesus’ sword is not a sword which brings violence. Jesus is not the one who brings violence and conflict into the world. Those things are already there, products of the evil and injustice that are present. Jesus' sword is the sword of truth which cuts through those things. But that being so, Jesus demands that we take sides, take sides with him on the side of truth and justice.

The alarming thing about Jesus’ sword is how and where it might cut. Jesus’ call for loyalty  and commitment to him and his mission, calls into question all the other loyalties and commitments we might have. Jesus asks us to choose him over everything and everyone else. Following Jesus is going to make enemies. It will make enemies of those who think we owe loyalty to them. There is a very good reason why Jesus says “love your enemies.” Those enemies may in fact be the ones closest to us:

For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be the members of one’s household.

Jesus creates a moment of decision in the world. A crisis in which everyone has to choose to follow Jesus or to reject him. To follow Jesus means making enemies of everyone who rejects Jesus, be they members of our households, or those who wield the power of this world.

In past few weeks one of the slogans that was prominent in the Civil Rights movement in the United States has reemerged into prominence again: “No justice, no peace.” It is spoken in the context of the civil disturbances that are a reaction to police violence against people of colour in the United States. Disturbances which have spread internationally as the residue of racist history and ongoing inequality and injustice have been challenged. I suspect as a slogan, “No justice, no peace,” unsettles us in the same sort of way that the image of Jesus bringing a sword does. We worry that they become a pretext for violence and a camouflage for more injustice and evil.

Above all we long for peace. Which is why as a Church we have so often made Jesus the guarantor of peaceful social orders. But to accept peace in the face of injustice is to side not with Jesus, but with those who commit injustice. It is to take sides on the wrong side, against God’s kingdom, and to perpetuate the world as it is, rather than to promote God’s peaceable rule. The “peace” that exists in the presence of injustice is at best an illusion, but more often is a lie. And it is a lie that is itself violent in its perpetuation of injustice. It is a false peace which an accommodated and assimilated Church co-opts Jesus to underwrite. Racial injustice is one of those things which Jesus brings his sword against. It demands we take a stand with him against such things. That is the sword which Jesus brings.

In the end there is no way to be faithful to Jesus, without making enemies. The faithful Church cannot keep loyalty to the Lordship of Christ as a private opinion. We have avoided persecution, only by evading responsibility to the message which we have been given to proclaim. "The kingdom of God is at hand, Jesus is Lord!" For the longest time we have only heard that whispered. It is time for it to be proclaimed from the housetops.

Amen.

Jesus Brings a Sword by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost (14/06/20): Christian Philosophy of Life

Christian Philosophy of Life

Romans 5:1-8

Everyone has a philosophy of life. That seems a bold claim, since most of us are not in the least bit philosophical. But everyone has a philosophy of life. In an informal sense what that means is that everyone has some basis for their character. There is something that makes each of us who we are. There is a set of ideas, a basic outlook, which shapes everything we think and everything we do. It is how we look at the world. It is how we decide what is good and what is bad. It shapes our aspirations and our longings. Mostly we are unaware of it. Mostly we don’t pay attention to it. It just works in the background making us who we are. It is the self-appointed task of philosophers to worry and talk about such things. But, Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Trust a philosopher, especially an old Greek philosopher, to think that philosophy is important! But maybe the ancient Greek had a point. If we don’t examine the map from time to time how can we be sure we are still headed in the right direction. And indeed, how do we decide what the destination should be in the first place. Presumably we are all trying to live a life worth living, a good life. A philosophy of life, consciously or unconsciously, whether we are aware of it or not, defines what that good life might be. It is how we decide where we are going and the map which helps us to get there.

A philosophy of life has two parts.  And here we do start to sound philosophical, if by that we mean, using Greek words. But bear with me. Every philosophy of life consists of metaphysics and ethics. Metaphysics is a properly philosophical word. Literally in means “in addition to physics.” It is an attempt to describe what lies behind the world as we experience it. If physics asks, “what?” and “how?” Metaphysics asks, “why?” Again we may be mostly unaware of this. We are happy to let philosophers worry about such things.  But in the end everything we do, to some degree, grows out of what we believe about the world and how and why it works. And that leads us into ethics. Our ethics are the principles which govern our actions. Our actions and the decisions that we took before them are shaped by what we think is good and bad. The thing is, discipleship is nothing more than the process of giving us a Christian philosophy of life. As Christians, if we were to do as the old pagan Socrates suggested and examined our lives, we would hope to find that they were shaped by a Christian philosophy of life.

 Paul very helpfully and very succinctly offers us a Christian philosophy of life. And he includes, though we might not notice it, a Christian metaphysics. Paul says:

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

And later he says:

God proves his love for us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Those are two decidedly metaphysical statements. They are an attempt to point beyond the material reality of our lives to what really determines the meaning of our existence. And first of all a Christian philosophy of life, of course, includes God. It is God who stands behind what is real. God, above all, is the reason why there is something rather than nothing. God is the ground of our being. It is God who gives us life and offers us the possibility of that life being good.

There are plenty of philosophies of life which include the idea of God. And almost none of those philosophies are Christian. And the god of many of those philosophies hardly resembles the true and living God of Christianity. For the most part Christianity is surprisingly disinterested in metaphysics. For the most part we don’t want or need to speculate about what lies behind reality. And it is clear why not from what Paul says here. For Christians all that can be said or known about God, certainly everything that needs to be known about God, has already been shown to us in Jesus Christ. A Christian metaphysics says that what lies behind reality, the true nature of the universe, and our place in it, is shown to us in the life, death, resurrection, ascension and promised return of Jesus Christ. Put bluntly: Jesus is God. This is the same idea that John tries to express at the beginning of his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . And the Word became flesh.

Which is just about the most metaphysical that the Bible ever becomes. Many of those who accept, or reject, God as part of their philosophy of life do so on the assumption that God is angry or at best indifferent. For many people whose lives are motivated by the idea of God, their picture of God is a scary one, and their lives always reflect that picture. Others of course, reject God on the basis that that picture of God could be the only one available, and they reject the life that grows from it. And even those atheists who reject metaphysics altogether, by default place the cold indifferent “laws of nature” in place of God, and find themselves with metaphysics whether they like it or not. 

But Christians make a quite different and startling claim about God. The metaphysics of Chrsitianity is that what lies behind reality is a profound love and an absolute goodness. The Christian picture of God, the one shown us in Jesus Christ, is that God loves us and is profoundly and intimately involved in our history and in our lives. Indeed God loves us so much, that in spite of our hostility towards God, God died for us. The underlying assumption that Christians make about the nature of reality is that what moves the universe is the God who makes himself known in Jesus Christ and who wills only good for us.

For Paul putting our trust in this is what makes the decisive difference. If this is what we believe lies behind the reality of our experience, then our lives, our decisions and our actions will be shaped in a particular way. This Christian metaphysics is what drives Christian ethics. Paul’s description of what Christian living should look like starts in a rather odd place. He declares:

But we also boast in our sufferings.

Like Jesus’ beatitudes, which declares blessing on those in negative situations, this seems counter-intuitive. Why would anyone take pride in their discomfort. It seems a curiously masochistic thing to say. I think Paul recognises this. That’s why he starts his sentence, “But.” Many philosophies of life would make their aim, and their definition of good, the avoidance of suffering. Paul, in his Christian ethics, welcomes suffering. But an ethics that welcomes suffering requires a metaphysics that includes the God shown to us in Jesus Christ. The claim which a Christian philosophy of life makes is that even in bad things God is working good for us. In all the circumstances of our lives God is present and at work. The truly Christian philosophy of life rejects prosperity gospel and all philosophies which claim that the good life is defined by wealth, or success, or power or anything like them. God is present in our happy times and our positive experiences. But God is not absent in our hours of difficulty and moments of failure, sadness or frustration. Indeed it is perhaps easiest to allow God to work in and through and for us, in poverty, sickness, grief or persecution, to bring about the good life we are looking for.

Paul goes on:

Knowing that suffering produces endurance

Paul takes us up the first step of what might be called a ladder of virtues: Endurance. Life is brief, but we are in it for the long haul. The problem with philosophies of life which aim to avoid negative experiences is that they don’t work. In the end at least a little suffering must enter every life. But a Christian philosophy of life assures us is that nothing is all bad. That every experience can be a source for growth towards that good life we are aiming for. At the very least coming through suffering assures us that we can come through suffering. Little by little our confidence that what we believe to be behind the universe, God’s love and goodness, is proved to be true. Our ability to take what life throws at us is increased. Our characters are formed.We become capable of living that life that is worth living.

And character is the next step on the ladder of virtues in Paul’s Christian ethics:

And endurance produces character.

For Socrates, and other philosophers, the purpose of a philosophy of life is to produce character. For Paul the purpose of discipleship is to produce Christian character. Character is meaning and purpose we give to our lives. The reason Socrates thought an unexamined life was a bad thing was that it was liable to be blown here and there by the winds of circumstance. An unexamined life is one determined, shaped, by what happens to it. Without examination of life, life can not have meaning or direction, and therefore by Socrates’ definition it can’t be good. A Christian life is one that is examined in relation to what has been shown to us by God in Jesus Christ. It is life that is built on trust in the God who shows himself in Jesus Christ which is a life which can boast in suffering. That is a life which can endure. And it is a life which endures has the stability to build character. A Christian philosophy of life produces an ethics which enables a Christian disciple to give purpose, meaning and direction to their life.

Paul’s ladder of virtues has one more step:

And character produces hope.

Above all Christians are hopeful people. If we were looking for a one word definition of what Christianity defines as the good life: hope is that one word. In the time which we are living through now, perhaps it is more important than ever to grasp a Christian philosophy of life. In a moment where the threat of a disease has utterly changed our experience of life. Where our sociability has been severely restricted; Where our community has been closed off from us, or reduced to a simulation; Where fear and sorrow have become the companions of all our lives; A Christian philosophy of life is more needed than ever

At at time when the injustices that exists in the world have become exposed. Where, especially, the victims of racial injustice have again spoken out loudly and demanded, “if not now, when?” Where the disturbances we have seen on our televisions and even in our own town, have shaken our confidence in the peaceful complacency of our society; Where those who would lead us seem to lack the vision to answer the demands before them: A Christian philosophy of life is more needed than ever.

The life worth living which a Christian philosophy of life produces is a life of hope. A life that believes in the God who makes himself known in Jesus Christ is a life which can define the good and make the choices which lead to hope; In this moment, hope that disease, sickness and death do not have decisive control over our lives and our relationships; In this moment, hope that all the injustices that exist in the world, not least racial injustice can be overcome, and that a reconciled and harmonious society is possible. It is hope which enables us to direct our lives towards those things. And as Paul points out:

And hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Amen.

Christian Philosophy of Life by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A Sermon for Trinity Sunday (07/06/20): Trinity, Grammar and Punctuation

Trinity: Grammar and Puntuation

Matthew 28:16-20

Today is Trinity Sunday. The Sunday which is famous, or infamous, as the one which preachers, if they can, try to avoid preaching. That is because this Sunday’s theme has the reputation as the most difficult one to address. Trinity is the Christian doctrine about God. This is the way which the Church has concluded that it is right for us to speak about God. It is the idea that God is one God, but three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of those persons is equal with the others, but distinct from them, but always in unity with them. God is never less than three separate persons, identities. But God is never more than only one God. It is the kind of idea that is just plain difficult to get your head around. How can three be one? How can one be three, whilst never disrupting the unity of oneness? Ever since the Church concluded that this is the proper way for Christians  to think and speak about God, and it took quite a long time to arrive at that conclusion, Christians have been struggling to illustrate and explain just what that means. And often the explanations hardly reduce the problems. And some of the most attractive straightforward ones, in fact, have been condemned as heresy. That is they are false and misleading. For example: It could be said, and I think we often slip into this way of speaking, that the God we believe in is a God who presents himself to us in three different ways: as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now that does have some appeal. It is straightforward and not that hard to understand. Pushed a little further we might be tempted to say: that God the Father is what we observe in the Old Testament, God the Son is the God we find in Jesus Christ in the Gospels, and God the Holy Spirit is what has been with us ever since, we observe a kind of chronological sequence. Problem solved. What was all the fuss about? The Trinity is not nearly as difficult as we thought. Except that is not quite what the doctrine of Trinity says. Indeed that is a quite specific heresy, it has a name, it is called Modalism. It is false because it fails to make the proper distinction between the three persons of the Trinity. And in that chronological form, it calls into question the equality and eternity of each of those persons: God was and is, always Father, always Son and always Holy Spirit.

There is no way out from under the burden of having to hold onto the idea that God

is both one and three at the same time. So we are left to illustrate what we mean. We have to try to find some analogy that helps us picture what Trinity might be like. But in the end I’m not sure that even the best of those help that much. There is the famous Rublev Icon (the image at the start of this sermon). It is a Russian painting from the 15th century. We see three people sitting around a table. It beautifully expresses the intimacy of the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And as such, it helpfully presents us with the idea that God is relational. But looking at I’m left wondering: how is that one? What makes those three figures just one God. We are left with the problem we started with.

Or, most famously of all, St. Patrick’s illustration of the shamrock. That God as Trinity

is like a leaf of that plant, which is both three and one at the same time. Which, I have to say, to me looks like one leaf that has three parts, which is probably leading us back to Modalism. And as an illustration it has for ever been undermined for me, because whenever I hear it mentioned I can only think of a scene from “Nuns on the Run,” a film in which Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle play petty criminals who are hiding out from gangsters disguised as nuns in a convent. At one point Idle, who has no background in the Church is compelled to explain the Trinity to a sixth form RE class. Coltrane, a Glaswegian Roman Catholic provides him with St. Patrick's illustration. With a sharp intake of breath he says: “Ah that's a bit of a [expletive deleted]. It's as my old priest used to say. . .” Shortly afterwards Idle is faced with a room full of teenage girls is overcome with nerves and blurts out: “Remember, God is like a shamrock, small, green and in three parts!”

We could, of course, simply accept the Trinity as an idea, as a way of speaking. Without trying to understand or explain how that can be. And pass the difficulty of as the mystery of God. Which is what I guess most of us try to do most of the time. And leave the problem to us preachers on this Sunday. Except that as doctrine it is a major stumbling block in relationships between us and the other Abrahamic faiths: Judaism and Islam. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all worship the one God who was revealed to Abraham. The problem for Jews and Muslims is that the great revelation to Abraham is that there is only one true and living God and no other. The Trinity, to them, looks like we are worshipping three Gods. To them God is either one, or there are three gods. It is not possible in their thinking to be both. It would be helpful in our relationships with them, and in our efforts to explain our faith to others, if we didn’t have to offer God as something as mind-boggling as the Trinity.

And there is worse yet. We can turn, as we always should, to the Bible. And what we find is that it doesn’t help a great deal. The Bible possesses no worked out theology of the Trinity. We find all three persons all over the Bible. The Son is present in the Old Testament, in the Gospels obviously, and after the ascension promised in the future, in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit breathes through the whole Bible, at work in Prophets and Psalmist as much as in the Church after Pentecost. And God the Father stands behind the idea of God throughout the Bible, not least as the way in which Jesus himself speaks about God. But at no point does any book of the Bible sit us down and say: "look this is how it is, God is one God in three persons." And then go on to give us an ideal explanation as to how that can be. The idea of the Trinity is a conclusion that Christians arrive at after reading and thinking about it for a long time. Beginning in the second century and finally settled after 50 years of bitter debate in the fourth century. They solved the problem of how the Bible and Christians speak of God. But their solution to the problem is itself the problem we are left with.

So we come to today. And the reading which is set. These are last five verses of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is with the remaining 11 of his 12 disciples, one last time.

When it comes to Trinity Sunday the creators of the lectionary have a problem. Where do they find passages in the Bible which refer to all three persons of the Trinity in a relatively short space? They are very few and far between. So the reason we read this passage is because the risen Jesus says in one breath:

Baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

That is nearly unique in the Bible. One of only a very few locations where God is referred to in that explicitly trinitarian manner. Except, look at the passage it occurs in! This is the Great Commission. This is Christ’s charge to the Church to be the Church. This is his command to do what we must do, along with his promise to be with us always as we do it. As a preacher looking at this passage I just feel there are so many much more important things to be said about this passage than trying to discuss the obscurities of a complex doctrine like the Trinity.

And yet, there it is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Present, visible even, in one of the most crucial passages of scripture for our life as Christians. The Trinity becomes a doctrine of the Church, because that threefold name is already embedded in the way Christ and Christians speak and think about God. The Trinity is necessary as a doctrine because it lies here at the root of the mission of the Church. This passage actually marks the beginning of the journey which leads to the realisation that this is how Christians must speak of God.

It might pass almost unnoticed  but something quite startling takes place when disciples meet Jesus on that mountain in Galilee:

When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted

No wonder some doubted because there is something quite astonishing here.

They worshipped him. . .

Up to now the disciples have followed Jesus, they have listened to Jesus, they have loved Jesus, they have obeyed Jesus. But up to now they have not worshipped Jesus. The haven't because you can and should only worship God! How conscious they were at the time of what they were doing is difficult to say. Perhaps the ones who doubted were the ones who were most aware of what this means. Jesus is God! Already the disciples find that the God who was revealed to their ancestor Abraham is a God who is one, but who is at least two persons. Now of course we know “binitarianism” (or would that be a "duunity"?) one God/two persons is not really a thing. But our answer to those who question the authenticity of our monotheism is that find that the one true and living God is made fully present to us in Jesus Christ which is why the disciples and we worship him.

Of course putting this reading on Trinity Sunday pushes it out of sequence. In sequence this belongs more than a fortnight ago. This is Matthew’s story which parallels Luke’s account of the Ascension. It really belongs as the last reading in the season of Easter. Crucially in the narrative sequence of the New Testament as a whole this happens very shortly before Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and the Church. Looked at that way, it emerges how and why the Church does and must speak of God as Trinity.

There is of course so so much more that could and should and must be said about the Great Commission, which trying to use it on Trinity Sunday sort of pushes out of the way: There is the way in which this scene neatly contrasts with the scene from Jesus’ temptation. There the devil claimed to have authority over all the nations of the world - and promises that Jesus can rule if he bows down and worships the devil. But the devil has lost. Jesus’ whole life was a refusal of that offer. It was that refusal which required Jesus to endure rejection and crucifixion. But through that endurance he has triumphed. Here Jesus declares:

All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me

And it is the disciples who bow down and worship him. He is the Son The one who commands them and us to make disciples of all nations. Which is that great commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

We could spend a good deal of time, instead of wrestling with the Trinity, deciding how that commission is best translated: it should probably read something like: “Having gone, make disciples of all the gentiles, by baptising them. . . .” But there it is Father, Son and Holy Spirit embedded in the most fundamental thing we have to say about the Church. One of the very few things more or less all Christian denominations agree on is how we make the Church. It is by baptism, and a baptism which involves water and that trinitarian formula. We fulfil the most decisive commandment Jesus has given his followers by building the church as the place where “gentiles” learn how to obey what Jesus has taught us under that trinitarian idea about God.

And there is that promise that Jesus remains with us to the end of time. Another of those mistakes we might make is that Jesus is merely a historical moment. The point in time when God is present in history. And that it is Father and Spirit who stand outside of time. One of the assertions which the doctrine of the Trinity makes is that all three are equal with one another. And that includes equally eternal. Even in a passage that has so much else to say, the idea that God is one God in three person runs as the unavoidable undercurrent of everything that is being said

Frankly I think Trinity Sunday is a mistake. Focusing on the the Trinity is like reading a really wonderful story, but instead of thinking about the story, you end up thinking about the grammar and punctuation of how it was written. Perhaps that is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is: The grammar and punctuation of Christian speech. It is absolutely essential. It has to be implicit in everything we say. But it is not necessarily something something we want to draw attention to beyond knowing how to use it properly. Without grammar and punctuation nothing we could write would make any sense, it would be meaningless. Without the Trinity nothing we Christians could say about God would make any sense. The only God we know know is the God who is Father, the God who is Son and the God who is Holy Spirit, the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. The God who is always and only one God. That is the God who we trust and who we worship

Amen 

Trinity: Grammar and Punctuation by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.