By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow
This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
An audio version of this sermon is available here.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
These words from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians go right to the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity, which we of course are celebrating on this Trinity Sunday. And these words tell us that, at its heart, the doctrine of the Trinity is about love, it's about how we as Christians feel the love and the presence and the being of God as real factors in our experience. At its heart the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Christian feeling of God is that God is God with us in three ways: God is beside us, and God is beyond us, and God is within us.
God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, right here in the midst of human life, sharing with us the substance of our hopes and dreams and fears and successes and failures and pains and sorrows and celebrations, sharing the glory and the absurdity of being human in every fiber of human being. God is incarnate, embodied in the real life of the real world. This is the God we encounter in Jesus. This is part of the experience of the Trinity
And God is beyond us, bigger than we are, around us and above us and below us, in whom we live and move and have our being, beyond any name we can name or idea we can think or image we can imagine, who is not limited by any of our limitations. This is God Transcendent, God whom we call Creator, or Father, or Yahweh, or Being — or just plain “God,” which is not really even a name but a title, “God,” because the Transcendent is beyond all names. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.
And God is within us, dwelling in our own spirits, empowering us within, transforming us from the inside out, giving us strength and courage and wisdom and compassion and a capacity for love that we know we could never have on our own. God is immanent, the life within our lives — or, as one Islamic Sufi writer put it, God is closer to us than our own arteries. This is the God we call the Holy Spirit. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.
God beside us, God beyond us, God within us. God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent. Three ways of being God, that are all one God. Or, as Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit that is with us all.”
We know God beside us in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Grace” is a word that means a free gift, an unearned blessing, something that is just given out of the sheer joy of generosity. That’s the kind of love Jesus showed all through his earthly ministry. In all the stories about Jesus, he never rejects anyone who comes to him — in fact, he was notorious for accepting all sorts of people whom the “religiously proper” folks would not accept, tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and terrorists — he’d even hang out with Pharisees if they were willing to hang out with him. Jesus accepted everyone freely, graciously, for exactly who they were. And Jesus shared the good news with everyone, exactly as each needed to hear it. And Jesus called everyone to repent and believe the good news, exactly as each needed to be called. Jesus met people where they were, side-by-side with them in their real lives.
And we experience the grace of Jesus side-by-side with us in our real lives, too. Years ago I used to vacation in the summers in a small town in Northern Michigan, and just outside of town there was a waterfall that was a favorite place of mine. It was just a small stream, but it had carved a series of cascades and pools deep into the rock face of a hill, and it was great fun to climb up that waterfall to see all the cascades. One time I was climbing, and I decided to go straight up a rocky part that I usually detoured around, and as I was climbing the rock I remembered that I’m not really a very experienced rock climber, and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing — and I panicked. I froze. I could not move, because I was certain that if I moved even one handhold, I would fall straight down that waterfall, go bouncing down each cascade, until I landed in a sodden bloody heap at the bottom. I was that scared. And I stayed there, pinned to that rock for what felt like an awfully long time, until I began to pray. I prayed that Jesus would be there with me, right beside me, and show me the way down. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus put his hand right on top of my hand, and with his hand guided me to the next handhold. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus took hold of my foot and guided it to the next toehold. And bit by it, feeling Jesus side-by-side with me, I got down off that rock. And that waterfall is still one of my favorite places. Sometimes we can experience the presence of Jesus so vividly that we know God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, sharing the very human details of our very human lives. That’s part of how we experience Trinity.
We know God beyond us in the love of God. The Greek word Paul uses for “love” here is agapē, and in the Greek translation of the First Testament that Paul was trained in — remember that Paul was trained as a Pharisee before he became a Christian, and that meant he knew his Greek Bible very very well — in the Greek Bible the word agapē was used pretty specifically for a kind of love that is full of affection, but beyond affection is also an intentional choice to will what is good for the other, and to stay faithful in that goodwill no matter what. Agapē-love is the kind of love God has for Creation in our story from Genesis today, when God sees what is created and feels affection for it and says “It is good,” when God blesses the creatures and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and implies a covenant with them: “I will be your God and you will be my creatures and this is how the Universe will work, and I will be faithful to this Universe.” The agapē-love of God is what surrounds us and sustains us and holds us in being, it is God’s goodwill for us before and behind and through all things.
And we experience that all-encompassing, creating, goodwill love in our lives, too. I know so many people who tell me they feel God’s presence in nature, in a forest, on a mountaintop, under a starry night sky, on the golf course — for me, I often feel God’s presence when I’m pedaling my bicycle out in the Valley. And people who share this kind of experience with me tell me that what they feel in nature is such goodness, beauty and awe and wonder and delight and a deep-down foundational sense that, as Genesis says, it is very good. Think for a moment of some time you have felt the goodness of creation, and have recognized that as a reflection of the goodness of the One who creates it. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.
We know God within us in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now “communion” is a very special word: we use it all the time in church, but when you try to define it, it gets slippery. “Communion” means to be united, but not in such a way that you lose your own identity: you are one with God, but you are also still your human self. In the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta they call it “non-duality”; not singularity, but not duality either. Communion is to be who you are, but be who you are along with God.
One of the most moving stories anyone ever shared with me about their experience of communion with the Holy Spirit came from someone who had bouts of depression all through her adult life. There was one time, she told me, when it was particularly bad, when it felt like all the color, all the energy, all the joy, all the meaning had just drained out of her life; she felt empty and hopeless; her meditation, her church, her friends, all seemed insipid and pointless; and she found herself one night sitting alone in an empty dark room, seriously doubting she had the strength even to stay alive. And in that darkness, she said, she heard a voice — and the strange thing was she could tell the voice was coming from inside her. She knew it was a voice in her imagination, she knew it wasn’t coming from outside; and in her imagination it was as if she could hear it literally inside her body, echoing off her ribs, vibrating in the muscle of her heart. And in her own intonation and inflection the voice said to her “You know you are strong enough for this. You know you are strong enough to get through this.” That’s all it was. No light, no vision, no miracle. No sudden cure for her depression, no instant sense of wholeness and well-being. But in that moment she knew, without question, that God the Holy Spirit was with her, and from within her own struggling psyche was giving her strength to grow and to heal and to become well again. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when from within our own selves God brings forth strength and courage and wisdom and compassion that are more than we could manage on our own. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when we feel the power of God within us helping us to become our true selves. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.
In all these ways, the doctrine of the Trinity is really all about love, all about putting into words the specific Christian experience of how God loves. God beside us, God beyond us, God within us; God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent; the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. May that grace and that love and that communion of the Triune God be with us all evermore.
This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
An audio version of this sermon is available here.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
These words from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians go right to the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity, which we of course are celebrating on this Trinity Sunday. And these words tell us that, at its heart, the doctrine of the Trinity is about love, it's about how we as Christians feel the love and the presence and the being of God as real factors in our experience. At its heart the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Christian feeling of God is that God is God with us in three ways: God is beside us, and God is beyond us, and God is within us.
God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, right here in the midst of human life, sharing with us the substance of our hopes and dreams and fears and successes and failures and pains and sorrows and celebrations, sharing the glory and the absurdity of being human in every fiber of human being. God is incarnate, embodied in the real life of the real world. This is the God we encounter in Jesus. This is part of the experience of the Trinity
And God is beyond us, bigger than we are, around us and above us and below us, in whom we live and move and have our being, beyond any name we can name or idea we can think or image we can imagine, who is not limited by any of our limitations. This is God Transcendent, God whom we call Creator, or Father, or Yahweh, or Being — or just plain “God,” which is not really even a name but a title, “God,” because the Transcendent is beyond all names. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.
And God is within us, dwelling in our own spirits, empowering us within, transforming us from the inside out, giving us strength and courage and wisdom and compassion and a capacity for love that we know we could never have on our own. God is immanent, the life within our lives — or, as one Islamic Sufi writer put it, God is closer to us than our own arteries. This is the God we call the Holy Spirit. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.
God beside us, God beyond us, God within us. God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent. Three ways of being God, that are all one God. Or, as Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit that is with us all.”
We know God beside us in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Grace” is a word that means a free gift, an unearned blessing, something that is just given out of the sheer joy of generosity. That’s the kind of love Jesus showed all through his earthly ministry. In all the stories about Jesus, he never rejects anyone who comes to him — in fact, he was notorious for accepting all sorts of people whom the “religiously proper” folks would not accept, tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and terrorists — he’d even hang out with Pharisees if they were willing to hang out with him. Jesus accepted everyone freely, graciously, for exactly who they were. And Jesus shared the good news with everyone, exactly as each needed to hear it. And Jesus called everyone to repent and believe the good news, exactly as each needed to be called. Jesus met people where they were, side-by-side with them in their real lives.
And we experience the grace of Jesus side-by-side with us in our real lives, too. Years ago I used to vacation in the summers in a small town in Northern Michigan, and just outside of town there was a waterfall that was a favorite place of mine. It was just a small stream, but it had carved a series of cascades and pools deep into the rock face of a hill, and it was great fun to climb up that waterfall to see all the cascades. One time I was climbing, and I decided to go straight up a rocky part that I usually detoured around, and as I was climbing the rock I remembered that I’m not really a very experienced rock climber, and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing — and I panicked. I froze. I could not move, because I was certain that if I moved even one handhold, I would fall straight down that waterfall, go bouncing down each cascade, until I landed in a sodden bloody heap at the bottom. I was that scared. And I stayed there, pinned to that rock for what felt like an awfully long time, until I began to pray. I prayed that Jesus would be there with me, right beside me, and show me the way down. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus put his hand right on top of my hand, and with his hand guided me to the next handhold. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus took hold of my foot and guided it to the next toehold. And bit by it, feeling Jesus side-by-side with me, I got down off that rock. And that waterfall is still one of my favorite places. Sometimes we can experience the presence of Jesus so vividly that we know God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, sharing the very human details of our very human lives. That’s part of how we experience Trinity.
We know God beyond us in the love of God. The Greek word Paul uses for “love” here is agapē, and in the Greek translation of the First Testament that Paul was trained in — remember that Paul was trained as a Pharisee before he became a Christian, and that meant he knew his Greek Bible very very well — in the Greek Bible the word agapē was used pretty specifically for a kind of love that is full of affection, but beyond affection is also an intentional choice to will what is good for the other, and to stay faithful in that goodwill no matter what. Agapē-love is the kind of love God has for Creation in our story from Genesis today, when God sees what is created and feels affection for it and says “It is good,” when God blesses the creatures and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and implies a covenant with them: “I will be your God and you will be my creatures and this is how the Universe will work, and I will be faithful to this Universe.” The agapē-love of God is what surrounds us and sustains us and holds us in being, it is God’s goodwill for us before and behind and through all things.
And we experience that all-encompassing, creating, goodwill love in our lives, too. I know so many people who tell me they feel God’s presence in nature, in a forest, on a mountaintop, under a starry night sky, on the golf course — for me, I often feel God’s presence when I’m pedaling my bicycle out in the Valley. And people who share this kind of experience with me tell me that what they feel in nature is such goodness, beauty and awe and wonder and delight and a deep-down foundational sense that, as Genesis says, it is very good. Think for a moment of some time you have felt the goodness of creation, and have recognized that as a reflection of the goodness of the One who creates it. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.
We know God within us in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now “communion” is a very special word: we use it all the time in church, but when you try to define it, it gets slippery. “Communion” means to be united, but not in such a way that you lose your own identity: you are one with God, but you are also still your human self. In the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta they call it “non-duality”; not singularity, but not duality either. Communion is to be who you are, but be who you are along with God.
One of the most moving stories anyone ever shared with me about their experience of communion with the Holy Spirit came from someone who had bouts of depression all through her adult life. There was one time, she told me, when it was particularly bad, when it felt like all the color, all the energy, all the joy, all the meaning had just drained out of her life; she felt empty and hopeless; her meditation, her church, her friends, all seemed insipid and pointless; and she found herself one night sitting alone in an empty dark room, seriously doubting she had the strength even to stay alive. And in that darkness, she said, she heard a voice — and the strange thing was she could tell the voice was coming from inside her. She knew it was a voice in her imagination, she knew it wasn’t coming from outside; and in her imagination it was as if she could hear it literally inside her body, echoing off her ribs, vibrating in the muscle of her heart. And in her own intonation and inflection the voice said to her “You know you are strong enough for this. You know you are strong enough to get through this.” That’s all it was. No light, no vision, no miracle. No sudden cure for her depression, no instant sense of wholeness and well-being. But in that moment she knew, without question, that God the Holy Spirit was with her, and from within her own struggling psyche was giving her strength to grow and to heal and to become well again. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when from within our own selves God brings forth strength and courage and wisdom and compassion that are more than we could manage on our own. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when we feel the power of God within us helping us to become our true selves. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.
In all these ways, the doctrine of the Trinity is really all about love, all about putting into words the specific Christian experience of how God loves. God beside us, God beyond us, God within us; God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent; the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. May that grace and that love and that communion of the Triune God be with us all evermore.
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