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Sermon Date:	June 3, 2007 (Redeemer, Sanford)
Sermon Text:	John 8:48-59
Church Calendar:	Trinity Sunday
Delivered By:	Rev. Brian Roberts

"How Do You Picture God?"

Dear Friends in Christ, I’m glad to be in church today, but I wish I wasn’t preaching. One of the things I have learned in my 19 years as a pastor is to try to avoid preaching on Trinity Sunday.

Trinity sermons are not easy. On Easter Sunday you can talk about the resurrection of Jesus, and the significance of it. On Pentecost you can preach about the arrival of the Holy Spirit, and what that means in our lives. On Christmas you can preach about the story of Christ’s birth.

But what happened on Trinity Sunday? Nothing. Trinity Sunday is not about an event. It’s not about a story. It is about a teaching, a doctrine.

How do you preach on the Trinity? It isn’t easy. For one thing it is an impossible doctrine to understand. The Holy Trinity is a mystery. The Bible sets it before us as something beyond human comprehension. I could simply say, “God is three persons, yet one God, Amen!” and send you home.

And as much as you might prefer it, I can’t do that. As a preacher, I HAVE to say more than that.

Preaching on Trinity Sunday is hard. And it is for this reason that I think Trinity Sunday is secretly lamented by many pastors.

I think congregations might agree. If you were to rate worship services that have been the most inspiring and motivational for you – I believe Trinity Sunday would not be right there at the top.

Often, in an attempt to make the sermon interesting pastors succumb to the temptation of attempting to make the Trinity more understandable. But you can’t explain the unexplainable. You can’t explain how the one true God is also three separate persons.

Our finite human reasoning capacity simply doesn’t allow the possibility. This small bowl of brain matter in our heads, cannot contain the vast, immense, eternal nature of God.

And I suspect that listeners get tired and bored of trying to understand what can’t be understood. But you see, the Bible doesn’t ask us to understand the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity – how God can be three distinct persons and yet one God. The Bible simply asks us to believe it, to confess it.

When we start to pick away at the doctrine of the Trinity in such a way as to make it comprehensible to our finite human faculties – often innocently, because let’s face it, we want to understand the Bible, right – but, if we start to do that, we will end up in far more spiritual trouble than we have ever dreamed.

Let me tell you a story to help illustrate this. Larry Walters had a boyhood dream to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. When he was finally discharged, he had to satisfy himself with watching jets fly over his backyard in Southern California.

One day, Larry had a bright idea. He decided that he was going to fly. He went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. The weather balloons, when fully inflated, would measure more than four feet across.

Back home, Larry inflated the balloons and securely strapped them to his sturdy lawn chair. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and he climbed on for a test while it was still only a couple of feet above the ground.

Satisfied it would work, Larry packed several sandwiches and a six-pack of Miller Lite, loaded his pellet gun – figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to descend – and went back to the floating lawn chair.

He tied himself in along with his pellet gun and provisions. Larry’s plan was to lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard, and in a few hours come back down. Things didn’t quite work out that way.

When Larry cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he didn’t float lazily up to 30 or so feet. Instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon. He didn’t level off at 30 feet. He didn’t level off at 100 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 11,000 feet.

At that height he didn’t want to risk shooting any of the balloons. He was afraid that he might unbalance the load and tip over the lawn chair. So, there he stayed, not moving, cold and frightened, drifting along.

Then he really got in trouble. He found himself drifting into the primary approach corridor of Los Angeles International Airport.

A United Airlines pilot first spotted Larry. He radioed the tower and described passing a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. Radar confirmed the existence of an object floating 11,000 feet near the airport.

LAX emergency procedures swung into full alert and a helicopter was dispatched to investigate. The helicopter was able to lower a rescue line, which snagged Larry and finally lowered him to the ground – where he was promptly arrested for violating LAX airspace.

Now, what was the point of that story? In the same way that Larry’s simple, innocent desire to fly led him into all kinds of trouble, so will our desires to understand the Holy Trinity lead us into all manner of spiritual trouble.

By faith our task is not to comprehend God, but to confess Him. When we become restless and dissatisfied with this, when we attempt to adjust God, and make Him more comprehensible we are actually begin to deny Him.

And we are start down a path of spiritual misfortune. We become like Larry Walters who should have left well enough alone.

History is strewn with the wreckage of many religious groups and cults that have tinkered with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Confessing the Triune nature of God is an act of love. It is an act of worship, motivated by faith. To demand that we understand God before we place our faith in Him is to challenge God.

Really, it is rebellion. It is an act of arrogance. It is to say that the most important thing is not God, it is my comprehension of God – in other word, the most important thing is – me.

If I applied this same attitude to my marriage – that I had to understand my wife before I married her – then I would have never been married in the first place. I’ll never fully understand my wife, let alone God, but I still love her, it didn’t keep me from marrying her.

So, what is the value of Trinity Sunday? What is it that we can take home with us today?

Well, let me ask you this, How do you picture God? When you think about your Lord, How do you see Him?

Do you see Him as a stern, judgmental God, Who demands the right behavior from you and punishes you when you don’t deliver?

Or, do you see Him as more of an aloof type of God who leaves you alone in many ways, but interjects Himself periodically. The “God helps those, who help themselves” kind of God.

How do you picture God?

My kids pulled out one of our family photo albums the other day, and were having fun looking through the pictures. And that got me thinking, That is kind of what Trinity Sunday is for us.

Trinity Sunday allows us the opportunity to ponder and enjoy a “snap-shot” of God. It allows us to remember and celebrate what He has done for us. It allows us through His Word to see Who He is.

Our lessons today do not allow us to try to figure out God’s majestic greatness – His triune nature. But they give us the opportunity to pause and consider who God is – what He is like – and what He has done for us.

How do you picture God? We need only look at the Gospel lesson to see how the Bible pictures Him. There He is – surrounded by a hostile group, who refuse to believe His claims.

There He is: a human being, a mortal man; 5'10", maybe, 150 pounds of flesh and bones, born of a woman, needing food and drink and rest, like everyone else, not especially handsome, we think.

And there He stands in front of the crowd: squinting in the sunlight, calluses on His hands, dirt between His toes, claiming to be God Almighty, King of the Universe, Maker of heaven and earth.

Some look at this silly character and dismiss the idea that God would stoop to this kind of indignity. Others look at this Man and see a God, Whose love prompted Him to embrace our humility.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

And Philippians 2 we read: “Christ Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!”

To see what kind of God we have, we need only look to Jesus. And there, we see a picture of a God, Who loved us enough to sacrifice Himself on the cross for your sins and mine.

He is not an angry, vindictive God. He is a merciful and loving God – willing to sacrifice for us, willing to humble Himself for us, willing to serve us, so that we might spend a loving, perfect eternity with Him.

God is a God of goodness and grace. He fills our lives with His presence and daily gives our lives His purpose.

A woman wakes up in the morning in the nursing home where she lives. She pushes the button to bring the nurse to get her out of bed for the day. It always takes such a long time for the nurse to come.

She doesn’t really want to get up today. She has nothing left to live for. She’s given up her home, given up her health, given up her independence and most of her dignity. The woman in the bed next to her never gets up at all. She is unconscious.

“Why am I still here?” She thinks. “What purpose do I serve to anyone?”

The nurse finally arrives to lower the bedrail and move her to the wheelchair. While the elderly woman struggles, a smile comes to the nurse’s lips. “You are so patient,” she says. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

And there it is – God at work, the fruit of the Spirit, patience. That smile was God’s work in her today.

In the beginning the majestic Triune God of the universe moved over the face of creation. He is still moving over us today – at work in us, transforming our lives, utilizing our lives, bring meaning and value out of the littlest things.

You might ask yourself from time to time, “How important is my boring life?” Our lives have great purpose, you see.

We were created to be good, and when that failed, we were recreated in Christ to be faithful to God, and to be His meaningful servants.

These last few weeks we have been talking a lot about, and enjoying, the partnership we have as Redeemer and St. Luke’s, Oviedo here in this place.

But that partnership is nothing compared to the partnership that God has entered into with US. Our Triune God chooses to work among and through us.

The Father creating and preserving us. The Son loving, forgiving, and living in us. The Spirit loving the Father and the Son by bringing Christ and the power of His salvation directly into our hearts.

Today’s celebration of the Holy Trinity allows us the opportunity to marvel that this great God has chosen us to be His children. As the psalmist contemplates, so eloquently, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of Him?” There’s no doubt how this Psalm writer pictures His God.

How do you picture Him?

Amen.

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