A Trinitarian Community
Sermon for May 22, 2005
1. Good Morning. Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: It’s Trinity Sunday and our Scripture readings reflect this focus but ever so lightly. I must confess that when I read our scant readings for today I was a bit concerned because they seemed to touch ever so slightly on this huge doctrine. So I kept reading while asking our Lord to reveal what He wanted to reveal to us this morning and it wasn’t until Friday morning that He revealed to me specifically what He wanted us to focus on. It’s always a blessing when this happens – ha!
Now this subject should be of
particular interest to us because it’s at the core of our identity as a
Christian community. After all we’re
called “
Unlike my previous reflections on the Trinity this morning’s reflection isn’t going to be doctrinaire in focus but rather it’s going to be much more “visceral” than that.
Have I got your attention? Ha!
Let’s focus in immediately upon God’s Word and as I briefly review our Scripture readings I think the primary revelation will become increasingly obvious to us all.
3. Focusing in on Scripture: OK – turn with me if you will to our first reading from Exodus chapter 34 beginning at verse 4:
In this reading Moses
is dealing with God following
6 And he passed in
front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and
gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,
It is with such a God that the covenant is renewed! Try to imagine this scene. God had every right to be terribly angry with His people’s apostasy – their unfaithfulness – their seeking to worship an idol! But instead, as Moses is tramping up the mountain in deep sorrow for his people’s terrible failure he hears God Himself assuring him that “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness!”
Wouldn’t you love to hear this from God even before you made a confession of yours to Him?
I would!
What’s
happening here? Yes, God is giving to us
an insight into His very nature.
Ah! Can you see what’s happening? God wants to reveal to us
this morning not a doctrinaire statement about Who
He is in His Triune Nature but rather an insight into His very Triune heart! God is compassionate and gracious;
slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness.
Ah!
God’s inner nature is being described by words like: compassion, grace, love and faithfulness!
Now let’s turn to our Epistle reading:
2Cor. 13:11 Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints send their greetings. (14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.)
This very brief reading is telling us about our Triune God. We’re being encouraged – “to live in peace. And the God peace and love will be with us.
Again we see God’s inner nature being revealed to us – He’s a God of grace and love and peace.
We’re being encouraged to make these virtues of God’s inner nature – grace, love and peace, the very hallmarks of our own Christian community!
Let me emphasize what I just said – We’re
being encouraged to make the very virtues of God’s own inner nature i.e.,
grace, love and peace, the very HALLMARKS of our own Christian community!
God is telling us what cardinal virtues
MUST become the mark of
We, a Christian community, are to adopt the
very inner nature of our Triune God! WE
ARE TO BECOME A TRINITARIAN COMMUNITY!
LET ME SAY IT AGAIN – WE ARE A TRINITARIAN COMMUNITY and we’re being
called by God to make the virtues of His inner Triune nature the hallmarks of
our own inner nature!
Listen now to one of the most sublime
passages in all of scripture that reveals God’s inner nature. Please turn to our Gospel reading – John
3:16-18:
John 3:16 “For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life. 17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn
the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not
believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of
God’s one and only Son.
God loves and God gives His all to us! His very Son! Nothing held back! He doesn’t come to condemn but to save – to redeem!
What we’re being told here is that the result of
those inner qualities of grace, love and peace is self-giving!
OK – let’s return then to a more in-depth study of those inner cardinal virtues of our Triune God that must become cardinal, indeed, Hallmark virtues of our community so that the outworking of these virtues will be a SELF-GIVING COMMUNITY!
Let me read our second reading once more but this time include verse 14 in it:
2Cor. 13:11 Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with
you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints send their
greetings.
14 May the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with you all.
Ah! Listen to it once more: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be
with you all!”
Now we see a specific virtue being attributed to each Person of the Trinity:
The GRACE of the Lord Jesus Christ,
The LOVE of God the Father,
The FELLOWSHIP of the Holy Spirit!
AH! Now we have discovered which
cardinal virtue is associated with which Person of the Trinity. Grace is associated with God the Son, Love
with God the Father and Fellowship with God the Holy Spirit!
This simple formula is to define and describe us at our very core as it describes God Himself at His very core.
Each of
these virtues are about RELATIONSHIP aren’t they? Grace, Love, and
fellowship. These virtues enable
and sustain pure and life-giving relationship!
It’s out of these virtues that self-giving,
self-sacrifice emerges and begins to define who we are as a community.
The special insight into God we celebrate
today is that “relationships” are at the very center of who God is! God Himself is a Holy Community and because
we worship and follow a Triune God we too must become Triune in our nature.
4. Exploring God’s relational virtues: Let’s explore these relational virtues a little further shall we?
a) The GRACE of the Lord Jesus Christ! Grace – what is “grace?” Sometimes the best way to approach this is to define what Grace is not. Grace is not about “Law.” It’s not legalistic. It’s not about rules! It’s not a tit for tat thing.
The Hebrew word for grace is “Hin” and it is defined as:
favor, grace; charm; grace is the moral quality of kindness, displaying a favorable disposition; “to find grace in someone’s eyes” means to be in a state of favor
I’ve heard “grace” defined as “unmerited favor.”
The Greek word for “grace” is “caris” and it’s defined as, “favor
or good will.’
We
extend grace to others when their attitudes or actions could easily elicit
something less than gracious. When we
forgive someone even when they don’t ask for our forgiveness is a great example
of “grace” in action.
Grace
is at the very heart of God and it’s ultimate
expression was when Christ died on the cross for us – unworthy as we were and
are of such grace!
b) Now let’s turn to the LOVE of God the
Father. And so the virtue of LOVE is
associated with God the Father – the first Person of the Godhead.
1Cor. 13:4 Love is
patient, love is kind. It doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it is not proud. 5 It’s not
rude, it’s not self-seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. 6 Love doesn’t delight in
evil but rejoices with the truth. 7
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres. 8 Love never fails.
Wow – Love truly is the Cardinal virtue of the cardinal
virtues isn’t it!
This defined God and must in turn define and become the
very Hallmark of every Christian community!
c) And finally let’s turn to the
“FELLOWSHIP” of God the Holy Spirit.
The Greek word
translated “fellowship” is koinoœnia. It means the
close association between persons, emphasizing what is common between them; by
extension: participation, sharing, contribution. It’s the outcome of such close
relationships. In this word we have the
sense of “sharing something in common.”
It seems to me that the opposite of “fellowship” is
“fragmentation” or “disunity.”
At the very center of God’s nature is this idea of
“community.” He’s not an individual but
rather God Himself is a Holy Community in perfect harmony – perfect fellowship.
Can you imagine the Trinity having a family squabble? Can you imagine the Holy Spirit saying to
Jesus, “Hey, the Father’s a bit arbitrary today, let’s just ignore Him?”
I don’t think so – do you?
No! Within the perfect harmony of
our Triune Godhead there is perfect fellowship and God is calling us to this
perfection.
5. Concluding challenge. And so we come to the close of our reflection
this morning upon our Triune God.
God is calling us
to reflect in our community the same cardinal virtues that define His very
Triune Personhood.
He’s calling us
to embrace the cardinal virtues of GRACE, LOVE and FELLOWSHIP within our own
being and within our own Christian community to the end that we will become as
He is – completely self-giving.
So would anyone
describe you as gracious, loving and good to be with?
Would someone who
visited and remained in our community for a while describe us as gracious,
loving and good to be a part of?
This is what it
means to be a Trinitarian Community – this is what it means to be THE COMMUNITY
OF GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON AND GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT! AMEN AND AMEN!
Let’s pray . . .