Harris, Mark W.

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 26Issue 1 The Baptismal Journey: Adventures on theRiver of LifeArticle 125-1-2000Festival of the Holy TrinityMark W. HarrisFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Sermons is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationHarris, Mark W. (2000) "Festival of the Holy Trinity," Consensus: Vol. 26 : Iss. 1 , Article 12.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol26/iss1/12Festival of the Holy TrinityI!Mark W: HarrisPastor, Mount Zion Lutheran ChurchIWaterloo, OntarioMany years ago, while I was still a student at seminary, 1 wasvisiting one day with a family who had somewhat adoptedmy wife and me. Their youngest daughter, who was aboutfour years old at the time, was busy with some watercolours, painting apiece of wood. Finally, when she had finished with her masterpiece, shecame over and presented it to me as a present. Now to be quite candid,1 was unable to distinguish anything recognizable in the painting at all,Iand so, as innocently as possible, 1 said, “This is beautiful Sarah, can youItell me about it?” Well, four year old Sarah was not impressed. She puther hands on her hips and gave me a glare which would have meltedIstone, and then shaking her head replied, “Can’t you tell? It’s God... sittingdown.”INow we may be inclined to smile at Sarah’s innocent attempt to^ portray God in visual form...and sitting down at that, obviously weariedby the concerns of the world. Yet in another sense, her attempt reflectssomething which is not only utterly serious, but which is profoundlyhuman...our attempts to give form and expression to the one whom wecall “God”.Have you ever thought about the different ways that people pictureGod? 1 am told that if you walk through many of the ancient cathedralsin Europe, especially ones which were built over several centuries, thatyou will find an amazing range of statues and carvings and stained glass,all reflecting the attempt of the builders to give expression and to createan atmosphere which tells us something about how they saw and under-stood God.112 ConsensusIf, in similar fashion, you consider the cathedral of your own heart,starting with your childhood, then continuing through youth and intoadult years, and if you stop along the way and examine those placeswhere you knelt in great joy or in great pain, you may well be astonishedat the variety of your own images and understandings of God. Our im-pressions and presumptions about God change over time and much ofthis change simply represents our maturing as persons. As Susan White,who has worked with our Open Sesame preschoolers for 29 years canassure us, just because a child completes preschool does not mean thathis or her education is complete. Our thought, and especially our abilityto think conceptually and metaphorically, become more sophisticatedas we grow up. So as we grow, a greater range of experience and re-sponsibility will pull us into a more complex understanding and reflec-tion upon the nature of God.The cathedral of stone and glass, the cathedral of the heart, and ourrelationships with other people, can provide a way for us to think aboutthe church’s teachings about God, and the relationship of those teach-ings to our lives as individual believers.You see, just as our lives are marked by a growing maturity, and by aprocess of development in our understanding and imaging of God, sotoo the life of the church reveals an increasing theological sophistica-tion, a sophistication that directly resulted from Christ’s command to“make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Different nations havedifferent ways of thinking, different languages, different cultures. So asthe early church grew and spread, encountering different peoples anddiverse languages, such differences inevitably led to variations in the ex-pression of the Christian faith.By the time that Matthew wrote his Gospel, some fifty or sixty yearsafter Jesus’ earthly ministry, the church had already begun to developsome of its distinctive practices of worship. As inheritors of the richtraditions from the temple and synagogue, the early Christians modifiedand developed their ancient practices in light of the Gospel. Matthewemployed some of the language which was characteristic of this worshipin the closing verses of his Gospel, when - in the words of the GreatCommission - Jesus charges his disciples to go forth as witnesses to theGospel, charging them to “baptize in the name of the Father and of theSon and of the Holy Spirit”. At this point in the church’s history, thosesimple words did not carry all of the elaborate theological meanings andFestival of the Holy Trinity 113nuances which developed over the ensuing centuries.Now as the church began to spread around the Mediterranean ba-sin, it encountered peoples whose ways of thinking and talking aboutGod included philosophical forms of thought. As they heard and be-lieved the Gospel, they wanted to understand more precisely this Godwho has been revealed as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What was thecharacter of this God, they wondered, this God who was One, but who inGod’s very being was characterized by a relationship between three parts?Who was this one God, revealed to humanity in three different ways? Asa result of their reflections, they formulated the doctrines of the HolyTrinity, teachings that went far beyond the original meaning of Matthew’slanguage. Their understanding of God, who has been revealed as Fa-ther, Son and Holy Spirit, has not only been found meaningful by count-less generations, but has shaped our understanding and imaging of God.To return to our earlier analogy, they added to the cathedral in theheart new and more intricate images of God, new ways of reflecting uponthe One who created us, who renews us, and who sustains us, this Godwho stands at the centre of our faith and hope.Now 1 would suggest to you, on this festival of the Holy Trinity, as wegather with Christians around the world to celebrate specifically the tri-une-God, that there are two ways of thinking about these developmentsin the doctrine of God. One way would be to suggest that the processhas ended, that the cathedral of belief is now a finished building, to whichnothing more can or needs to be added. While having some appeal,such a conclusion would also seem to suggest that we have God “allfigured out”, which we certainly do not! But there is another alternative;that would be to suggest that the cathedral is still under construction,that the story of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity is really aparable illuminating our need to continue reflecting upon God in light ofthe novel ways that human thought and culture are always evolving andchanging. We honour what our ancestors in the faith did and believed,by taking seriously their efforts to understand God. But we also honourthem by continuing such efforts in our own day. And in doing that we dosomething even more important: we honour the living God who is greaterthan all of our human formulations and doctrines, the God who isshrouded in mystery, yet also the God who loves us so intensely; the Godwho - in Christ Jesus - took on human form and taught us how to die sothat we may truly live; the God whose Spirit enlivens all creation. It is this114 ConsensusGod who calls to us today - and every day - calling us to rededicateourselves so that God may live in us and through us.May it be so. Amen.

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