Ro 8:12-17

11 June 2006

Trinity Sunday

“Within and Without”

            In recent months, my long-time latent interest in physics has been re-awakened.  A couple of books I’ve read have helped.  They are The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene and Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife.  Greene and Seife are scientists who have written books for us non-scientists.  And as such, they’re books that are relatively easy to read.  Brian Greene is apparently a fan of The Simpsons, since he likes to use characters from the show to illustrate various principles of quantum physics.

            It’s good that they dumb down this stuff for people like me—and I’m guessing, for the rest of you non-scientists.  At the quantum level, the sub-atomic level, the laws of classical science break down.  The common sense reality that we’re used to no longer applies!

For example, there’s a principle called entanglement, in which a particle—say, an electron—acts as one with another electron.  They might be very close together or on opposite sides of the galaxy.  It doesn’t matter; they are, in effect, one thing.  Then there are equations and experiments which lead to the disorienting conclusion that there are many more dimensions than the three we’re familiar with (height, length, and depth):  up to as many as eleven dimensions!

Here’s something else I find especially mind-blowing.  There’s evidence of matter winking in and out of existence.  Particles continually appear in, and disappear from, our universe!

            The scientists have as much trouble as we mere mortals do in picturing all this stuff.  Einstein even called some of it “spooky.”  But I think I now have the foggiest notion as to what they’re talking about.  The next time some of the super geeks are on the news, high fiving each other after some discovery they’ve made, maybe I won’t be completely clueless as to why they’re so excited!

            If you’re wondering why I’ve started my sermon with all of this jibber jabber about quantum physics, it’s only appropriate.  A lot of people within the church feel the same way about today, Trinity Sunday.  They may say, “It’s a lot of jibber jabber that has nothing to do with real life.”  But they would be wrong!

            Still, that feeling is understandable.  Too often, when the Holy Trinity is discussed, the conversation is reduced to describing how three can be one and one can be three.  Sometimes analogies are made, for example, to H₂O (it can be ice, water, or vapor) or to people (I am a son, a brother, and a husband).  If you don’t find this terribly interesting or relevant, then guess what?  You’re not alone!  The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—isn’t some mathematical puzzle to be solved.  Hardly.

            According to theologian Anthony Kelly, who himself seems to know a bit about quantum physics, the Holy Trinity is nothing less than “the absolute Being-in-Love at the heart of the universe.”[1]

            Before the scientific discoveries of the past century, people tended to think of God as located somewhere in outer space.  Now we’re finding that nature itself seems to bear witness to entire universes unfolding right in our midst, within ourselves—to dimensions that we simply can’t perceive with our 3-D bodies.  But this is much more than a science lesson.

            “The divine three,” Kelly says, “can only be understood in relation to one another, as ‘for’ and ‘in’ the other…God is God by being a communion of mutual self-giving…the life of God is one of unrestricted, all-embracing love.”[2]  Trinity Sunday, far from wondering how one God can be three Persons, is instead a lesson in love.  It’s a picture of the ideal family, the ideal community, which is based on perfect love.

            Even though the word “love” doesn’t appear in our epistle reading, what Paul does for us is to illustrate how the divine family—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—moves and flows with love.

            Our passage begins, “So then, brothers and sisters” (v. 12).  Clearly, he’s continuing a train of thought.  Here’s a little bit of context.  In chapter 7, Paul describes his ongoing struggles.  Sometimes he doesn’t understand his own actions.  “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (v. 15).  When that happens, he recognizes that “it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me” (v. 20).

            But he also recognizes that he is no longer bound by sin.  As we move to chapter 8, we hear the familiar words, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1).  He highlights the contrast between living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit.  And right before today’s scripture, Paul reassures us, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you” (v. 11).

            All of that brings us to the somewhat peculiar language of verse 12:  “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.”  What does it mean that we should not “live according to the flesh”?  Does it mean to hate our bodies?  Some have accused the apostle of saying that very thing.

            However, “‘flesh’ does not mean the body of flesh and blood in a literal sense,” says one writer, “as though Paul disapproves of what it means to be human and the way God made us.  It is what we do with who we are that counts.”[3]  “Flesh” as opposed to “Spirit,” isn’t about biology.  It’s about behavior; it’s about love.

            “By ‘flesh,’ [Paul] means the human values which have come to dominate people:  selfishness, greed, exploitation.  Sometimes he lists the fruit of such a lifestyle.  It is negative—the opposite of love, generosity, and compassion.”[4]  In Galatians 5:19-23, he lists side by side what living according to the flesh, and living according to the Spirit, looks like.

            There’s something else that might seem peculiar about verse 12.  This came up during our men’s fellowship meeting last Monday.  (We used this scripture passage for a time of reflection.)  It’s the word “debtors.”  We are debtors.  We owe.  Really now, is that a fact?  I’m terribly sorry, but exactly, who do we owe?  Precisely, what do we owe?  Is Paul trying to impose a new kind of burden on us?

            These questions are cleared up later in the letter, in chapter 13, where Paul tells us, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (v. 8).  We owe each other love.  That’s all part of being led by the Spirit.  That’s all part of the immense privilege and responsibility of being brought into the family of God.

            As we see in verse 15, the last thing Paul wants is to impose a new kind of slavery.  He’s had his fill of living in fear, especially the fear that clothes itself in religious garb.  That’s the worst—the most extreme—kind of fear.  It also produces the most extreme kind of hate.

            No, Paul says, we haven’t received a spirit of slavery; we’ve received a spirit of adoption.  This idea of adoption (uioqesia, huiothesia) is one of Paul’s favorite ways to describe how we’re brought into God’s family—how we become children of God.

In Galatians 4:4-5, he tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”  According to Ephesians 1:5, God has “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.”

Jesus, as today’s gospel reading reminds us, is God’s “only Son” (Jn 3:16).  He is, in Greek, the monogenh (monogenē), the “only-born.”  As Christians, we are enabled by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, to join with Jesus and cry, “Abba!  Father!” (v. 15).

Paul continues his train of thought by saying that if we are children of God, then we’re also “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (v. 17).  Sounds like a pretty sweet deal!  Except…what good does it do to be an heir if the parent never dies?  Clearly, something else is in view.  Ordinary human rules don’t apply.

It seems that what we inherit is what we already have available to us:  God.  We participate in the love of the Holy Trinity, and there’s an entire ocean of love we’re called to explore—to its very depths.  But we tend to be like my dog, Duncan, who abhors getting wet.  Far from jumping into a body of water, he heads for the house if he’s struck by a single raindrop—especially if it hits his nose!

I fear that I’m that way.  I want just enough of an experience to say, “Okay, I’ve done that.  I’ve been there.”  Just don’t ask me to give myself fully to it.  Hey, I don’t want to be changed that much!

This past November, someone I knew at seminary died of multiple myeloma.  I found that out when I was doing random searches on the internet of people I’d known in the past.  His name was Dwight Ozard; he was from across the water in Ontario.  I never got to know him as well as I would have liked.  I really admired him.  The date of his death, November 14, is especially meaningful for me.  It came precisely ten years to the day after my first brain surgery, which was a transformative time in my own life.

He posted this quote from Henri Nouwen on his website, less than three months before he passed away:

“Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain.  The greatest pain comes from leaving.  When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies…the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.

“Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving.  And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair.  We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.”[5]

Being part of the family of God—doing this Trinity thing—means embracing the love.  And it also means facing facts.  It means agreeing with Paul that if we are children of God—if we inherit God—then we suffer with Christ, so that we may also be glorified with Christ.  Embracing love also means healing for our sad, self-destructive ways.

I would say, in my humble opinion, that that makes Trinity Sunday much more relevant.  Much more so, than the mathematical puzzles I mentioned earlier.

It’s been noted that our “trinitarian faith is a healthy disturbance for all closed little worlds of isolated independence.  Defensive alienation from [each] other, resistance to peace and reconciliation, any hardened disharmony with the rest of creation sets us outside the stream of life.”[6]

“The stream of life.”  I like that.  Just as God continually sends the Spirit into the world, in a similar way, the particles of creation itself flow from our universe and then return.  What holds it all together is love.

I’ll finish with something from a minister named Wilbur Reese:  “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.  Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk—or a snooze in the sunshine.  I don't want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.  I want ecstasy, not transformation.  I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.  I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.  I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.”[7]

That is not what Trinity Sunday is all about!

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