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Saturday, June 03, 2023

The Importance of Pronouns

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

We still find ourselves
being accused of
worshipping three gods.

It seems very strange that,
even in this day and age,
we should still be accused
of worshipping three gods.

The church has this all sorted out,
hasn’t it?

 Are you able to say
why we do not believe in three gods
but one God in three Persons?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord says to Nicodemus,
 “verily, verily I say unto thee,
we speak that we do know,
and testify that we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness.

Our Lord’s use of the word “we” there
seems rather important.

Even right at the beginning,
God says let us make man
in our own image.

It seems everywhere
throughout the record of Holy Scripture,
that God himself uses
the pronoun “we” rather than “I”.

Yet he says to Moses,
“I am that I am.”

God’s pronouns are important.

Moses does not experience
Our Lord Jesus Christ
as the apostles do,
nor is the Holy Ghost yet made manifest
to the Israelites,
though surely He is there.

St John himself says
in his first letter
that there are
three on earth that bear witness:
the Spirit, the water and the blood
and these three agree as one.

 

The church certainly believes
that there are three in heaven
who bear witness:
the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost
and these three are one.

They bear witness to our faith in God
and we believe in one God.

[PAUSE]

We know that God is One,
and that he is not made of parts.

He cannot be broken down into
left and right,
up and down,
front and back,
or even past, present and future.

None of these things
make any sense
when it comes to talk about God.

If this seems a little tricky
to get your head around
think of your own mind.

Your mind doesn't have a
front or back,
or up or down.

Doesn't it really have a past, present and future?

Whether it does or doesn’t,
you are not your mind
for you have both a body and soul.

Unlike God,
you can be broken to bits.

But nonetheless
God is three persons.

We see them each
individually
throughout Holy Scripture,
and the Church Fathers
have consistently taught
the doctrine of the Trinity
that we recite weekly in our Creed.

Even Our Lord says explicitly,
the Father and I are One.

And He says,
“We testify what
we have seen,
and ye receive not our witness.”

The Jewish law courts
require the testimony of
two others to
corroborate someone’s witness statement.

So, even here,
as Our Lord speaks to Nicodemus
about the Holy Ghost,
He is calling upon the Father
and the Holy Ghost to bear witness
that Man needs to be born again,
to be born from above by the Spirit.

Here are three persons
that speak about Heavenly things
to Earthly people,
and their testimony is one.

And yet,
there can only be One God,
for if there were two,
one would limit the other’s being 
in some way,
and God’s being cannot be limited.

There cannot be two sources
of all being;
there cannot be two founts
of existence.

But God has three persons
and God cannot be divided,
so each of these three persons
must be fully God.

[PAUSE]

We struggle
because we only have experience
of human persons,
of individuals limited
to space and time.

We can think of each of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
as individuals,
but we cannot go beyond that
because we are Earthly minded.

The task that we have is
just to believe the truth:
One God in three Persons.

This is faith,
to receive the truth
even if we don’t understand it.

[PAUSE]

If we do receive this truth,
then we receive truth
about Heavenly matters
because of our Faith.

If we believe that
we must be born again
of the Holy Ghost,
which Our Lord tells us
is an Earthly matter,
then the truth of the Holy Trinity
is open to us
through the faith that we are given
and the grace
which accompanies
that faith.

The idea of the Holy Trinity
jostles in our mind
as we try out our
mental gymnastics,
but that’s exactly what should happen
when we try to think about
the One Who Is
and Who has entered into our lives
to bear witness about Himself
so that we might know Him personally.

[PAUSE]

If we struggle to answer
those who accuse of worshipping
three gods,
it may well be that
their concept of a god is small enough
to fit in their own minds.

Ours isn’t
and that’s because He is the
One True God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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