"Call Me, Israel": What the Temptations of Jesus are Really About

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.  ~ Matthew 4:1-11

My wife is a historian at Westmont College and teaches a variety of courses. One of them is World History. In one of her lectures she begins a discussion on the Renaissance by introducing the students to Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors and asks a deceptively simple question: “What do you see that is Renaissance?” 

On the surface you can experience a beautifully detailed Renaissance painting (perspective, realism, humanism and new learning) but if you will pay more careful attention an even richer piece of art begins to emerge that reveals a more complicated drama (discord, division, religious wars, death). 

Now, this is not a class on Renaissance art so if you are intrigued and have more questions or interests my wife is right over there to answer all of them. But what happens when we look at our biblical story more carefully – a story that connects to more complicated historical drama than we might first imagine – the Exodus. Take a look at the slide on the screen.

New Testament, Matt. 4:1-11  “led up by the Spirit to be tested”, 4:1 “wilderness,” 4:1 “Forty days and forty nights,” 4:2 “If you are the son,” 4:3 “It is written, ‘one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,’” 4:4 N.B. Fundamental to this is the idea that the fasting and hunger are the will of the Father for the Son. To turn the stones into bread would be in effect to refuse God’s will and disobey. The son will not exercise his messianic power to satisfy his own desires. “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 4:7 (c.f. Psalm 95:9) N.B. Jesus will be obedient and will not fail as did God’s son Israel. To act otherwise – to jump to safety – would be to act only out of self-interest and to act against the will of God. Devil tempts him with riches for the price of idolatry, vss. 4:8-9 “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,’” 4:10

Old Testament, Deuteronomy, chs.6-9 “the LORD your God has led you,” 8:2 “wilderness,” 8:2  “forty days and forty nights; [Moses] neither ate bread nor drank water,” 9:9 Israel is likened to a “son,” 8:5 He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ~ Deuteronomy 8:3 Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. ~ Deuteronomy 6:16 (c.f. Ex. 17:1-7 . . . the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’”) Moses warns the people not to be tempted by the riches of Canaan, for it is God who gives wealth (Deut. 8:18) The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear. ~ Deuteronomy 6:13

         

          1.     We are invited to hear the story of Israel “again.” That word “again” rings out at us from the passage, vss. 4:7-8. What was the point of the project of Israel? Why would it matter?

You have to know the salvation story to recognize it is being retold! What’s that story? It’s about Adam and Eve, and Abraham and Moses. About God calling out a small, insignificant group of people to love and send out as his emissaries to the whole world. God’s purpose in choosing Israel was for them to be a model nation to other nations and that through them “all the families of the earth” would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). He wanted Israel to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Other nations would see that when the Israelites obeyed God, they were blessed (verse 5). So, it’s a particular story, a historical story and, in the end, a failed story. Through stubbornness, idolatry, militarism, xenophobia, failing the poor, looking only out for its self-interest Israel proved to be an unwilling and failed servant and son of YHWH.

So this point is what I meant last week when I said we need to read the Old and New Testaments both backwards and forwards. This is one of the forward readings where if we aren’t familiar with the OT we would miss the recapitulated drama that Jesus is being asked to perform. We would miss the dramatic faithfulness of God. Here, in other words, we need the OT to interpret the New. If Israel cannot fulfill its side of covenantal love (which is one of the basic plot lines of the OT), God will still not be stopped. The point of this story is that Jesus will do for Israel what Israel cannot do. That’s the backwards reading – God’s plan of redemption through this particular people will happen through Jesus – God is so faithful, in other words, he pretty much sticks to the original plan for blessing the nations, so to speak.       

           2.     This is not a story about your temptations but it is a story about you.

What’s the point of this elaborate Old Testament redux? We aren’t being asked to fast for 40 days or re-envision our temptations to match these bombastic ones of miraculous baking, temple jumping or world domination. These things aren’t “ours” to claim, exactly. But all these things – bread, safety, and the kingdoms of this world – are rightfully Jesus’ by virtue of his sonship and messianic identity. Yet, Jesus is being asked to exemplify a costly obedience to the will of the Father as a test. Matthew 4:1-11 reveals that where Israel (and by extension “we”) fail, Jesus will not. So this is NOT a story about our temptations per se, at least not as we have often heard it. Jesus’ obedience to God is not so much exemplary as it is one of solidarity – he becomes one of us to fulfill Israel’s and our destiny which makes this about the incarnation and salvation rather than temptation. He observes God’s commandments and statues “for our lasting good” so that “we will be in the right” (Deut. 6:24, 25). Jesus is qualified to be the savior and leader of the new Israel by being the perfect Israelite in the same old wilderness of temptation. The emphasis of the temptation narrative then is clearly not on the result of the temptations, but instead on the contrast between Israel in the wilderness and Jesus in the wilderness. The emphasis is on a new people being created “in” Jesus because he encounters the wilderness and comes out victorious. So if we know our Old Testament we should read this, weep, and shout, “Hallelujah!”

            3.     When reading the Old Testament, better to stick with the Devil you know.

I wanted this to only be a two-point sermon but then Ashley Miller happened. Yes, Ashley Miller met with me to talk about preaching – asking good questions about how I go about. And I distinctly remember telling her that I try and pay attention to what I don’t like or resist in a text, sometimes what I ignore. And as I continued to write I discovered that I was experiencing my on little crisis and temptation - what about this strange Satan character? Now Satan literally means “Adversary” and can apply to human or celestial beings – King David, for example, is considered a “satan” of the Philistines. The celestial figure appears only a handful of times in the OT  (1 Chron. 21:1; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; Zech. 3:1-2) and never appears in the Exodus story, yet one gets the sense that the devil is at least familiar with it. So I found myself having to resist two temptations here: 1) to simply ignore this part of the story, to turn a blind eye to the Adversary; or 2) to take you into a thorough yet complicated discussion about what or who a Satan or “the” Satan might be. And believe me when I tell you it’s complicated.

It’s interesting though that as I sat with the text and struggled with this satan – something emerged that helped me make sense of this passage. We, of course, never know what this figure looks like. In some of the art of the medieval period the character of Satan is not some dark, ominous angel but a very human looking character, often dressed in religious garb – a monk or a priest, with only either small horns or talons for feet to clue us physically into his diabolical nature.

And I believe the religious nature and character of Satan is instructive for us on two critical points – which point out the Devil we can know. 1) It reminds us that the fight to follow God –is about which story is true. The devil tries to use the scriptures to confuse Jesus, to deter him from submitting himself to God’s suffering will, to confuse him about his vocation as a suffering messiah. Like last week, I pointed out that the Pharisees could only read the OT as a “book of glory,” they couldn’t read it in such a way where God would willingly enter into our condition of suffering, be present in our suffering. It’s interesting to me that the Devil tries to do the same to Jesus. He seeks to define Jesus’ role solely by the miraculous, by power and glory. The Devil quotes Psalm 91:11-12, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Psalm 91 was not a messianic Psalm but considered for all the faithful. So he is being encouraged to both disobey and also to think he is nothing special.

The contest between the devil and Jesus is thus presented as an interpretive fight over biblical texts – a refusal to acknowledge Jesus as a suffering interpreter who submits to the will of God will help. 2) Second, it (and the “it” here is the devil because there is no sense that the figure is a he or she) fails. Whatever or whoever the devil is, we don’t need to be afraid. Jesus won this contest – and not simply for himself but all of us. Jesus' faithfulness to Scripture, in other words, is done so on our behalf as well. So, in conclusion, I have only one question.

Are you willing to trust this?

 

And Now I See: Reading the Old Testament with Jesus (sermon series)

¹³ Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ ¹⁹He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ ²⁵Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. ²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’~ Luke 24:13-32 

My kids are retro t.v. watchers, they get it from there mother. The more vintage, black and white, over-the-top acted the better. We own, for example, the entire series of the original Twilight Zone. In one of those episodes, which I was forced against my will to watch, aliens come to earth seeking to be our friends and to end the great woes that have plagued us: war, famine, disease, poverty, etc. While many world leaders remain skeptical they are put at ease when cryptographers initially break through the alien’s language, noting that there premier book is titled, To Serve Man. Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the aliens' home planet, which is portrayed as a paradise.  With the Cold War ended the code-breaking staff has no real work to do, so American cryptographers continue  to work out the language of the text in order to read To Serve Man. At the end of the episode, the main character is boarding the aliens’ spaceship. As he mounts the stairs one of the cryptographers runs into the scene in great agitation and cries: “Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship! The rest of the book To Serve Man, it's... it's a cookbook!” 

Today we begin a series of sermons about Jesus’ relationship to the OT. For many of us, the OT is all-together strange – written in a strange language from a place and time that for all practical purposes can feel very alien. But – we have been told that these books are for us and for our salvation – used by Jesus to talk about himself, his mission, God’s grace for our lives. And yet many of us feel a bit nervous – How is the OT “to serve man?” so to speak. Is it a book truly “to assist us” or is it there “to make of us a meal”? And I want to help you understand that it’s the former and not the latter. 

So today I have a one point sermon.

           1.     The Old Testament is Jesus’ book. (the “is” is important)

What do I mean by stating that the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures is Jesus’ book?: a quick survey

• He read and often quoted it (Luke 4:4-12 / Deut. 6:13, 16; 8:3),
• acknowledged its authority and importance for his disciples (Matt.  5:17-19)
• prayed it (Matt. 27:46 / Psalm 22),
• raised questions from it (Matt. 22:43-44 / Psalm 110:1) ,
• argued with others about it (Luke 20:17 / Psalm 118:22-23),
• chastised others with it (Matt 15:7-9 / Isaiah 29:13),
• taught about God from it (Matt 22:37-39),
• claimed authority over it (Matt 5:21-48 / Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy),
• enacted it (Mark 11:1-11 / Zech. 9:9),
• interpreted it (Matt. 26:31 / Zech 13:7),
• refused to do critical parts of it (John 8:1-11 / Deut. 22:22),
• referenced himself by it (Mark 14:62 / Daniel 7),
• gained his mission from it (luke 4:17-19 / Isaiah 61:1-2),
• from a Trinitarian perspective even wrote it.

In his preface to the Old Testament, Martin Luther said, “Here you find the swaddling clothes and the manger in which Christ lies, and to which the angel points the shepherds (Luke 2:12). Simply and lowly are these swaddling clothes, but dear is the treasure, Christ, who lies in them.”

Now, Martin Luther is surely saying something true but I don’t think given our list it’s radical enough. If the OT is to be the clothes that Jesus’ wears then you must know that they come from the cotton seeds he plowed and planted into the soil, cultivated with loving care, harvested, processed and then spun into cloth. Afterwards, he designed the clothes, sewed them carefully, and only then did he wear them. That’s what I mean by stating that the OT Scriptures are his.

So - to not read it, to refuse to study it, to speak ill of it, to fail to find him in it, will leave you having to answer to no one less than Jesus himself. Friends, to refuse to welcome and reverence the OT in your life, I’m arguing, is simply and categorically unChristian. “Okay pastor” – some of you are thinking – “thanks for the bombastic guilt trip. But what does this mean practically? I mean there’s a lot in the OT and some of it’s strange, some of it’s kind-of boring, some vicious, some beautiful, some X-Rated, and some even Jesus and the Apostles didn’t don’t do anymore. So help me out with that!”

How does this story of Jesus’ bible study with the two on the road to Emmaus help us read the Old Testament?  So here is where I’ve pulled a Twilight Zone trick – It’s true I only have one point but there are four sub-points. The point is not to belabor them – this is not one sermon on the topic but the first of many. I simply want to use this text to begin to point us in the right direction.

          1.     First, the Bible should be read as a whole. The Bible seeks to tell a story – the particular story of God’s gracious covenant act of creating and saving the world.  The gospel is that part of the story of Jesus which brings the story of the OT – the story of Israel – to its completion. So you need to know that beginning part of the story – you can’t watch the climax of a movie as a YouTube clip and think you understand what’s happened, you can’t only hear Darth Vader say, “Luke, I am your Father,” and understand truly what is going on without knowing what came before.  And Jesus doesn’t offer new visions from heaven or mysteries from beyond the grave but instead focuses on patient exposition of Israel’s Scripture.  Moreover, the testimony to Jesus is to be found “in all the scriptures,” not just in a few isolated proof texts. The whole story of Israel’s narrative finds it completion in this suffering messiah. So yeah, to be a faithful Christian who follows Jesus you will have to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy as well as the Psalms and Isaiah.

          2.     Second, the Old Testament should be read with Jesus in mind. Now that we know the surprising climax, we aren’t being asked to forget it as we read the earlier part of the story. In fact, we now can pick up on clues that otherwise we hadn’t seen, couldn’t know, because the main reveal hadn’t happened – I’m of course talking about Jesus’ death and resurrection. So the most important Bible study question when reading the OT is not “what does this mean (to its original audience)?” or “What does this mean to me?” But, what does this mean in light of Jesus? Jesus’ explains that the issue is about what relates to Him – “he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” It means that Jesus’ story is the interpretive lens by which we read. So we need to read both forwards and backwards from the vantage point of the resurrection. On the one hand, the Old Testament then is understood rightly as a messy journey of God with God’s people. It’s a text that is going somewhere, that in its very pages points to a hopeful future and that future culminates in Jesus and a new community which is us. But we also need to read it backwards from that event, which will allow us to recognize Jesus’ in other places. Isaiah 53 wasn’t read this way, as relating to the messiah, until Christians did so. The most important point is that we must abandon control over the text because Jesus is its fundamental interpreter, which probably means that prayer is far more important than that Bible dictionary or commentary on your shelf. This is why the resurrection is so important. Jesus is alive and anxious to reveal himself. It’s what should drive us to the text – for it helps us see Him even as He helps us read it.

          3.     Third, we need to read with a warning in mind.

I’d like to think that Jesus’ twin judgments against Cleopas and his anonymous partner are instructive – “Foolish” and “Slow of Heart.” First, there’s “foolish” – I understand that to mean that they have not brought to bear there critical thinking to the text. They’ve not read it as carefully as they should. They’ve not listened to it well enough. And Jesus references the whole of the OT so we can’t simply pick and choose ahead of time where we might find him. But the second judgment is also instructive – “Slow of heart.” “Slow of heart” is not so much an intellectual issue but a moral one and that moral has everything to do with suffering and the human condition. We will see that Jesus always read the OT with an eye to suffering, particularly the suffering of others (John 8, for example). And that his closest doctrinal companions, the Pharisees, are often accused of missing point because they refuse to see the suffering of others or even worse heap up burdens on people that they cannot bear. Think about Jesus’ debates with them over Sabbath. Both used the OT but Jesus put the OT in discussion with the actual suffering of real flesh and blood people. The Pharisees had an abstract hermeneutic of glory – which failed to incorporate suffering. It could only read texts in the abstract.  Jesus warns the disciples – God is found in suffering – so suffering must be a way that you read!

    

          4.     Fourth, we need to read sacrificially. I’m struck by the fact that Jesus’ impromptu Bible study did not produce seeing in the two disciples. That despite his great discussion or sermon they still failed to see who it was that was walking along with them. So Jesus does a bit of a ruse – “pretending” to go farther. What do they do? They practice the Old Testament on him as the stranger. Prior to his death, Jesus had taught them that the Old Testament could be summed up in the greatest commandment using two verses from the OT, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  

    

     So basically, I’d like to think of this as sort of a gracious test – do you get it? Can they hear the word of God and do it? Will they read the Bible carefully – hear what it says about the stranger, a neighbor, God’s saving love – and act on it? Will you follow my teaching?, Jesus asks. Will you remember my words, “Blessed are those who listen to the Word of God and do it.” And when they do act on it, what does Jesus do? He offers them an Old Testament meal and it’s there that the scripture comes alive, that they see Him, that they are nourished by them.

The Rules of Love: Why Understanding (and not understanding) the Trinity is Important

“For God to be truth, God had to be one; for God to be love, God had to be two; and for God to be joy, God had to be three! ~ Richard of St. Victor, d. 1173

⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ~ Romans 5:5-6

Alice and George were getting ready to celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary. They wanted to show the photos of grandchildren born since the celebration of their fiftieth. Alice asked George to produce the photos and he began to fumble through his pockets, saying occasionally, “Right. Here they are,” only to produce a receipt, a pipe, a hanky, glasses that had been missing for a month – everything but the photos in question. Then George suddenly remarked, “Oh dear, I think I put them in my other coat just before we left and then grabbed the wrong one on the way out.” After the appropriate apologies and disapproving looks from his wife, George excused himself to the restroom. When he was gone, Alice sighed, “I know him like the back of my hand but I’ll never understand him.”

I’d like to think that that’s a good story to begin with on Trinity Sunday. Despite firm convictions, the church has always taught that our unknowing about God goes deeper than our knowing goes. The famous ancient theologian Augustine – himself no dummy, called this reality, “learned ignorance.” Simply put, he meant that we can and must make every effort to speak rightly about God because God is too important for anything less than our best intellectual effort. And yet, Augustine would remind us, we must also know God without thinking that our thoughts and words actually grasp God. Like Alice’s remark– the church has always tried to navigate two realities - that we seek to know God like the back of our hand without ever thinking we’ve got God figured out. And nothing comes closer to this vision of knowing and unknowing than the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now, if you would permit me one more analogy. I believe that trying to prove the doctrine of the Trinity is a lot like trying to prove that I love my wife. All of us would agree that such an idea is very important but that no single proof exists that can’t be questioned. In fact, to try to prove my love would cheapen it or seem like I was hiding something. So this morning my aim is not to prove to you a concept of the Trinity. The Church has taught throughout the ages that the idea is everywhere assumed in the Scriptures. But it has also refused to remove the mystery of God and God’s activity which is also everywhere assumed in the Scriptures (Psalm 45:15). So the Church over time has developed rules or guidelines for how to think trinitarily without assuming it has God all figured out. And that’s what I would like to talk about this morning. So this is a bit different of a sermon – more thematic and overarching and not bound to one text. And my prayer is that it will help you not be smarter but better able to worship and trust this mysterious God. So today I would like to teach you two rules the church has devised for thinking about our God, the triune God, who created each of us and knows us by name.

1.     The first rule of Trinitarian thinking is clearly emphasized by Paul in his letter to the church at Rome, 5:5-6 – which speaks of God saving us from our sins. It’s called the Rule of Appropriation and can be stated this way: According to Scripture, all the works of the Trinity are indivisible. There is only One God who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. To put it another way, all of God is involved in everything God does.

For example, the work of reconciliation and redemption, Paul reminds us, is not only the work of the Son but the work of the Father and the Spirit as well. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). It is through the Spirit that we have “access . . . to the Father” (Eph. 2:18).

However this is true of other works of God as well, the work of creation is not only the work of the Father, it is also the work of the Son: “All things came into being through him” (John 1:3). “All things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). And according to Gen. 1:2, creation is also the work of the Spirit of God moving across the waters.

Even the Spirit’s work of sanctification and sustaining the community for fellowship with God is also attributed to the Father (1 Thess. 5:23) and to the Son (Eph. 5:26).

The importance of this rule becomes clear when we encounter a number of heresies which separated the works of God within the Godhead.

Heresy One: This heresy went something like this: “The Old Testament God is an angry and vengeful God who needs to punish us because we have disobeyed his law. But Jesus is a God of love and mercy. Jesus saves us from the righteousness of a God who demands good works and blood, which is why we don’t need to read the Old Testament.” How many of you have heard this heresy in the church? 

In response, the doctrine of the Trinity points out that the will and action of Jesus on our behalf are not opposed to the will and action of God the Father – what Jesus does and says ARE the Father’s words and actions. Christ does not change the mind of God toward us sinful human beings or force God reluctantly to be for us instead of against us; rather, the Biblical witness is that Christ is the deepest expression of God’s desire to be with and for us (Col. 2:9). In fact, we will shall see in our sermon series beginning next Sunday, Jesus will gain his vision of mercy and grace and self-understanding of the cross by reading and praying the Old Testament. So the doctrine of the Trinity means that we cannot separate the power and righteousness of God the Father from the suffering love of the Son for they are one and the same God. I would like to think that this principle of unity would help us discern the “will of God” in how we should deal with sin and sinners, or, how we read the Scriptures.

Heresy Two: This heresy went something like this: “The Holy Spirit makes us into our true, spiritual selves – unencumbered by worldly things and only concerned about things like prayer, worship, our souls. The Spirit has nothing to do with the fallen physical world like our bodies - sexual desires and physical pleasures (like eating, etc.), the way we make and spend money, and we don’t need not to care about the environment or issues of justice. It’s all just flesh and wood and ash – it can’t contain Spirit and won’t it all burn?” How many of you have heard of something like this being said in church?

In response, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that the HS is the Spirit of the God who is Creator and ruler of heaven and earth, our bodies, individual persons and social-political communities. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son who became a flesh and blood human being who went to parties with not always the holiest of folk, healed the sick, fed the hungry and came to bring God’s compassion and peace to all. The Spirit of God who is the Creator of this world doesn’t help us escape it or simply save souls but enables us to engage the world for the redemption of all of human life: physical, material, social, political, economic, etc. What would it mean for us to understand the spiritual life as a Trinitarian life in which there simply is no place that God does not go, no separation of the material and spiritual?

I think it means that there can’t simply be private spirituality only, on the one hand, nor mere socio-political change devoid of a relationship with God, on the other, for God is both a personal God who takes up residence within and the creator of all that is so that nothing is beyond his care. Trinitarian theology aims to heal us of a fractured spirituality.

To sum up: The works of Father, Son and HS are indivisible. Every person of the Trinity is involved in every outward action of the Godhead. We may distinguish between the three persons of the Trinity (it is still okay to think of creation as the work of the Father, despite the fact all three persons of the Trinity are implicated in creation) but we must always understand that they remain in concert, in agreement, all parts participating at all times.

          2.     The second rule of Trinitarian thinking moves us from an emphasis on what the triune God does to a discussion of who the triune God is – a divine community who lives with and for and in one another in mutual openness, and freedom, both giving AND receiving love. 

     

     Here we are aided by the thinking and emphasis of Christians in the East who offer a counterbalance to an overemphasis on God’s oneness. We can call this the Rule of Community  – perichoresis (to sit or go around) or a community of mutual love. Historically, Christians in the East have generally been unhappy about what they believe is a one-sided Western emphasis on the unity, or oneness, of Father, Son, and HS to the neglect of their real threeness. They point, for example, to Jesus’ own prayer in John 17:21, “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  In our time, these Eastern Christians have been joined by other theologians (social trinitarianism) who argue that an emphasis on the oneness of God can have disastrous consequences for our understanding of who God is and who we are as human beings and how we should treat one another.

On this point I am indebted to the theologian Rowan Williams about why such a view might be important in order to understand what it means that God is love and how that means that God can be trusted. I often meet people who struggle with experiencing the love of God and I think all of us can acknowledge that our techno-capitalist world is a very cynical place using concepts like “love” and “trust” in manipulative ways – “Love” is everywhere but we always wonder what are they selling? Hiding? Spinning? From politicians, to Walmart, to the television news. In this world, most simply cannot believe that love can exist with no strings attached, without some hidden agenda. I even find this logic in the church where people define God’s love in ways which make it seem as if God’s happiness or joy is somehow connected to our actions or that God created us, for example, because God needed us. For many of us this can sound cold. Wait? God doesn’t need us?  ILLUS. the character of God in the musical Children of Eden by Stephen Schwartz in which God prowls around like a spurned and abusive parent who punishes Adam and Eve because they are ungrateful children. But God as a community of love reminds us that within God is all that God needs for God’s own happiness. This means that the love that God shows in making the world, saving the world, relating to the world, has no shadow or selfish purpose but is utterly for our sake. It is the love that God invites us into - utterly for ourselves. God is, simply happy to be God and thus can be trusted because God has no private agenda, has no need within or outside himself. If God is perichoretic, then we need not ask, “Wait, what’s in this for you?” Nor do need to be worried that God seeks to manipulate us (or that God can somehow be manipulated) in the ways in which all of us felt manipulated by those who claim to love us. God is supremely happy within God’s self and invites us to participate in that. If God is Trinity, in other words, then God creates us because God thought we would enjoy it.

To sum up: The rule of Perichoresis is that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reflect a divine community who live with and for and in one another in mutual openness, freedom and self-giving love. And this divine community is the model for all genuine human community. This notion has important implications for Christian political thought. How might the  mutual relationships among three co-equal persons within the Godhead provide a model both for human relationships within marriage and church communities and for Christian political and social theorizing?  

Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who was a major contributor to quantum physics, said the universe is "not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think." Look at any of the Hubble telescope pictures you get a taste for this strangeness. We now know that 68% of the universe is "dark energy"--even though scientists can't define it--and that there are 200 billion other impossibly immense galaxies! Stars and planets now seem uncountable.

The doctrine of the Trinity is saying the same thing: God is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think. Perhaps some of the weakness of the doctrine of the Trinity is that we've often tried to understand it with silly analogies or mathematical-like proofs instead of through worship and prayer. In the end, I believe that only lovers seem to know what is going on inside of God and even when they do, say, “I know him like the back of my hand but I’ll never understand him.”