Matthew 28:16-20
When we began this series “The Stories that Shape Us” the puppets shared the story of the blind men and the elephant. This story is a helpful reminder that none of us has a full picture of who God is and what God is like. The story reminds us to be humble about what we believe about who God is and to be prepared to listen to the story of others and their experience of God, as we share our own experiences of God.
In the end we must admit for any of us our experience of God is not God but rather is our experience of God. Let me say that again, our experience of God is not God but rather is our experience of God. God cannot be domesticated to either your experience and understanding of God nor my experience and understanding of God. But sharing our personal stories and experiences of God with one another and the world around us is still important.
In the reading from the gospel of Matthew Jesus sent the disciples out with this message. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Here is the imperative that each one of us who has responded in faith to God’s love is to “go”. We are to “go” into the world and share the good news of Jesus in what say and do, and in so doing share our experience of God and Jesus with others who may not have yet understood their encounters with God.
As a congregation we are committed to “Growing lifelong disciples of Christ”. You may have heard me say before that there are two parts of this vision for us to grapple with. The first is to ask ourselves, “What am I doing to grow as a disciple of Christ?” Recalling the story of Peter the Fisherman we also hear the invitation to “follow me”. This means bending our hearts and minds to being discerning as prayerfully we listen for and seek to follow Jesus as seek to understand God’s presence and calling in our own lives. This involves being open to new learnings about Jesus, the scriptures, and the world that we live in, as seek to follow and serve Christ.
The second aspect of “Growing lifelong disciples of Christ” is about helping other people grow as disciples as well. This includes people who have not yet heard the story of Jesus or have become estranged in their relationships with God. As people who have already discovered our belonging to Christ and in the community of the coming kingdom of God it is our task to share this good news and invite us to share in the good news of their belonging in Christ. In a rapidly changing world this involves us being innovative and creative as we “go” and share our faith with others.
To be able to do this effectively means yes that we come here on a Sunday, but also, that we seek God in prayer throughout the week, that we read and reflect on the scriptures, that we listen for the traditions and teachings of the church, and that we engage with reasoned and rationale thought.
Just this week I have been reading a book by the theologian Kathryn Tanner called Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology. Sounds exciting doesn’t it. The word theology simply comes from the words theos which means God and logos which means words. So, theology is words about God. And theology is something we all do when we try to organise our thoughts about our experiences of God and our story of who God has been for us. Tanner puts it this way saying, “In order to witness to and be a disciple of Jesus, every Christian has to figure out for him or herself what Christianity is all about, what Christianity stands for in the world.” (p.1)
As a congregation we are all called to share in this task. Remember Jesus word to the disciples “go”. When I was called to be your minister I was called to share in the mission and ministry that you as a congregation were already doing and are continuing to do. All of us share in this task of trying to articulate the good news of Jesus to others in our daily lives.
But here are some aspects of being Christian that take us from simple places of understanding into complex mysteries. Remember what Paul wrote to the people in Corinth about the difference between being fed milk and meat. There are times that we too need to move to deeper reflections on the mystery of God’s life.
Last week in the sermon we shared some entry level conversations of faith with one another as part of remembering the conversations that people shared on the day of Pentecost. These were “milk” level conversations. Today we will wade into some deeper waters of understanding, so in Pauls’ language some meat.
The title of Kathryn Tanner’s book had within it the word Trinity. Today is Trinity Sunday. In the Gospel readings Jesus said to go out baptise people “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
Part of the story of the Christian faith is a complex understanding of God who is three in one and one in three. We use the words Trinity or Triune to describe God’s existence in this way. Now it is important to understand that whilst the Bible does not use the words Trinity or Triune, or a variation of this phrase there are moments like we heard today that group the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together.
In the first few centuries of the church as the canon of scripture was being drawn together people of faith tried to understand what God has been doing in and through Jesus. The acceptance of Jesus as divine was debated and the place of the Holy Spirit was unclear for many.
These issues came to a head after the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian and issued the Edict of Milan in 313 which gave freedom to Christians to worship God. In the years following this, leaders of the Church, the bishops, met at the Council of Nicaea and debated the nature of Jesus existence as the Son of God. It is from this Council in the year 325 C.E. that we get the first version of the Nicene Creed which was later adjusted in 381 C.E. at the Council of Constantinople into the wording which we still use today.
The story of the Nicene Creed is the story of people who were asking themselves who has God been for us in Jesus and through then Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s Creed, which was affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451 C.E., are commonly accepted by most Christian churches as telling the story of who God has been for us in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.
When recited each section begins with the words either “I believe” or “We believe”. I want to focus on the second articulation “We believe”. There are two observations that I would make here. First, the “we” is meant to be all Christians who are baptised into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Second, the word “belief” means precisely that we believe it – it is something that we accept to be true, or is in our opinion true, or that we have confidence in. When we “believe” something we may not have absolute, physical proof rather we put our trust in it.
Over my years of ministry, I have noted that many people struggle with the language of the Creed and some of its assertions. Nevertheless, whilst you may struggle to believe every aspect of what the Creed contains the Creed invites each one of us to continue to grapple with what “I believe” as we try to make sense of the good news of Jesus Christ and our own experience of God.
This morning I am going to engage us with the beliefs expressed in the Nicene Creed by stepping through each section and making a few simple observations about God. In doing so I invite you to think about what you might be able to include in your story of who God is.
So here is the first bit:
We
believe in one God,
the
Father, the Almighty,
maker
of heaven and earth,
of all things seen and unseen.
Three things to remember here. There is only one God. This God is powerful. And this God is the author of all things – the creator.
The second bit comes in two parts. This part A.
We
believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the
only Son of God,
eternally
begotten of the Father,
God
from God, Light from Light,
true
God from true God,
begotten,
not made;
of
one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
This section was at the core of the debates at the Council of Nicaea. Who is Jesus? Relying on John Chapter 1 which describes Jesus as the eternal Word of God, alongside Jesus’ claim in John 17 that he and the Father are one, this section makes the claim that Jesus shares fully in God’s existence and has done so eternally. Jesus is divine, which leads to part B. of section 2.
For
us and for our salvation
he
came down from heaven;
by
the Holy Spirit he became incarnate
from
the virgin Mary,
and
was made man.
For
our sake
he
was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he
suffered and was buried.
On
the third day he rose again,
in
accordance with the Scriptures.
He
ascended into heaven
and
is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He
will come again in glory
to
judge the living and the dead.
And his kingdom will have no end.
The key element of this section is that in Jesus God shares in created existence, he became incarnate. The reference to Pontius Pilate locates the era of history in which Jesus lived, died and rose again, then ascended into heaven. What appears most important in this section to me is that the claim that the eternal Word become human person. This is a completely radical idea and one that Christians continue to discuss. This leads to section 3.
We
believe in the Holy Spirit,
the
Lord, the giver of life.
Who
proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
With
the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
Section 3 was added at the Council of Constantinople and asserted that the Holy Spirit was just as much God as the Son. The Creed concludes with a short section about the church.
We
believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
We
affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We
look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and to life in the world to come. Amen.
The church exists as the unity of the baptised believers who are followers of Christ who look for the coming and life of the world to come.
Over the centuries people have reflected and debated on what the story of faith is and what the good news is. I suspect that there are not two people in this room who would stell the same story about who they think Jesus is and how they would explain the good news of God’s love.
Still, if we were to bring together all our different images and
understandings of God, we might create a rich, kaleidoscopic picture of who God
is. Even then, we would know that we do not yet see the whole picture. There is
something exciting in that mystery, though it can also feel confronting or
daunting. Yet Jesus’ call to Peter to “follow me” and fish for people, together
with his command after the resurrection to “go into all the world,” does not
depend on us having a perfect or complete understanding. Rather, we are called
to share our own story of who God is, trusting that the Holy Spirit may use our
witness to invite others into the same journey of faith.
