Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: Title: "Baptized into What Name?"

Text: John 16:12-15

and you will find lots of differences …

Different kinds of music …

different styles of architecture …

differences in whether the prayers are printed or spontaneous …

differences in how the worshippers dress,

and whether they sit still or move around a lot …

differences in how the preachers are robed, or not robed …

differences in expectation about how important a sermon is,

and how long it should be …

just this week, an acquaintance of mine was complaining that

their new preacher’s sermons were too short,

that he never preached more than 30 minutes!

But there are some things that we all share,

and one of them is baptism.

We may do it differently;

we may disagree about the age at which a person should be baptized.

But all Christian churches baptize.

Not only that,

but we also all baptize in the name of the Trinity:

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Since today is Trinity Sunday,

and since today we are baptizing Sonia,

it seems a good time to think about

this notion of God that we share with our fellow Christians,

no matter how weird they are in other ways,

or how weird they think we are.

One of the things you quickly learn in seminary

is that is it impossible to talk about the Trinity

without saying something heretical!

You simply cannot describe God in human words,

as three-in-one, or one-in-three, or whatever,

without saying something that someone in the past was condemned for.

Maybe even burned at the stake.

If you emphasize the three more than the one,

then you’re guilty of polytheism, having more than one god.

But if you emphasize one to the neglect of three,

well, look out, we call that monarchianism.

And woe be unto you if you try to describe the persons of the Trinity

merely by listing the roles that they play:

God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sustainer.

That’s modalism – very naughty!

And it’s troubling, because that’s one way we have

tried to get around the very obviously sexist language

that we use to describe God in three persons.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit …

one feminist theologian described it as "two men and a bird"!

No matter how hard we try,

our human words cannot convey

the super-human reality of God.

God is a mystery

that we can only partially understand.

Which isn’t to say that we haven’t tried.

The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth

wrote his whole 13-volume Church Dogmatics

based on the doctrine of the Trinity,

and it wasn’t even finished when he died!

And some of his footnotes are longer than this whole sermon!

So don’t imagine that we can tell the whole story of the Trinity

in just the space of one sermon,

or you’ll end up just as much a heretic as I am!

What I’d like for us to do for a few moments together,

is "put on our thinking caps,"

as our teachers maybe used to say,

and reflect for a moment.

To begin with,

what words and pictures and thoughts come to your mind,

when you think of God the Father?

What does it mean to you,

to call God "father"?

Does it make you think of the stereotype,

"old man with a beard"?

Or do you picture your own human father,

enlarged a few thousand times?

And what kind of a relationship do you have

with a God whom you call "Father"?

This is a hard one to begin with,

because for most of us it means one of two quite opposite things.

For some of us, a father-God

is a wonderfully intimate and close image.

Like Jesus, when he prayed and called God Abba, "Daddy."

God as someone who protects us from harm,

who feeds us when we are hungry,

who provides for all our needs.

But for others of us,

God as Father may seem quite distant and scary.

Especially for people who never knew their human fathers,

or who had a bad relationship with them for whatever reason.

They may therefore perceive God

as some who, yes, has a great deal of power over them,

but who does not truly care for them,

and cannot be trusted.

And it is frightening, to think that God might be like that.

And yet, these two very opposite images of God as father

do have something important in common:

They describe a God who is over and above us.

We might also use words like king, or judge, or shepherd.

Or ten-dollar words like omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.

When we think of God the father,

we think of the God of all creation,

the parent who gave life to all the earth.

And there are times when

that is precisely the God we need.

When our own lives go out of control,

is can be greatly comforting to know that

God is above all that, and is ultimately in control.

When the news we read and see is all bad,

and we feel tempted to despair,

we need to be reminded that solving the world’s problems

is not our responsibility alone.

No matter how improbable it seems in any given moment,

God our father, our mother, is Lord of all creation.

God is, ultimately, the one in charge,

In a sense, though, God the Son is more on our level.

God as father is sort of "up there," "out there," "over us."

"The man upstairs," as we sometimes say.

But God the Son spent time "down here,"

with us, like us, as one of us.

He experienced temptation;

he got tired and frustrated with the demands made on him.

He suffered pain, and he died.

And sometimes, this is the God we need.

At times in life when we are suffering and hurting,

we can take comfort in knowing that God knows what we are experiencing.

Not just "knows" it in an intellectual sense,

but God knows hurt and suffering through personal experience.

And, therefore, is able to have compassion and mercy on us.

I think it’s also helpful to know in those times

when we mess up and don’t live in accord with God’s plans,

that Jesus also experienced temptation.

Granted, he didn’t give in

the way we are inclined to do!

But he knows what it’s like,

and somehow that makes it easier for us to confess.

If we thought of God as only a stern judge, "up there,"

we might not have the courage to admit when we’ve done something wrong.

But because we also know God as the Son,

we know that God can be understanding and forgiving.

And therefore we are free

to keep on trying, and falling short, and trying again.

However, when we think of God the Son,

we often think in the past tense.

We look back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now, we believe that he is alive,

and that he has gone to be with God and will some day come again …

But we focus mainly on the past …

on the word made flesh, two thousand years ago,

and what he did for us then.

When we think of God in the present time,

most of us think of God as the Holy Spirit.

God who is our comforter, our advocate;

God who is with us here and now, and is infinitely close to us.

God the Spirit, who bestows different gifts on different persons,

but gives them all for the benefit of all.

God the Spirit, who helps us to live lives worthy of our calling,

filled with the fruits of kindness, gentleness, patience, faithfulness, and love.

God who interacts with each one of us

as unique and special individuals.

So sometimes,

God the Holy Spirit is the God we need.

Not a powerful father, God of the universe …

but simply a "God of me," a "God of you," alone.

A God who has given you a unique set of gifts and talents

not quite like anyone else’s.

A God who acts, not only on a grand and cosmic scale,

but in small personal ways as well.

A God who prays with us and for us and through us …

especially in those times when we don’t know what or how to pray.

At times, this is the God we need more than any other.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit …

three faces of the one God.

Three names by which we know God …

not the only three names, to be sure,

but three names which carry a weight of rich tradition

that we share with all who call themselves by the name Christian.

Three names, making up the one name

of the God into whose church we are baptized,

and for whose kingdom we long.

Three names of the one God

into whose family we will today baptize Sonia,

as her family recognizes both God’s claim on her

and her need for God,

even as little as she is.

Three names, that try to express what we know and we feel

about the mystery that is God.

Three names, into which we are all baptized,

of a God who loves us and calls us all

to be God’s children, and friends, and fellow-workers

in building God’s kingdom on earth.

May we remember our own baptisms today,

and the God who has named us as God’s own.

Amen.

© 2004 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)