Matthew 28:16 – 20
I have a cousin who says that she is
spiritual but not religious. I don't know quite what that means. I
do suspect that she, like many other people today, find that they
cannot believe in the God they imagine religion proclaims, but
nevertheless intuit that there is something more than the material
world. The word “spiritual” means that I believe there is
something beyond what I can touch, feel, hear, see, or smell. The
word “religious” seems to imply that there is a set of doctrines
and practices that characterize those who adhere to the religion.
And there are many people today who
fall into this category: spiritual but not religious. But being this
way is a dead end. If there is something beyond the material world,
so what? Does it have anything to do with how I live? Does it
pertain to life after death? Does it impact on how I treat other
people? Does is give me a direction in which to shape my own life?
People who are spiritual but not religious have to start from
scratch. They are missing out on all the great thinkers of the past
who have traveled the same road.
One of the things many “spiritual
but not religious” people have problems with is the concept of God.
And I don't blame them. All of us have a picture in our minds of
God – usually an old man with a long white beard. He may be a
loving father or a vindictive punishing sort. Some of us call him
the “Old Testament” God and we imagine this is the God of the
Jews. But that simply means that we don't know the Old Testament
very well, because that's where Jesus got his ideas about God.
Or we may see Jesus as God, and that's
fine. After all, that's kind of an essential part of Christianity.
Very few people who claim to follow Christ would deny that He is God.
After all, rising from the dead is a pretty convincing demonstration
if the miracles don't do it for you. But if Jesus is God why does he
keep referring to God as His Father? Are Jesus and the Father
different?
And in the Acts of the Apostles and
the Epistles, especially those of Saint Paul, It's pretty obvious
that the early Christians experienced the presence of a person who
helped them pray, who gave them courage, who was there when they
preached; and they identified this presence with God, because Jesus
had made it clear that he would send another advocate, that he would
give his disciples the Holy Spirit who would be his spirit, the
spirit who would live in the heart of the Church. And in the Hebrew
scriptures, God breathes his spirit into creation, into the prophets,
into Moses and the leaders of the people during the Exodus. Somehow
the Spirit is God.
Today we celebrate the feast of the
Holy Trinity. We can't explain this concept. If we try to explain
the Trinity, we soon come to the paradox, the Spaghetti Monster in
the sky. Once we explain the Trinity, we lost sight of God and set
up an idol.
The Trinity is to be contemplated, not
explained. It is to be looked upon, not analyzed. Like a great work
of art that is never exhausted, that's kind of like the Trinity.
If a Muslim says that God is One, we
Christians agree. If a Hindu says that God is in some way many, we
Christians agree. God is one and God is a community.
If our Pentecostal brothers and
sisters tell us that God moves among His people working signs and
wonders, we have no problem with that, that's after all the promise
of the Holy Spirit. If our Orthodox friends point out the complete
otherness of God, the holiness which is unapproachable, we agree.
And if our brother Christians tell us that God became a human being,
we have no problem; in fact, we tell them that God became bread and
wine, so that we could actually feed on him, because he cares so much
for us that he wants to give our bodies and our souls his own person.
He wants us the be like him, in fact he wants us to become him.
Don't try to analyze the Trinity.
Don't be taken in by that book, “The Shack” which describes the
three persons. But don't be taken in by Thomas Aquinas, either,
whose formulation of the Trinity can't help but put images in our
minds that make us think of God as three beings. The thing to
remember is that whatever you say about God is probably mostly wrong.
We who are creatures limited by time and space cannot fathom the
source of all that is, the one for whom there is no time or space.
Our minds just aren't equipped. All we can do is stand in wonder.
And that's enough. It's enough for us
to pick out little things from the Trinity to apply to our own lives.
The Trinity runs on love, and so should we. To the extent that we
love, we share in the most powerful force there is. The Trinity is
endlessly fruitful; and so should we be. Love, after all, is just a
word unless it bears fruit, unless it changes something for the
better. The Trinity makes the Universe out of Love, we can at least
help each other to draw closer to Love. The Trinity tells us that
true power lies in emptying oneself out. The characteristic common
to the three persons is complete self-giving. That is what Jesus
showed us about God on the Cross. The Trinity tells us that when
persons come together to accomplish something they desire, there is
more power than when someone tries to do something alone. And each
person of the Trinity desires exactly what the others desire; they
are of one mind. And we see how powerful were the apostles when they
began the church. The Acts of the Apostles talks about the early
Christians being of one mind, sharing all things.
So my cousin, who is spiritual but not
religious, probably does not believe in a personal God. But we don't
either; we believe in a three-personal God, a God who to our poor
human minds is a God of utter simplicity and at the same time a God
of contradictions and complexity. In short, a God who cannot be
described in words. And now and then when we are well rested and up
to the task, we should stand in awe of the Trinity and ask our God to
reveal a little bit more of himself to us, not to satisfy our
curiosity, but to show us something to imitate – because we are
made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.
