May 18, 2008
SCRIPTURES
-SCRIPTURE (Matthew)
- Identifies the the identity and mission of Jesus and also his followers.
- Matthew challenges the church to remember that its life can never be reduced to being a vendor of religious goods, services or activities. For Matthew, making disciples meant conversion and transformation.
-Trinity wasn't articulated as such until Tertullian coined the word in the early third century.
SERMON: If you're sick of preaching on the doctrine, try a sermon on MYSTERY! If not this week save it for another time. Lindy
Every religion that does not affirm that God is hidden is not true Pascal.
-Mysterium tremendum, Mysterium tremendum et fascinans" (fearful and fascinating mystery): Rudolf Otto
-Modern believers tend to trust in therapy more than in mystery Kathleen Norris
-There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. Gertrude Stein
-See in glass glass dimly: 1Cor. 13:12
-Too often we have faith in our answers to mystery rather than faith in God
-Faith ceases to be faith when it can be explained.
-Jesus may be absent but God is not!
-We offer easy answers to avoid difficult questions.
-Invisible realities are important, too.
-Life comes veiled.
-Life is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Winston Churchill (about Russia)
-Uncertain certainties
-Doctrines are an attempt to explain mysteries. Hans Kung
-The greatest and most important problems in life are all fundamentally insoluble. Jung
- The silence of mystery
-The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein
QUOTES
- The tri-unity of God
-What is the sound of three hands clapping? B.B.Taylor
-Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the divine existence. John Wesley
- We are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina Robert Capon
- Perhaps the most faithful sermon on the Trinity is one that sniffs around the edges of the mystery hunting for something closer to an experience than a understanding. B.B.Taylor
-“It is very easy to think about the Christian faith as a lovely story,” but the concept of the Trinity invites us to think about the Christian faith as having a content that forces us not simply to act or to feel but to think … We must remember that the object of Christian theology is not to reduce the incomparable to our small size but rather to make us grow up in some small degree to the capacity of the subject.” Peter Gomes Gomes underscores the value of thinking about the Trinity so as to enjoy God as three gifts in one: Creator, Christ and Spirit.
- God is Plentitude Augustine;
- a “toy for theologians.” Like a Rubric’s Cube, the concept of a God who is three-in-one and one-in-three is truly mysterious
-“the formula does not save us. Love does. The power at the heart of the universe is love. God is love. Christ is the most complete form of love who ever walked the earth, and the Holy Spirit is Christ’s love among us after Easter. But the essence of the Trinity is love- relational, community love. People should know us by our love, not our doctrine.” Rev. Dr. Robert M. Watson
-Three is not enough! God, in God's fullness, is more than three. God, in Whose Image humanity is created, has more than three dimensions. Dr. David R. Blumenthal, Professor of Judaic Studies, Emory University.
--This is the only day of the year that calls us to ponder a teaching of the church rather than a teaching of Jesus. Mary Anderson
-God is ubiquitous ; God is effusive Willimon
- The father, son and their one spirit
- What would we have if all we had was God the creator (1st person of the trinity)? The Reverend Elizabeth S. McWhorter
-When we think about the Trinity, we must forget how to count
-Trinity: God's three point route to understanding Him.
- God as community calls us to shared responsibility.
-When we want to emphasize the oneness of the divine mystery we usually use the term "trinity;" when we want to emphasize their difference, we use "triunity." Moltmann
-Trinitarian theology provided an important solution; it kept Christians from backsliding into superstitious polytheism, but it also prevented Jewish monotheism from undermining the significance of Christ. Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Beyond Theism [Oxford University Press, 1985
-These names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three names for the same thing. They are three names of one God. "I am one person, but I play the roles of father, husband, and son." Willimon
-God is not an unknown but a miss-known.
-Your God is too small. J.B.Phillips
There is a modern word for talking about this dynamic structure — synergy. Within the Trinity, there is constant movement, interaction, as the Father gives to the Son, and the Son is constantly returning praise and glory to the Father, and the Father and the Son give to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit constantly draws everything back to the Father and the Son. There is the Beloved, the Lover, and the Love. Willimon
-God seems to alternate between Spectator and Participant. P.Yancey
[See more on Trinity below]
ILLUSTRATIONS
- Vocabulary: Trideism...three gods; Tritheism three Gods; Unitarianism, Monotheism, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Essence
-Two words have been used historically to speak about the Trinity. One is the Latin word "persona"; God is three persons in one nature or substance. Derived from the language of the theater, the word "persona" refers to masks worn by actors in their roles on stage. Today we give the word "person" more individualistic connotations, but in trinitarian theology the persons are three different characterizations of one dynamic actor.
-Augustine, one of the greatest minds of the Western World, put his head to thinking about the Trinity. Augustine, a master of words, took fifteen books to talk about the Trinity, fifteen books that took him over a decade to write. Augustine’s On The Trinity continues to be helpful in thinking through that which is difficult to think about, and talking about that which is difficult to describe, namely the nature of God who comes to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Early on in his massive treatise, Augustine had seven statements about God: The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. And then, after these six statements, Augustine adds one more. There is only one God.
-There has never been an end to our search for images by which to express the mystery of the Trinity. St. Patrick used the shamrock to teach about the Trinity. To him, the shamrock spoke of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was a primitive way of teaching, but it is open to question whether we have succeeded in improving upon it. If the Trinity is our way of groping for an expression of the totality of God, then what can be better than to stoop down to the green earth and lift from it an image of God’s truth placed there by God’s own hand?” Herbert O'Driscoll
HUMOR
-Dung beetles study man and his ways and call it Humanology. Man
studies God and calls it Theology
-Some strive to put everything into a nutshell but the only thing in the nut shell is the nut.
CHILDREN
1. Using a cut out card board triangle, ask children how many corners. Give examples of other "tri" words like tricycle, tripod, trinity. Tell them that today is Trinity Sunday, the day we celebrate the three ways we know God. Go over the three ways we relate with God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There are other "trinities" in nature: Egg, yolk, white; Ice, water, vapor are all H2O. Root, branch, fruit are all the plant. Remind them that although there are three ways to talk and relate about God there is only one God. Lindy
2. Show the common symbols that represent the Trinity. Christian Symbols Discuss each.
PRAYER PHRASES
.....we confess to the littleness of our ideas about You.
----in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we pray.
---Ps. 139
----begins her sermons with a wonderful prayer: “May the Sacrament of the Word and the hunger of our hearts meet, and lead us ever more deeply into the heart of God.” Renee Miller
TRINITY NOTES FROM YEAR B and C
-TRINITY Not about God but about our relationship to God!
-People see God every day. They just don’t recognize him. Pearl Bailey
-A trick answer is to admit that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, but with God you don't add, you multiply, and 1 x 1 x 1 is still one.
-Holy, Holy, Holy
-God must be beyond all limiting definitions
-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. In a way, the Trinity is saying something about us and the way we experience God. Buechner
-The Omnipresence God
-This doctrine became official in 325 AD at Council of Nicaea. Trinity Sunday has been celebrated since 1334 when Pope John XX11 fixed it as the Sunday after Pentecost.
-We understand the trinity the most when we realize we do not understand.
-God is more than two men and a bird U.S.Catholic 1990
-If God is male, than male is God. Mary Daly
- What ever is sacred is relational.
- The Trinitarian Doctrine is always under construction
- Emily Dickinson, you speak the truth best when you tell it at a "slant." Perhaps poets can serve the Trinity best because they know that truth can at best be told at a slant, between the lines, beyond where words themselves can go.
·
home