Athanasian Creed: Athanasius, known as Athanasius of Alexandria, was the 20th bishop of Alexandria. His intermittent episcopacy spanned 45 years, of which over 17 encompassed five exiles. He is traditionally thought to be the author of the this Creed named after him. It was created to guard Nicene Christianity from the heresy of Arianism. It is widely accepted as orthodox and some abbreviated versions of it are still in use today. And yes, the intro and outro are actually part of the original text. 

Whoever desires to be saved should above all hold to the catholic faith.

Anyone who does not keep it whole and unbroken will doubtless perish eternally.

Now this is the catholic faith:

    That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
    neither blending their persons
    nor dividing their essence.
        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
        the person of the Son is another,
        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

    What quality the Father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has.
        The Father is uncreated,
        the Son is uncreated,
        the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

        The Father is immeasurable,
        the Son is immeasurable,
        the Holy Spirit is immeasurable.

        The Father is eternal,
        the Son is eternal,
        the Holy Spirit is eternal.

            And yet there are not three eternal beings;
            there is but one eternal being.
            So too there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings;
            there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being.

    Similarly, the Father is almighty,
        the Son is almighty,
        the Holy Spirit is almighty.
            Yet there are not three almighty beings;
            there is but one almighty being.

        Thus the Father is God,
        the Son is God,
        the Holy Spirit is God.
            Yet there are not three gods;
            there is but one God.

        Thus the Father is Lord,
        the Son is Lord,
        the Holy Spirit is Lord.
            Yet there are not three lords;
            there is but one Lord.

    Just as Christian truth compels us
    to confess each person individually
    as both God and Lord,
    so catholic religion forbids us
    to say that there are three gods or lords.

    The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone.
    The Son was neither made nor created;
    he was begotten from the Father alone.
    The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten;
    he proceeds from the Father and the Son.

    Accordingly there is one Father, not three fathers;
    there is one Son, not three sons;
    there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

    Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
    nothing is greater or smaller;
    in their entirety the three persons
    are coeternal and coequal with each other.

    So in everything, as was said earlier,
    we must worship their trinity in their unity
    and their unity in their trinity.

Anyone then who desires to be saved
should think thus about the trinity.

But it is necessary for eternal salvation
that one also believe in the incarnation
of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully.

Now this is the true faith:

    That we believe and confess
    that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son,
    is both God and human, equally.

     He is God from the essence of the Father,
    begotten before time;
    and he is human from the essence of his mother,
    born in time;
    completely God, completely human,
    with a rational soul and human flesh;
    equal to the Father as regards divinity,
    less than the Father as regards humanity.

    Although he is God and human,
    yet Christ is not two, but one.
    He is one, however,
    not by his divinity being turned into flesh,
    but by God's taking humanity to himself.
    He is one,
    certainly not by the blending of his essence,
    but by the unity of his person.
    For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh,
    so too the one Christ is both God and human.

    He suffered for our salvation;
    he descended to hell;
    he arose from the dead;
    he ascended to heaven;
    he is seated at the Father's right hand;
    from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
    At his coming all people will arise bodily
    and give an accounting of their own deeds.
    Those who have done good will enter eternal life,
    and those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.

This is the catholic faith:
one cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully.

This ecumenical creed (428 A.D.) is probably unknown to most Christians because it is seldom, if ever, used in worship services. It is probably not used because of its length. The Nicene Creed has eighteen printed lines, whereas the Athanasian has 69. It is difficult for congregations to use because of the creed's intricate and complex terms.

Though the creed carries the name of Athanasius, he did not write it. It was the product of the church of his time. The creed was named after him to honor him for his brave and forceful defense of the Trinity. Athanasius (289-373) was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt.

The creed deals primarily with the Trinity and Jesus as the Son of God. At this time, the heresy of Arius was prominent. He taught that Jesus was not fully human or divine and that the Holy Spirit was not God but only a divine influence. The Athanasian Creed denounced these false teachings and upheld the doctrine of the Trinity. Luther's high regard for this creed was expressed: "I doubt, since the days of the Apostles, anything more important and more glorious has ever been written in the church of the New Testament."

On the television show M*A*S*H, Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester III made it clear what separated him from everybody else. "I'm a Winchester," he was heard to say more than once. For him, it was his family name that made him superior to everyone else. Other people carry other burdens. One woman received her education at Harvard and found a way to work Harvard into every conversation. Congregations fall victim to the same problem. Churches become satisfied with their pasts to the point that they do not make the changes necessary to live in the present with the same degree of faithfulness shown in prior years. It's one thing to be proud of certain things, but it is possible to lean too heavily on a good past and live too scantily in the precious present.

That's what John the Baptist was dealing with in this lesson. In scripture's continuing assault on the religious people of the day, John the Baptist was completely unimpressed with the very thing that the Jewish people had built their lives upon. They were the "children of Abraham." That was their birthright and, they felt, it would never be taken from them.

Then comes John the Baptist. He tells them that just because they are children of Abraham doesn't mean that the requirements have been eased or that they can slack off. We hate to hear John the Baptist say that because we know how it translates to our situation. We can hear him now. "Just because you are members of the church, just because you give your weekly offerings, just because your great-grandparents were in this church, just because you are an officer, just because you are the minister, doesn't mean it is time to relax and take it easy and give in to this temptation of thinking this matter of being Christian is under control." In other words, don't presume your past has taken care of your present.

Of course, like all preachers, John didn't get through to everybody. Some who came to the Jordan with no intention of getting taken in by this man stuck to that determination pretty fiercely. The religious leaders provided John the opportunity to cut loose with his strongest language."Sneaky snakes!" John fairly howled! "Somebody set the field on fire and out slithered you all! Well, I'm here to tell you that the days of resting on your laurels are over. Don't whip out your Members Only temple gold card your theological credentials cut no ice with me! Don't tell me about your spiritual lineage or that you are Abraham's children because if God wanted more children of Abraham, he'd turn the stones into a whole bunch of them. But that's just the problem, isn't it? Your hearts are as dead as stone already. God wants living trees producing juicy spiritual fruit. If I were you, I'd get serious about that because I'm here to lay the groundwork and clear a path for Somebody big and strong who is coming any minute now. He's coming with a very sharp axe in his hand and he will chop down and burn to ashes dead trees like you all!"

John Todd was born in Rutledge, Vermont, into a family of several children. They later moved to the village of Killingsworth back in the early 1800s. And there, at a very young age, both John's parents died. The relatives wondered what they would do with so many children, how they could parcel them out to other friends and relatives. One dear and loving aunt said she would take little John. The aunt sent a horse and a slave to get John, who was only six at the time. The slave, Caesar, came and put the little boy on the back of the horse. On the way back an endearing conversation took place:

John: Will she be there?

Caesar: Oh, yes, she'll be there waiting up for you.

John: Will I like living with her?

Caesar: My son, you fall into good hands.

John: Will she love me?

Caesar: Ah, she has a big heart.

John: Will I have my own room? Will she let me have a puppy?

Caesar: She's got everything all set, son. I think she has some surprises, too.

John: Do you think she'll go to bed before we get there?

Caesar: Oh, no! She'll be sure to wait up for you. You'll see when we get out of these woods. You'll see her candle shining in the window.

When they got to the clearing, sure enough, there was a candle in the window and she was standing in the doorway. She reached down, kissed him, and said "Welcome home!" She fed him supper, took him to his room, and waited until he fell asleep. John Todd grew up to be a great minister of the gospel. But it was there at his aunt's, his new mother, that he grew up. It was always a place of enchantment because of his aunt. It awed him that she had given him a second home. She had become a second mother to him.

Years later, long after he had moved away, his aunt wrote to tell him of her impending death. Her health was failing and she wondered what was to become of her. This is what John Todd wrote her:

"My Dear Aunt,

Years ago I left a house of death not knowing where I was to go, whether anyone cared, whether it was the end of me. The ride was long but the slave encouraged me. Finally, he pointed out your candle to me, and there we were in the yard and you embraced me and rook me by the hand into my own room that you had made up. After all these years I still can't believe it—how you did all that for me! I was expected; I felt safe in that room—so welcomed. It was my room.

Now it's your turn to go, and as one who has tried it out, I'm writing to let you know that Someone is waiting up. Your room is all ready, the light is on, the door is open, and as you ride into the yard-don't worry, Auntie. You're expected! I know.  I once saw God standing in your doorway—long ago!"

There's a trend on social media to cancel peoples livelihood for even the slightest offenses that the person attacking them doesn't like. It's been billed the "cancel culture." It's an evil behavior often by anonymous sources. But it's not new. More prevalent but not new. And it certainly has been in the church for a long time. Let's use the acrostic CCC: Christian Cancel Culture.  

A religious weight loss program called Weigh Down created in 1992 by a woman named Gwen Shamblin grew from a small business conducted out of a home garage to a multimillion-dollar Nashville corporation with over 30,000 churches and organizations participating. But last year the whole movement was threatened and her business placed in jeopardy when Shamblin, on August 10th made comments regarding her beliefs in the Trinity. Here is what she said, "As a ministry, we believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. However, the Bible does not use the word "trinity," and our feeling is that the word "trinity" implies equality in leadership, or shared Lordship. It is clear that the scriptures teach that Jesus is the Son of God and that God sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not send God anywhere. God is clearly the Head."

Her comments sent shockwaves through her community of followers and business partners. She was removed from the Women of Faith Web site, influential evangelical churches dropped her program, even some key employees left. Thomas Nelson, her publisher, quickly canceled the publication of her book that was then scheduled for release in one month. All of this because she trifled with the Trinity.

If you are confused as to why her words got her into so much trouble, that is quite understandable. The church has struggled to explain how God can be both One God and three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Where Mrs. Shamblin went wrong was in her statement that God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were not equal in leadership. In an interview, she agreed that Jesus was both Lord and God but she maintained that Jesus held only a secondary and unequal relationship to the Father.

If you are still confused, let me ask you this: What is the conclusion of such a statement? It is this: Jesus is not fully God. This cuts at the heart of the church's historic teaching that Jesus Christ, in his very nature, was both fully God and fully man. It's a mystery which we accept through faith. Yet Shamblin tries to argue her point by saying that Christians grieve Jesus if they adhere to doctrines not found in Scripture. She says, "If God wanted us to refer to Himself, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit as the 'trinity,' He would not have left this word completely out of the Bible."

We must tread carefully when these kinds of claims are made. Just because a word is not in the bible doesn't mean that it is unbiblical. There are a lot of words that we use in the church that are not found in the Bible. In fact, the word Bible is not in the Bible.

Now we find ourselves this morning, on Trinity Sunday, struggling with this ancient doctrine. What are the essentials of our faith and why is the Trinity one of them? And how can we safeguard our pursuit of truth?

Robert Drake is a Tennessean who writes stories about growing up in that part of the country a generation ago. He told a story about Miss Caroline Walker, who was a music teacher. She had been doing it for as long as anybody could remember. She was something of a legend in her county in Tennessee.

She had two goals in teaching. One was to teach her girls to be ladies. So she taught them manners as much as she taught them music. She also taught them to play one piece perfectly for the May recital. She rehearsed them and drilled them all year long to play that one piece perfectly, including instructions on how to sit on the piano bench, to spread your skirt as you sit down, and how to announce the song by standing straight and holding your hands together at your waist.

The night of the recital came. It was held in the high school auditorium. Ten pupils of Miss Caroline's were there waiting for their turn. Ann Louise's turn came. She was terrified. She thought she was going to faint. She knew she would never make it, but it was her turn, so she moved forward to the wings where Miss Caroline was waiting.

She could see how nervous Ann Louise was. Her body had become stiff and rigid. Miss Caroline put her hands on Ann Louise's shoulders, and bent down to whisper in her ear, "You have worked hard. You know this piece. You have nothing to fear. And remember, I am counting with you all the way."

With a little shove she pushed Ann Louise out onto the stage where, all of a sudden, she was facing this large audience of everybody's relatives, including her own. She announced her piece, then spread her skirt, and sat on the bench. She noticed that she was much calmer than she thought she would be. She noticed that Miss Caroline was still there in the wings. She remembered the last words that she said to her, "I am counting with you all the way." She didn't say, "I am counting on you." She said, "I am counting with you."

And Drake wrote this. "She felt that they were held together by something beyond either of them alone. Teacher and disciple were as one. She realized that it was this that she had been preparing for all year long, this test. And the music, at her command, came cascading out of the baby grand into the darken auditorium full of joy and full of life, right on cue."

I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.

So let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Mary Had The Little Lamb

Mary had the little Lamb, who lived before His birth;
Self-existent Son of God, from Heaven He came to Earth.
Micah 5:2

Mary had the little Lamb; see Him in yonder stall
Virgin-born Son of God, to save man from the Fall.
Isaiah 7:14

Mary had the little Lamb, obedient Son of God;
Everywhere the Father led, His feet were sure to trod.
John 6:38

Mary had the little Lamb, crucified on the tree
The rejected Son of God, He died to set men free.
1 Peter 1:18

Mary had the little Lamb men placed Him in the grave,
Thinking they were done with Him; to death He was no slave!
Matthew 28:6

Mary had the little Lamb, ascended now is He;
All work on Earth is ended, our Advocate to be.
Hebrews 4:14-16

Mary had the little Lame mystery to behold!
From the Lamb of Calvary, a Lion will unfold.
Revelation 5: 5,6

When the Day Star comes again, of this be very sure:
It won't be Lamb-like silence, but with the Lion's roar.
Psalm 2:12
Revelation 19:11-16

Some of the world's greatest men and women have been saddled with disabilities and adversities but have managed to overcome them.

• Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott.
• Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan.
• Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington.
• Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.
• Subject him to bitter religious prejudice, and you have a Benjamin Disraeli.
• Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Burn him so severely in a schoolhouse fire that the doctors say he will never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham, who set a world's record in 1934 for running a mile in 4 minutes, 4.4 seconds.
• Deafen a genius composer, and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.
• Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Harriet Tubman, a Marian Anderson, or a George Washington Carver.
• Make him the first child to survive in a poor Italian family of eighteen children, and you have an Enrico Caruso.
• Have him born of parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp, paralyze him from the waist down when he is four, and you have an incomparable concert violinist, Iczhak Perlman.
• Call him a slow learner, "retarded," and write him off as ineducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.

Great events turn on small hinges.

The Gospel was first introduced to Japan through a portion of the Scriptures that floated ashore and was picked up by a Japanese gentleman. Afterwards he sent for a whole Bible and was instructed by the missionaries.

When the Queen of Korea lost her little child by death, a slave girl in the palace told her of heaven where the child had gone, and the Savior who would take her there. Thus the Gospel was first introduced to Korea by a little captive maid.

The success of the mission in Telugu in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India depended on the fact that John Cloud had studied engineering when he was at college. Therefore he was able to take the contract for the building of the canal during the famine and provide the employment of thousands of laborers to whom he preached everyday on the text, John 3:16. The result of this work was the baptism of 10,000 converts in one year.

The battle of Bennington was gained, it is said, because a little lame boy in Vermont set a shoe on Col. Warren's tender-footed horse, and thus enabled the Colonel to lead up his regiment just in time to save the day. The victory of Bennington decided the Battle of Saratoga, which decided the Revolutionary War.

The hunger of the son of Columbus led him to stop at the monastery in Andalusia and ask for bread. The Prior of the monastery, who had been the confessor of Queen Isabella, heard the story of the adventurous navigator, and brought about an interview with the Queen, which resulted in the sailing of Columbus for the discovery of America. It all hinged upon the hunger of the boy.

Robert Bruce took refuge in a cave from the pursuer who was seeking his life. A spider at once wove a web across the mouth of the cave, and when the pursuer came by, he saw the web and took it for granted that no one had entered. The destiny of millions of people hinged upon that little spider's web.

Our greatest Advent challenge seems to be the need to face the truth about ourselves. Both Isaiah and John tell us some very unflattering things about who we are and what we are capable of doing. Truth be told, all of us some of the time and some of us all of the time are in radical denial about the situation of our planet, our nation, and our lives. For example, like the people who heard John, we can claim an entitlement that keeps us from becoming the prepared and faithful people God calls us to be. The folks in John's crowd were tempted to say, "We have Abraham as our father." Meaning what? Meaning we can coast through life as the entitled ones refusing to face the demands that being Abraham's children require of us.

We do the same thing. Put your own entitlement in the blank. "We are Americans." Or, "We are Baptists." Or, "We have a rich worship tradition in our Church," Or, "We have _______." For God to prepare us for God's coming in Jesus Christ, we must lay down our entitlements, our selfish "rights," anything that may indicate a sense of ownership, and confess that God has the gift of God's Kingdom, and we cannot receive the gift until we first admit we deeply and honestly need it. Justice, righteousness, peace, and dozens of other gifts all come into our needy lives, not from our own bankrupt professions or clichéd confessions.  Advent is about receiving God's judgment on all our self-protecting behaviors so we can finally, at last, receive God's gift of uncommon grace.

This day we are commemorating the witness of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a woman who used her words to set the captive free. I’ll say more about her later, but right now I want to note that in 1943-44 her witness was celebrated in a Broadway play titled “Harriet.”

It was Helen Hayes who played the part of Harriet Beecher Stowe. At the end of the play Beecher Stowe’s family stands around Harriet and sings the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” affirming the Christian witness of this brave and bold woman. . .

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811 into a devout family committed to the gospel of Jesus and to helping transform the world from the nightmare it often is into the dream God intends. She is best-known for a fictional work titled “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

In this fiction, she told the truth. She told the story of how chattel slavery afflicted a family, afflicted real people. She told the truth of the brutality, the injustice, the inhumanity of the institution of chattel slavery. Her book did what YouTube videos of injustices and brutalities do today. It went 19th-century viral. It rallied abolitionists and enraged vested interests.

The influence of that book was so powerful that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe for the first time, “So this is the little lady who started this great war!”

A woman of her era was supposed to write nice stories, not stories that would disturb the conscience of a nation. She was supposed to marry well, raise well-bred children, participate in a few charitable activities and be fondly remembered by all who knew her. That was the life she was supposed to have.

This is Trinity Sunday. God in three persons--Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do we fully understand this wonderful doctrine? No, but some of us will fight for it.

You may remember that ancient story about St. Augustine. One day he took a break from writing about the Trinity to take a walk along the seashore. There he came across a child with a little pail, intently scooping up a pail full of water out of the ocean, then walking up the beach and dumping it out into the sand, then going back down to scoop out another pail of water to pour into the sand, etc.

Augustine asked the child what he was doing, and the child explained that he was "emptying the sea out into the sand."

When the Bishop tried to gently point out the absurd impossibility of this task, the child replied, "Ah, but I'll drain the sea before you understand the Trinity."

Okay, so, maybe the child didn't say exactly that, but there's truth to that comment. We don't understand the Trinity, but we're ready to go to war to defend it. Well, maybe not anymore. But there was a time when battles were fought over church doctrine, and even today churches are being split over whose interpretation of the Word is correct. And it's tragic.

As Jesus and his disciples gathered in the upper room, something seemed to be wrong. Although it is not explicitly stated in the narrative, we can surmise what it might have been. But first let us set the stage. In the Lord’s day when people gathered for a meal, it was the slave’s duty to wash the people’s feet before the meal began. The Lord and his disciples were poor; therefore the disciples probably took turns washing off the dust of the roads from the sandaled feet of the little brotherhood. Normally they did it willingly as a matter of course. But tonight, all of them sat stubbornly in their places and would have none of the menial duty. Perhaps on their journey to the upper room they continued to argue with each other as to whom would have the position of honor when Jesus ushered in the kingdom of God. Perhaps with ruffled tempers and with sore feelings, they trooped into the upper room like a group of sulking schoolboys, not one among them willing to see the pitcher and basin and towel set out for their use. And so, for once, the customary little courtesy was not carried out, and they began their meal with feet still travel-stained. An uncompromising spirit prevailed.

Wanting to clear the air and cleanse this childishness out of their hearts, the Lord took the role of the servant, rose and carried through his dramatic action. The disciples were shocked, as clearly demonstrated by Peter’s challenging the appropriateness of the Lord’s action. In the foot washing, Jesus demonstrated his earlier words spoken just before he entered into Jerusalem, "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant ... even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Have you washed any feet lately? I am not referring to your own, although good personal hygiene is laudable. Have you been like the Lord, humbled yourself and done an act of servanthood that was uncalled for, unexpected, yet very Christlike? An act like shoveling the sidewalk of a neighbor who often lets his dog run all over your property. An act like continuing to speak well of someone who constantly knifes you in the back. Continuing to love your kids when they do things that make you dislike them. Coming to the church to help paint twice in one week when you notice that many of your fellow parishioners did not care enough to pitch in once. It means giving the extra needed ... be it forgiveness, monetary offerings, service, or what have you ... because you have been touched by Jesus and have felt his love for you.

The Lord of the universe has knelt at our feet, has been our slave, our brother, our friend, and our salvation. Are any of us better than he? Are we more important than he? Should our knees be deprived of the opportunity of touching the floor in order that we can also be in a position to do a little foot washing?

Frederick Douglass approached the front door of the White House, seeking admission into Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Ball. Just as Douglass was about to knock on the door, two policemen seized him, barring the black man's entrance. Douglass, a large, powerful man, brushed the officers aside and stepped into the foyer. Once inside, two more officers grabbed the uninvited guest, all the while uttering racial slurs.

As Douglass was being dragged from the hall, he cried to a nearby patron, "Just say to Mr. Lincoln that Fred Douglass is at the door!" Confusion ensued. Then suddenly the officers received orders to usher Douglass into the East Room. In that beautiful room, the great abolitionist stood in the presence of the esteemed President. The place quieted as Lincoln approached his newly arrived guest, hand outstretched in greeting, and speaking in a voice loud enough so none could mistake his intent, the President announced, "Here comes my friend Douglass."

The President had called Frederick Douglass friend. Who dared demean Douglass if he was a friend of the President?

Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe, has called us his brothers and his sisters. God has called us His own children. But not only us. Also the person who lies stripped and beaten by the side of the road. He " or she " is our friend, our neighbor. So we pause and we help, because once there was a man who paused on a cross for us. 

"Tell us what you think, Teacher. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" When the Pharisees asked Jesus that question, he responded with a request, "Show me the coin used for the tax," and someone handed Jesus a coin embossed with the head of the current Roman emperor, Tiberius. Engraved around his head was the inscription, "Tiberius Caesar, majestic son of the majestic God, and High Priest." "Whose image is on this coin?" Jesus asked. "The emperor's," they responded. "Well then," Jesus said, "give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor." The image of the emperor was embossed on the coin, therefore the coin belonged to him.

But in answering the Pharisees' question, Jesus didn't stop with the issue of taxation. He continued, "and give to God what belongs to God." As Jesus spoke the words, "give to God what belongs to God," standing right before him were those on whom the image of God had been embossed. The Pharisees, teachers of the law of Israel, children of Abraham whom God had claimed as his own, had been created from the very beginning in the image of God. In the image of himself, God had created them. They belonged to God. Those in whose eyes Jesus looked as he spoke were the coins of God. "Give to God what belongs to God," Jesus said. But when he spoke those words, the Pharisees left him and went away.

Should we pay taxes to the government? Yes, Jesus would say. But again, Jesus wouldn't stop there. Today he looks you in the eye and says, "Give to God what belongs to God." And as he looks at you, Jesus sees the image of God. In the beginning God created you and embossed his image upon you. In the waters of baptism, God marked you with the cross of Christ forever. God has given himself to you and has promised to love you and be with you forever.

Mrs. Detweiler was created in the image of God. She worked at Murray Elementary as the special education teacher. It didn't take her students long to recognize the image of God within her which made them feel special and loved. Even though she was a special education teacher, the students of Murray Elementary considered it a privilege to be invited to Mrs. Detweiler's room. The walls of her small classroom were covered with stars made out of bright yellow construction paper. Neatly written in black permanent marker on the star at the top of each row was the name of one of her students. As soon as a student finished reading a book, the title of that book was placed on another star that soon appeared directly beneath the star bearing the student's name. The more books a person read, the more stars accumulated under the name. Whenever her students finished a book, Mrs. Detweiler made them feel like stars, themselves. Her ability to make her students feel special and important was a mark of the image of God shining through her.

Mrs. Detweiler bore the image of God. She loved her students -- that was the image of God. She gave of herself by teaching them to read -- that was the image of God. She believed in her students -- that was the image of God. But even as one created in the image of God, Mrs. Detweiler would be the first to say that she had her faults. There were times when she let her students down; times when she lost her patience; times when her mood affected her ability to respond to her students enthusiastically. Mrs. Detweiler wasn't perfect, but she had been created in the image of God, claimed as God's child through her baptism and renewed each day with the gift of forgiveness. As she gave God what belonged to God by giving of herself to her students, Jesus worked through her. Through Mrs. Detweiler, God's love, acceptance and encouragement was shown to many students as they grew and matured into the people God had created them to be. As she gave God what belonged to God, God continued to give himself to her, revealing his love again and again through the sparkle in her students' eyes.

You are God's. His image has been placed within you. When I look at you, I see the image of God. I see the image of God in your faces as you greet one another before worship. I see the image of God each time you pray for each other and share one another's concerns. I see the image of God when I go to the nursing home and watch you hug and hold and gently speak with those who reside there. I see the image of God when I watch the Sunday school staff relate with the children -- so often God's love is given and received in the simple interactions they share. I see the image of God in the church kitchen, as members of this congregation work side by side to prepare a meal after a funeral or before a fellowship event. I see the image of God every time one of you gives to the Lord's work in a generous and cheerful way, sharing with others the blessings God has given you. God's image shines when you invite and welcome your neighbors to church -- not only those who are like you, but those who bring different perspectives and talents and needs to this body of Christ. I see God's image as this congregation reaches beyond itself to support missionaries and relieve world hunger. Whenever you give of yourself to others, the image of God within you is being revealed.

You are the bearers of God's image. Jesus said, "Give to God the things that are God's." You are God's. Jesus says, "Give yourself to God." But before you can even respond to Jesus' call to give yourself to God, God gives himself to you. Even before you have a chance to respond to Jesus' command, Jesus goes to the cross. Jesus goes to the cross to give to God what belongs to God. Jesus goes to the cross to give you to his Father in Heaven, who then blesses you with salvation and eternal life. Jesus goes to the cross for you and gives you life.

Give to God the things that are God's. When you give yourself to God, God will nurture his image within you. Jesus who now lives in you will give himself to others whenever you give of yourself to those in need. Jesus will use you to reveal God's love and forgiveness, to show all God's children how special they are to God, and to proclaim salvation to all who have been created in the image of God. Give to God things that are God's, remembering that Jesus has already given himself for you. Amen.

There were two brothers in Georgia during the 1950's. One decided that in opposition to the dominant culture of the day, he was going to participate in the formation of a desegregated community. The other worked as an attorney for a prominent law firm. Both were Christians and attended church regularly. As the community formed and social pressure forced the community into court proceedings, the one brother asked his attorney brother to help them with the legal work. The brother refused, saying that he could lose his job. He pressured his brother to help with a reminder that he was a Christian. The lawyer responded, "I will follow Jesus to his cross, but it is his cross. I have no need to be crucified." To this his brother replied, "Then you are an admirer of Jesus, but not his disciple."

King Herod is like this attorney. He greatly admired this prophet from God, John the Baptist, but not enough to become his disciple, not enough to risk his own honor and prestige to protect him.

Another similarity occurs in the first part of our text. The people had heard about Jesus. They knew of his great work. They heard about his powerful teaching. They admired him, but they came to the wrong conclusions about him. These people knew about Jesus, but they did not follow him.

That great American hero, editor, school teacher, and Presbyterian clergyman Elijah Lovejoy left the pulpit and returned to the press in order to be sure his words reached more people. The Civil War might have been averted and a peaceful emancipation of slaves achieved had there been more like him. After observing one lynching, Lovejoy was committed forever to fighting uncompromisingly the awful sin of slavery. Mob action was brought against him time after time; neither this nor many threats and attempts on his life deterred him. Repeated destruction of his presses did not stop him. "If by compromise is meant that I should cease from my duty, I cannot. I fear God more than I fear man. Crush me if you will, but I shall die at my post..." And he did, four days later, at the hands of another mob. Not one of the ruffians was prosecuted, indicted or punished in any way for his murder. On the contrary, some of Lovejoy's defenders were prosecuted! One of the mob assassins was later elected mayor of Alton! 

So where's justice? Was his blood ever avenged? There was one young man around who heard of these events which took place 80 miles from his home. He gave a speech referencing needless mob violence. He didn't refer to Lovejoy specifically, he didn't need to, everyone knew what he was talking about, when he said: 

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; [these stories of mobs] are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slave-holding or the non-slave-holding states. Alike they [or, these mobs] spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

So the Speaker chose to address mob rule in broader, national, context. To warn that living our lives by the whims of mobs is a recipe for national disaster. This speech was given to a local chapter of the American Lyceum Movement (which was a public education movement) in Springfield, Illinois in 1838. The speaker was 28-years-old at the time. His name was Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was deeply moved by Lovejoy's martyrdom. And carried the memory of it, as a horrible illustration of the outcome of mob rule, into his presidency and into the emancipation of slavery that his presidency affected.

Note: the brackets in the Lincoln quote are added to help the listeners understand what the proper antecedent is. 

A Source: Some of the information for this illustration gleaned from http://abelincolnhistory.com/speeches/lyceum-address.htm. There's other tidbits as well from this site that would be helpful, such as, Lincoln felt that all laws should be obeyed, even the laws of slavery, until such time that they could be changed; otherwise, societies descend into governance by mob rule. 

God called Sarah, too! We talk so much about God's call to Abraham that we can easily forget that God called Sarah as well. The story is told in Genesis 17. This old story begins with God's call to Abraham. It then moves to Sarah. "As for Sarah," God says, "she shall no longer be called Sarai but Sarah shall be her name." "I will bless her ..." God promises, "and she shall give rise to nations; kings of people shall come from her" (Genesis 17:16).

We can only imagine the solemnity of the moment when God made this promise to Abraham and Sarah. Abraham broke the solemnity. He fell on his face laughing at the very thought of God's promise. "Can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old?" Abraham laughed to himself. "Can Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?" Abraham's laughter, it turns out, is the laughter of unbelief. He doesn't believe that God can keep this promise. The Lord has to scold Abraham a bit for his unseemly laughter. "No," God says firmly, "your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac" (Genesis 17:19). The Lord, it seems, also has a sense of humor. The name Isaac means: "he laughs."

Very soon thereafter the Lord visited Abraham in the guise of three messengers. Abraham and Sarah scurried around like mad making their home suitable for a visit from the Lord. They put on their finest spread. As the meal begins we hear that the Lord has made this appearance in order to speak with Sarah. "Where is Sarah your wife?" the Lord said to Abraham. Abraham had laughed off God's promise to Sarah. But the Lord perseveres. The Lord speaks the promise again in Sarah's hearing. "I will surely return to you in due season and your wife Sarah shall have a son" (Genesis 18:10).

This time it was Sarah who laughed. "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" she mused (Genesis 18:12). Sarah joined her husband in the laughter of unbelief. For the Lord, however, this was not a laughing matter. The Lord was angry with all this laughter of unbelief. "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" the Lord says in reprimand of Sarah's laughter. Sarah protested. "I did not laugh," she said to the Lord in fear. "Oh yes you did laugh," the Lord replied (Genesis 18:14-15).

Now a little laughter cannot dissuade the Lord. The Lord had made a promise to Sarah. The Lord kept that promise. The Lord means what the Lord says! Sarah did conceive and bear a son. What joy this son must have brought into the life of Abraham and Sarah! They named him "laughter," Isaac, as the one who promised had instructed them.

But we're not done with the laughing. Now it was Sarah's turn to laugh. "God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me," Sarah said. "Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have born him a son in his old age" (Genesis 21:6-7). Sarah's laughter here is clearly a sign of her faith. At least that's how the author of the book of Hebrews understands the story. Sarah's laughter has turned from the laughter of unbelief to the laughter of belief. She has heard the promise. She has conceived. She has given birth. She has believed it all. And she has laughed about it all. As Sarah is our witness, what better response can be given to this promise-making, promise-keeping Lord?

Do you remember the TV mini-series Roots? It was the story of how Alex Haley, a black man, set out years ago to discover his family’s history. All he knew was that his family had descended from an African slave named Kinte who landed in America at a place called “napolis.” He also remembered bits and pieces of the stories his aunts and grandmothers used to tell him when he was a child. With that meager information, he began to put the story together. Across the generations, a few syllables of the original African language had been repeated. He went from one linguist to another, repeating those few syllables, asking if they knew what language they came from. No one seemed to know, until one day he met someone who identified the words as belonging to a tribal language from the small West African country of Gambia. After more research, he discovered that “napo-lis” stood for Annapolis, Maryland, entry point for thousands of African slaves. When he went to that area, he found the name Kinte in the breeding records of a family that had owned slaves a century and a half earlier.

In David Dunn's book entitled "Giving Yourself Away," he tells of a lesson he learned from a bus driver whom he once had met.

Riding the bus this day, Dunn noticed a driver who was exceptionally cheerful in every imaginable circumstance. There was a kind and happy word from him for everyone who stepped on the bus, and again for everyone who left.

As he was about to get off, Dunn told the driver he was the happiest bus driver he had ever seen and wondered what the reason was. "Well," the driver said, "to be honest, I read in the paper a few months ago about a man who died and left a lot of money to a bus driver who was nice to him. So, I thought maybe I would try it myself. But (now) I've enjoyed myself so much being nice to people, I don't care whether anybody ever leaves me any money (anyway).'

I would suggest to you the doctrine of the Trinity tells us something about God which is akin to that. If you would know Him, you cannot fully know Him with your mind. There must be the discovery of the spirit of it all somewhere living within you.

There must come that point in your life when you know both of the love and power of God are real, and they are true--not because you have run up against God's authority and fear to do otherwise, nor even because you have seen His love expressed and feel attracted to that in return. For to know God is to have chosen for yourself to live like that, simply because the spirit of it has become your own.

Trinity! Does it say very much to us of God? Perhaps not very much, as only a word --not very much at all.

But, if you mean by "Trinity," this reality of how men and women have to come to know God in their own lives, if they know Him at all, then Trinity is surely a word we can scarcely do without.

A pastoral report: "We have been unable to find a suitable candidate for this congregation though we have one promising prospect. We have followed up the recommendations from church members with interviews or calling at least three references. This is a confidential report on the prospective candidates:

ADAM: Good man but has had problems with his wife and children. He and his wife have been known to walk around outside without wearing clothes.

NOAH: Former pastorate of 120 years with no converts. Prone to unrealistic building projects.

ABRAHAM: References reported that he once offered to share his wife with another man.

JOSEPH: Big thinker, but brags, believes in dream – interpretation and has a prison record.

MOSES: Modest and meek man but a poor communicator. Stutters. Known to blow his stack and act rashly. Left an earlier position under a murder charge.

DAVID: The most promising leader of all. Very musical. We discovered he had an affair with his neighbor's wife.

SOLOMON: Great preacher but our parsonage wouldn't hold all his wives and children. Has grandiose tastes.

ELIJAH: Prone to depression; collapses under pressure.

HOSEA: A tender, loving pastor but his wife is a floosy or worse.

DEBORAH: Pushy female.

JEREMIAH: Emotionally unstable, alarmist, negative, always lamenting things.

ISAIAH: Claims to have seen angels. Has trouble with his language.

JONAH: Refused God's call until he was forced to obey when he was swallowed by a fish. He said the fish spit him out on the shore. We hung up.

AMOS: Backward and unpolished. Would only fit in a poor rural congregation.

JOHN: Says he is a Baptist but doesn't dress like one. Has slept outdoors for months on end, eats a weird diet. Doesn't work well with others – we suggest he become a camp director instead of a pastor.

PAUL: Powerful CEO type and fascinating preacher. Short on tact. So long-winded he has been known to preach all night.

JESUS: Popular at times, but once his church grew to 5000 he managed to offend them all and his church dwindled to 12 people. Seldom stays in one place every long. And of course, he is single.

JUDAS: His references are solid. A steady plodder and good money manager. Conservative and well-connected with the community and religious leaders. This is the candidate we recommend to the congregation..."

Some of you may have read a remarkable short story sometime during your school years by D. H. Lawrence titled, “The Rocking‑Horse Winner." I wonder if you remember how the story begins?

It is a haunting tale about a family living above its means. The mother is considered by friends and neighbors to be the perfect mother, in spite of the fact that deep down she knows she has difficulty loving her three children. It's important to the husband to keep up the pretense of success the large house, staffed with servants but they are living on the edge, just like many families today. Listen as D. H. Lawrence describes this family's life situation:

“And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!' The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!' And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. ‘There must be more money! There must be more money!'

“It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: ‘There must be more money!'"

That's the family backdrop to the story of “The Rocking‑Horse Winner." Quite an extraordinary picture: “There must be more money! There must be more money!"

I wonder if there are any homes in our community today that are haunted in that same way: “There must be more money!"

Let's talk about financial freedom. Jesus said on one occasion: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

Here is the challenge for today: We want to break the grip money has on our lives. We want to affirm that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our god, and our only god. We want to affirm that the God who manifested Himself in Jesus of Nazareth is our god. This is who we are. That is why we are here in this room at this time. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me."  We want God to be our god, not material possessions.

Richard Hoefler's book, Will Daylight Come?, includes A homey illustration of how sin enslaves and forgiveness frees. A little boy visiting his grandparents was given his first slingshot. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit his target. As he came back to Grandma's back yard, he spied her pet duck. On an impulse he took aim and let fly. The stone hit, and the duck fell dead.

The boy panicked. Desperately he hid the dead duck in the woodpile, only to look up and see his sister watching. Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing. After lunch that day, Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash the dishes." But Sally said, "Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen today. Didn't you, Johnny?" And she whispered to him, "Remember the duck! So Johnny did the dishes.

Later Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing. Grandma said, "I'm sorry, but I need Sally to help make supper." Sally smiled and said, "That's all taken care of. Johnny wants to do it." Again she whispered, "Remember the duck." Johnny stayed while Sally went fishing.

After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally's, finally he couldn't stand it. He confessed to Grandma that he'd killed the duck. "I know, Johnny," she said, giving him a hug. "I was standing at the window and saw the whole thing. Because I love you, I forgave you. I wondered how long you would let Sally make a slave of you."

St. Augustine, one of the most astute thinkers the Christian Church has ever produced, was walking along the seashore one day while pondering the doctrine of the Trinity - Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.  He seemed to hear a voice saying, "Pick up one of the large sea shells there by the shore." So he picked it up. Then the voice said, "Now pour the ocean into the shell." And he said, "Lord, I can't do that." And the voice answered, "Of course not. In the same way, how can your small, finite mind ever hold and understand the mystery of the eternal, infinite, triune God?

Many Christian churches will be celebrating today the doctrine of the Trinity. It is one of the most prized truths of the Christian faith. "God in three persons, blessed Trinity...."

Dr. James B. Lemler was preaching one time about the Trinity. He told about a couple of parents who had gone home from his church and during Sunday lunch were talking about his sermon. In the midst of their conversation, their second-grade daughter sitting at the table chimed in. "Oh, Father Lemler's sermons, they're always the same," she said, "You know . . . blah, blah, blah, . . . love . . . blah, blah, blah . . . love."

Dr. Lemler said he was amused and thought to himself, "Hey, this little girl really got it . . . the message, the repetition, the core, the redundancy."

"And so it is with the Holy Trinity," says Dr. Lemler, "Over and over again . . . blah, blah, blah, love . . blah, blah, blah, love . . ."

"God the Creator . . . I love you . . . blah, blah, blah . . . and give you life.

"God the Redeemer . . . I love you and . . . blah, blah, blah . . . embrace you in that love forever.

"God the Spirit . . . I love you . . . blah, blah, blah . . . and warm your heart and your soul with my love.

"Blah, blah, blah love . . ." 

I wish that is what the people heard that day when the voice spoke from heaven, "Yada, yada, yada, love " But John described it like this: "The crowd that was there and heard the voice said it had thundered . . . "

The Nicene Creed is a statement of belief widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene because it was originally adopted in the city of Nicaea (present day İznik, Turkey) by the First Council of Nicaea in 325.

We believe in one God,
      the Father almighty,
      maker of heaven and earth,
      of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
      the only Son of God,
      begotten from the Father before all ages,
           God from God,
           Light from Light,
           true God from true God,
      begotten, not made;
      of the same essence as the Father.
      Through him all things were made.
      For us and for our salvation
           he came down from heaven;
           he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
           and was made human.
           He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
           he suffered and was buried.
           The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
           He ascended to heaven
           and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
           He will come again with glory
           to judge the living and the dead.
           His kingdom will never end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
      the Lord, the giver of life.
      He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
      and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.
      He spoke through the prophets.
      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 Nicene Creed (325-381 A.D.) provides a fuller explanation of the Christian faith. It is called Nicene because a general council of the church, similar to Vatican II held in the 1960s, met in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor. The Council was called to deal with the heresy of Arianism, which was a denial of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed goes into more detail than the Apostles' Creed on the Trinity and the person of Jesus.

A final version of the creed was formulated by another Council which met in Constantinople in 381 A.D. The creed is and has been from the start a topic of contention. In 598 a provincial church council meeting in Toledo, Spain, added the "filioque clause" which says that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father "and the Son." This added clause was accepted by the Western but not the Eastern church. It became one of the causes of the schism between East and West in 1064 A.D. Today the clause is still proving to be a stumbling block to closer relations with the Eastern Orthodox church. The Nicene Creed is familiar to most churchgoers in liturgical churches, because it is used in the worship service on festivals and certain seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

Some of you are familiar with the name, Phillips Brooks. Phillips Brooks was a big preacher both physically and mentally. Standing 6 feet 6 inches behind the pulpit of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, he would speak powerful sermons at the rapid rate of 250 words per minute. Although he was a giant of a man, and a bachelor, he loved children dearly. 

It was December, 1868 and Dr. Brooks was laboring over a Christmas sermon. He could hear his organist, Lewis Redner, rehearsing Christmas carols in the sanctuary. While thinking of a recent trip to the Holy Land, he decided to write a Christmas song for his Sunday School children. After he had composed the words, he took them to Mr. Redner and asked him to compose some music to fit the words. Redner carried the poem in his pocket for several days, and then, on the night before Christmas, he awoke with a melody running through his mind. Later he said the music seemed to “come down from Heaven.” He got out of bed and wrote the notes down, and that Christmas morning in 1868 the children of Holy Trinity Church sang for the first time “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

It is so easy to get caught up in trivial interpretations of scripture and miss the point.

Take a look at John 21:11: "Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn." Now, why in heaven's name was there 153 fish? Have you ever wondered about that? No? Well others have.

Cyril of Alexandria in the 5th century said that the 100 represented the fullness of the gentiles, the 50 symbolized the remnant of Israel and the three of course was there for the Trinity.

Augustine’s theory (5th century) was a little more complicated. He said, there are 10 commandments and 7 is the perfect number of grace and that’s 17 right? Now if you add all the numbers from 1 to 17 together, you know 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 all the way up to 17 you’ll get 153. And not only that but if you were to arrange them with 17 fish in the first row, and 16 in the next row, and 15 in the next row, all the way down to a row of 1 you get a perfect triangle which of course symbolizes the Trinity.

Jerome, he also lived in the 5th century, suggested that there were 153 different types of fish in the sea and it was symbolic of the church reaching all the people in the world.

Personally I have my own theory, want to hear it? I think that it’s mentioned because there were 153 fish in the net.

Here's another theory of mine: they had to divide them somehow, and so Peter being the Skipper he got 21% or 32 fish, and John being mate got 16% that’s 25 fish, and the other five got 10.5 % each or 16 fish. You see we can get so caught up in really trivial stuff and miss the point that we need to be obedient to Christ, today.

Adapted from the sermon "Live for Today" by Denn Guptill, 1999.

Frederick Houk Borsch, since 1988, has been Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. I don't remember where I first read this quote on the Trinity, but my notes indicate that when he wrote it, he was a religion Professor of Religion at Princeton University and Dean of the Princeton University Chapel.

There are probably a number of people who imagine that the idea of the Trinity was thought up by ivory-tower theologians who, typically, were making things more complicated than they needed to be and were obscuring the simple faith of regular believers. In fact, it seems that the process worked pretty much the other way around. Practicing believers and worshipers were driven by their experiences of God's activity to the awareness that God related in several different ways to the creation....

Thus what these believers came to insist upon was that God had to be recognized as being in different forms of relationship with the creation, in ways at least like different persons, and that all these ways were divine, that is, were of God. Yet there could not be three gods. God, to be the biblical God and the only God of all, had to be one God. This complex and profound faith was then handed over for the theologians to try and make more intelligible. They have been trying ever since.

Clarence Macartney tells of a certain Canadian river which flows through a forbidding chasm. Looming on either side of the river are rugged, uninviting crags which bear the names "Eternity" and "Trinity." Macartney suggests that the opposing crags invite an analogy (you understand of course, that to a preacher, most everything invites analogy). "Inseparable from any true conception of God," he says, "are always the two doctrines of God's eternity and God's trinity ... The threefold experience of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." The great preacher then goes on to conclude that both doctrines lie helplessly beyond human comprehension.

Some while ago three other drivers and I all arrived at a Four Way Stop intersection at virtually the same moment. Although altogether too many drivers seem unaware of this fact, the rule at Four Way Stops is that drivers take turns in a clockwise fashion or according to whoever got to the intersection first. In this case, the four of us arrived simultaneously and so there was no logical starting point for even a clockwise rotation. What happened instead is that each of the four of us was making hand gestures to encourage someone to go first. After being momentarily stuck with no one moving, the next thing you knew, all four of us crept forward a bit at the same moment! Again we all stopped and again we all encouraged each other to go first. After lots of silly grins and even laughter among us four strangers, eventually we managed to get someone to go first. It was the complete opposite of what often characterizes road rage—we were terminally deferential! But it was hilarious and wonderful at the same time.

I think that something of that kind of deferential joy must characterize the interior life of God. There is something wonderful about a shared love and a shared enthusiasm one person for the other that is so intense, it results in a never-ending dance of affirmation and celebration. This Trinity Sunday lection from John 16 is pretty brief. Yet packed into this short section is the animating energy and verve and effervescence that exists at the bright center of the universe: that holy community that just is God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

I was probably about twelve when I was in my church confirmation class, and I remember asking my pastor about the Trinity. I couldn't get how one and one and one, can be One, and not three, and I definitely couldn't get why it was important to say that God is three and God is One, if it was something that by definition was a mystery, something we can't understand.

The answer I remember well. I was told that the Trinity is like H20 – it can be ice or water or steam, but it's all water. Well, that makes sense – there's no contradictions there! The illustration of water, steam, and ice brought some clarity of this to me. It's so simple. The only difference between them is the amount of energy each molecule of H20 has. Otherwise, they're the same. God is just like that.

Ice isn't steam and no one wants steamed soft drinks. When you ask for a coke with your burger they don't put a cup under the cappuccino machine and hit it with a few seconds of really hot steam. Here's your cup of steamed coke.

And when we want ice, nothing else will do.

And when you're ironing clothes or cleaning the carpets, you need steam. Just plain water causes problems.

But in the shower, I don't want steam and I certainly don't want ice. Something in-between is what I'm looking for.

Steam isn't ice isn't water. But all three are states of exactly the same molecules. That's only an analogy of what the God we worship really looks like. But like many, I still sometimes have a hard time understanding it, much less explaining it.

Now, more than ever, we need to face the question, "Who is the real Jesus?" Is the Christ of faith the Jesus of history? What is the truth about Jesus? What can we believe? We turn to the Apostles' Creed which has given the church's answer for 2,000 years.

Different Positions

It is not strange that the most popular question of our time is, "Who is Jesus?" Was this question not answered in Matthew 16:16 when Peter said to Jesus at Caesarea Philippi: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God"? In Jesus' day, too, there were different opinions about Jesus. When on a retreat with his disciples, he asked them what people were saying about him. The public was divided: Jesus was considered to be John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. What more of an answer do we need than the answer of Peter? Jesus accepted his answer as the truth, for he said, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven" (Matthew 16:17). Yet, after twenty centuries, we do not believe what Peter said about the identity of Jesus. According to a Gallup poll, 42 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: "Jesus is the Son of God." A recent report from Germany indicated that only one out of every four believe in Jesus Christ. Throughout Christian history down to the present, there are different views of Jesus. Now let us look at some of them.

1. The All-Human Jesus

Human

According to this position, Jesus is 100 percent human. It was held as early as the first centuries of Christianity by the Ebionites. They denied that Jesus was divine. He was only a teacher, prophet, miracle-man, and one with an outstanding character. But he was not divine, the Son of God. Today this view is held by many, including atheists, agnostics, Unitarians, Jews, Moslems, and other non-Christian religions.

2. The All-Divine Jesus

Divine

Opposite the Ebionites, Docetists held that Jesus was entirely divine. He was not at all human. This view was originally taught by Eutychus, a monk in a monastery near Constantinople. In the fourth century, Appolonarius, bishop of Laodicea, popularized the teaching. It was known as Docetism, from the Latin word docere meaning "to seem." It just seemed that Jesus was human. It was based on the idea that the physical and material were inherently evil. The human body therefore was sinful. Jesus therefore was not human, for God could not be identified with sin. Docetists held that Jesus' human nature was swallowed up by the divine. This denied the Incarnation, the biblical teaching that "the Word became flesh."

3. The Half And Half Jesus

Human/Divine

Nestorians took the view that Jesus was half human and half divine. It was taught by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, in the fifth century. To this day it is a very popular understanding of Jesus. When we see Jesus hungry, thirsty, and tired, we say it was because he was human. When he struggles in prayer and on the cross cries out, "My God, why ...?" we see the human Jesus. On the other hand, Jesus is God when he walks on water, feeds 5,000, raises the dead, heals lepers, and rises from the grave. The problem with this view is that we have a divided Jesus -- two persons in one body.

4. The Adopted Jesus

Divine

Human

This is known as adoptionism. According to this position, Jesus came into the world as a human. Because of his moral excellence, his perfect obedience to God, his wisdom, his compassion for people, and his willing sacrifice of himself on the cross, the Father adopted him as his son at his baptism. This adoption was confirmed by the resurrection and the ascension. Jesus then became a deified man.

5. The Both And Jesus

Human & Divine

The above different positions concerning Jesus caused great concern, for the gospel was at stake. If Jesus were only human, then he was just a martyr on the cross and not the Lamb that took away the sin of the world. If he were only human, the resurrection was a fairy tale. His promises of forgiveness and eternal life were meaningless. His claims to know God and to be one with God would then be the words of a religious fanatic who was deluded into thinking he was the Son of God.

On the other hand, if Jesus were only divine and not human, humanity would be the loser. Because he was human, he became one of us. As a human, he fulfilled the law for us. Through his humanity we could see the nature of God. Above all, he became sin for us so that sin, through him, could go out of the world. As a human Jesus knows our human condition. Like all of us he was tempted and he showed that by the power of God we can overcome temptation to sin.

Consequently, the church had to take a stand on the question of Jesus. Is he only human, only divine, or half and half? In 451 A.D. the church held a council at Chalcedon to decide the issue. The church decided that it was not a matter of Jesus being fully God or fully human, or half and half, but it was a matter of both, both fully human and fully divine. To this day the church holds to this truth stated at Chalcedon:

We confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, or a rational soul and a body, of one substance with the Father with respect to the Godhead, and of one substance with us in respect of the manhood, like us in everything but sin ...

This is to say that Jesus is fully God and fully man. These two natures are blended into one integrated personality. He is not a split personality, nor does he suffer from schizophrenia. It is like a blender in your kitchen. Suppose you put apples, peaches, and pears in it and pushed the "on" button for a minute. Now what do you have -- apples, peaches, and pears? Yes, you do, but can you tell which is which? They have become one fruit, one substance. Also, it is like homogenized milk. When the raw milk comes from the farm, a dairy runs it through a homogenizer. As the milk runs through the machine, pistons compact the milk so that the cream and skim milk are made one. As a result you cannot take cream off the milk. In the same way, the human and divine natures of Jesus are compacted into one integrated person.

This means that the Father and the Son are one. When Jesus prays, God also prays. When the human Jesus suffers and dies on a cross, God is in Jesus enduring the cross. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). When the human Jesus speaks, it is also God who speaks. When Jesus weeps, God weeps. This truth makes us realize the seriousness of the cross. It was not only a human on the cross, but God was there in Jesus. Good Friday is the day God died in Jesus. Indeed, the murderers did not know what they were doing; they did not know they were killing God! As the spiritual says, "Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble."

The story of Jesus sitting and debating the Law with rabbis reminds me of another debate that took place in a comparative religions conference, the wise and the scholarly were in a spirited debate about what is unique about Christianity. Someone suggested what set Christianity apart from other religions was the concept of incarnation, the idea that God became incarnate in human form. But someone quickly said, "Well, actually, other faiths believe that God appears in human form." Another suggestion was offered: what about resurrection? The belief that death is not the final word. That the tomb was found empty. Someone slowly shook his head. Other religions have accounts of people returning from the dead.

Then, as the story is told, C.S. Lewis walked into the room, tweed jacket, pipe, armful of papers, a little early for his presentation. He sat down and took in the conversation, which had by now evolved into a fierce debate. Finally during a lull, he spoke saying, "what's all this rumpus about?" Everyone turned in his direction. Trying to explain themselves they said, "We're debating what's unique about Christianity." "Oh, that's easy," answered Lewis, "it is grace."

The room fell silent.

Lewis continued that Christianity uniquely claims God's love comes free of charge, no strings attached. No other religion makes that claim. After a moment someone commented that Lewis had a point, Buddhists, for example, follow an eight-fold path to enlightenment. It's not a free ride.

Hindu's believe in karma, that your actions continually affect the way the world will treat you; that there is nothing that comes to you not set in motion by your actions. Someone else observed the Jewish code of the law implies God has requirements, and Islam's code of love does the same.

At the end of the discussion everyone concluded Lewis had a point. Only Christianity dares to proclaim God's love is unconditional. An unconditional love that we call grace.

Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight.
Christmas in lands of the fir tree and pine,
Christmas in lands of the palm tree and vine,
Christmas where snow peaks stand solemn and white,
Christmas where cornfields stand sunny and bright.
Christmas where children are hopeful and gay,
Christmas where old men are patient and gray,
Christmas where peace, like a dove in his flight,
Broods o'er brave men in the thick of the fight;
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!
For the Christ child who comes is the Master of all’
No palace too great, no cottage too small.

Born in 1765 in France, James Smithson was the illegitimate son of a prominent English duke (Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland) and a direct lineal descendant of King Henry VII through his mother (Elizabeth Hungerford Keate Macie). Branded as a bastard, James was refused British citizenship and denied a rich inheritance through his true father. Due to this rejection the young Smithson felt constrained to succeed at whatever he did, and he became one of England’s leading scientists and a member of the Royal Society (the chief association of leading scientists) at the age of twenty-two.

In 1829 Smithson, who never married, died and left his considerable fortune to a nephew. Rumor had it that the terms of Smithson’s will stipulated that his entire estate was to go to one recipient upon the nephew’s death. The English scientific community hoped that he had made sizable grants to their favorite institutions. But when the terms of the will were made public they were shocked!

Smithson had written: “Just as England has rejected me, so have I rejected England.” During Smithson’s lifetime, England had fought two bitter wars with her rebellious colonies in America. So, to show his utter contempt for those who had mistreated him, he gave everything to the United States Government for the establishment of a scientific institution in the young nation’s capital. To this day the Smithsonian Institution is recognized as one of the most prominent institutions of its kind in the world. England made the tremendous mistake of thinking that she had no need of this man, from whom she might have benefited greatly.

Let us be careful of saying to some member of the body of Christ, “I have no need of you,” only to find that the same member could have met some of our greatest spiritual needs.

Note: Most of the facts of this story are true. Wikipedia demonstrates that he was naturalized as a British citizen. So that's probably an error in the story. Likewise, the part of his being mistreated and contempt being the motive for the inheritance going to the founding of the Smithsonian Institute seems doubtful. The legal will stipulated that should certain events occur, like the fortune being unclaimed due to the death of heirs, the fortune would then go to the establishment of the SI in the Americas. Those events occurred. Per Wikipedia: 

"Smithson never married and had no children; therefore, when he wrote his will, he left his estate to his nephew, or his nephew's family if his nephew died before Smithson. If his nephew were to die without heirs, however, Smithson's will stipulated that his estate be used "to found in Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men". He died in Genoa, Italy on 27 June 1829, aged 64. Six years later, in 1835, his nephew died without heir, setting in motion the bequest to the United States. In this way Smithson became the patron of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. despite having never visited the United States."

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once sought to describe the incarnation of God in Christ. He used this simple illustrative story:

A certain king was very rich. His power was known throughout the world. But he was most unhappy, for he desired a wife. Without a queen, the vast palace was empty.

One day, while riding through the streets of a small village, he saw a beautiful peasant girl. So lovely was she that the heart of the king was won. He wanted her more than anything he had ever desired. On succeeding days, he would ride by her house on the mere hope of seeing her for a moment in passing.

He wondered how he might win her love. He thought, I will draw up a royal decree and require her to be brought  before  me  to  become  the  queen of my land. But, as he considered, he realized that she was a subject and would be forced to obey. He could never be certain that he had won her love.

Then, he said to himself, "I shall call on her in person. I will dress in my finest royal garb, wear my diamond rings, my silver sword, my shiny black boots, and my most colorful tunic. I will overwhelm her and sweep her off her feet to become my bride." But, as he pondered the idea, he knew that he would always wonder whether she had married him for the riches and power he could give her.

Then, he decided to dress as a peasant, drive to the town, and have his carriage let him off. In disguise, he would approach her house. But, somehow the duplicity of this plan did not appeal to him.

At last, he knew what he must do. He would shed his royal robes. He would go to the village and become one of the peasants. He would work and suffer with them. He would actually become a peasant. This he did. And he won his wife.

Tertullian, one of the theologians of the early church, explained the Trinity in a metaphor. God the Father he described as "a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance."

J. O. Sanders offers this interesting description of the counterfeit nature of Satan:

• Satan has his own trinity the devil, the beast, and the false prophet (Revelation 16:13).
• He has his own church, "a synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9).
• He has his own ministers, "ministers of Satan" (2 Corinthians 11:4-5).
• He has formulated his own system of theology "doctrines of demons" (1 Timothy 4:1).
• He has established his own sacrificial system; "The Gentiles...sacrifice to demons" (1 Corinthians 10:20).
• He has his own communion service, "the cup of demons...and the table of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21).
• His ministers proclaim his own gospel, "a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you" (Galatians 1:7-8).
• He has his own throne (Revelation 13:2) and his own worshipers (Revelation 13:4).
• So he has developed a thorough imitation of Christianity, viewed as a system of religion.
• In his role as the imitator of God, he inspires false christs, self-constituted messiahs (Matthew 24:4-5).
• He employs false teachers who are specialists in his "theology," to bring in "destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them" (2 Peter 2:1). They are adept at mixing truth and error in such proportions as to make error palatable. They carry on their teaching surreptitiously and often anonymously.
• He sends out false prophets. "And many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many" (Matthew 24:11).
• He introduces false brethren into the church, who "had sneaked in to spy out our liberty...in order to bring us into bondage" (Galatians 2:4).
• He sponsors false apostles who imitate the true (2 Corinthians 11:13).

Two of his daughters and a son-in-law committed suicide. Three of his children died of malnutrition. Marx felt no obligation to earn a living, but instead lived by begging from Engels. He fathered an illegitimate child by his maidservant. He drank heavily. He was a paid informer of the Austrian police, spying on revolutionaries. Though Marx and his wife were poor, he kept investing in the stock market where he constantly lost. His wife left him twice, but returned. When she died, he didn't attend her funeral. His correspondence with Engels was full of obscenities. His favorite daughter, Eleanor, with her father's approval, married Edward Eveling, a man who advocated blasphemy and worshiped Satan. Daughter Eleanor committed suicide, poisoning herself with cyanide. Karl Marx died in despair.

Laura Marx, Karl's other daughter committed suicide together with her husband on 25 November 1911. The couple decided they had nothing left to give to the movement to which they had devoted their lives. Laura was 66 and her husband Paul Lafargue was 69. In their suicide letter, which Paul wrote, they explained why they committed suicide. It reads:

"Healthy in body and mind, I end my life before pitiless old age which has taken from me my pleasures and joys one after another; and which has been stripping me of my physical and mental powers, can paralyse my energy and break my will, making me a burden to myself and to others. For some years I had promised myself not to live beyond 70; and I fixed the exact year for my departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution, it was a hypodermic of cyanide acid. I die with the supreme joy of knowing that at some future time, the cause to which I have been devoted for forty-five years will triumph. Long live Communism! Long Live the international socialism!"

Vladimir Lenin was one of the speakers at the funeral. He would later write the following to his wife: "If one cannot work for the Party any longer, one must be able to look truth in the face and die like the Lafargues."

Is it any wonder things ended this way for the Marx family? When you look at the tenets of Marxism, where else would you end up but in despair? Listen to these 10 basic principles:

1. Abolition of private property
2. A heavy progressive income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. State control of banks.
6. State control of communication and the press.
7. State owned businesses.
8. Equal liability of all to work, establishing industrial armies
9. Equal distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Combination of education with industrial production.

What is there left to live for? This world would lead to the despair that caused the Marx family to take their lives. They stand in contrast to the Greatest Commandment to love God and love your neighbor and to the admonition of the Beatitudes. Christianity frees and affirms; Marxism controls and demands. It's life or death isn't it? It's God's offer to the Israelites: I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live

One of the most popular college religion texts, Phil Zuckermann's Invitation to the Sociology of Religion (2003) says that the truth claims of religion are "mind-boggling, implausible,"fantastical," "manifestly unbelievable."

I say: Now you're talking, Dr. Zuckermann. For the very category of "impossible" is God's category. The impossible is the very definition of God. So if you tell me, the truth claims of Jesus are "impossible," I say...Hallelujah! It's only when you cross the border from the possible to the impossible that you're in God's territory. Faith does NOT stand to reason.

Or to quote Adidas, who stole one of our lines like the t-shirt company "No Fear" stole another one (and owes Christianity massive royalty payments): "Impossible is Nothing."

You tell me the incarnation is "impossible."

I say: Impossible is nothing. For "impossible" is the canon of faith, not the category of logic. It's the "madness of the impossible."

 

When I was a student, we had an assignment: "Prove or disprove the existence of God" in ten pages.  One clever answer used less than a page, and got top marks for the effort.  The student wrote to the effect that the assignment was not possible using the rules of logical proof.  For in using the available conventional starting point, we would only be able to use the things that can be observed and verified by human senses within the known created world.  All one could do, the argument supposed, in that instance is prove that something in the created world was God.  In other words, you could prove that something was God that could not possibly be God.  The second part of the argument suggested that in order for such a "proof" to be valid, a student would have to be objective, from the start, about that answer.  A student would need not to care if there was or was not a "God".  Since everyone has a stake in the answer, one way or another, it was reasoned that such a proof was impossible to attempt.

How would you prove the existence of God? The point of the exercise was to get the students to think about who or what God is. The reality of the exercise, at least for the student in question, is that we cannot approach the answer through logical thought, through reason alone.  Now this is not to say that reason and logic do not have their place in the realm of faith. It is just to say that they alone cannot do the job.  The IS-ness of God is just too different from our experience to be able to fathom.  So the language of the Trinity in the Christian witness may serve mostly to humble us.  It serves to remind us that God is indeed beyond our complete comprehension.  All the language that we have about God must be metaphor.  Most of the language in the bible is just that, with one notable exception: "God is love."

Augustine was in Milan when God touched his heart and changed his life. He then left his former life of license (he even had an illegitimate son). When he returned home, his former girl friend called to him: “Augustine, Augustine, it is I.” He turned and said: “Yes, but it is not I.” 

Note: This story has been retold and published many times but it is wrongly connected with Augustine. Go here for more. It is a conflation of a fable (which Ambrose retells) and Augustine's conversion story. Here's the fable as retold by Ambrose: Let the man deny himself and be wholly changed, as in the fable they relate of a certain youth, who left his home because of his love for a harlot, and, having subdued his love, returned; then one day meeting his old favorite and not speaking to her, she, being surprised and supposing that he had not recognized her, said, when they met again, “It is I”. “But,” was his answer, “I am not the former I”. (Ambrose, Concerning Repentance, Book II, Ch 10.96). 

Without God's explanatory word, God's redemptive action could not be recognized for what it was. The clearest revelation of God (the incarnation) is nevertheless the most opaque to man.

The baptism of Jesus was an important feast in the early church, more important than Christmas.  Like Epiphany, which was one of the three important feasts, it is a celebration of the true nature of the incarnation of God. It is a feast of light which illuminates God's nature.  Baptism celebrates our identity as being formed by the aim of God, being light and novelty to the world, and our role in living in the light - what God wishes us to be.

So this Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus.  I suspect that for many Christians there is a puzzle about baptism.  There is something curious and almost antiquated about the act of baptism.  If you ask people why they want their children baptized they would be hard pressed to say why, other than, "That's the way we've always done it."  Those of us who attend church faithfully would be hard pressed to say what their baptism meant to them.  Do we do it for the grandparents?  Is it a cultural act? Is it a beginning to form our children in what is most basic to us - a sense of God who loves all of creation?