They Laughed at Him (Proper 8 B)

They Laughed at Him
Fourth after Pentecost (Proper 8 B)
28th June 2009
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Lamentations 3. 22 – 33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8. 7 – end; Mark 5. 21 - 43

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today’s gospel reading is a sandwich: the main story--the two pieces of bread--is about how Jesus was asked by the synagogue leader Jairus to heal his 12-year old daughter, and how Jesus did that. Embedded in the middle of the bread--the filling, as it were--is the story of Jesus and the woman with a long-standing hemorrhage.

Modern readers usually understand the basic drama of the combined story—Jesus is asked to heal the girl, but on the way is followed by crowds who press in on him. Among the crowd is the woman, desperate for healing after losing all she has to try to remedy her condition. She secretly touches Jesus’ robe and is instantly healed. He, however, notices that something has happened and turns to ask who touched him. After an exchange with the disciples and the woman, he returns on his way to Jairus’ house. But the time it has taken to sort things out in the crowd was too long—the girl has died. Jesus nevertheless proceeds and heals the girl.

There are, however, a couple of matters in the story that are not readily apparent to the modern reader, and these are key to understanding what the story is trying to tell us.

First of all-- the crowds around Jesus are like the crowds of any peasant culture (or any culture that is just one or two generations removed from the life of peasants). They are crowding around him because they want to see something interesting, something worth telling.

Having grown up in North America, I didn’t really understand what was going on in the story until I moved to China and saw crowd behavior there. The Chinese term coù rènao (pile on to the heat and the noise) aptly describes a phenomenon you often see in Mainland China, especially in the provinces. After every traffic accident, or minor altercation or disagreement between people, you see a crowd gather quickly to watch. They press in to get a better view. They start cheering on their favorite or making comments of their own. You see, these people haven’t seen anything interesting in a long time, and the incident provides entertainment and variety to their somewhat monotonous lives. A similar thing on a usually much reduced scale occurs in schools in North America when young students gather around two of their classmates in an argument and they begin chanting “fight, fight.” The people following Jesus are pressing in to get a better view, to get a better chance of hearing what he is saying. Once it becomes clear that he actually is healing people, the crowds increase—we read in Mark 6:56, “And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed.”

So when the woman touches his clothes and he turns and asks who touched him, the disciples are understandably a bit perplexed at why he should even ask such a silly question.

Another item in the story that is more central to its meaning is this: the woman with the issue of blood won’t dare ask Jesus to help her because she is ritually impure. Under the religious laws of the day, she was unclean and conveyed that uncleanness to anyone who touched her or things she had had touched.

The rules to prevent ritual contamination were a central part of the religion that Jesus had been raised in, the varied Judaism of the period of the Second Temple. Just after the rules about dealing with women with unusual flows of blood, we read this in Leviticus 15: “You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them.”

The woman is an outcast because of her disability. She wonders how a religious teacher like Jesus could be expected to pay her any attention, let alone touch her to heal her. So she takes things into her own hands and secretly touches his robe. She is cured, but he feels that some power has gone out of him, and he asks who touched him.

It is the woman’s uncleanness that makes her reluctant to ask for help, or even expect a reply.


Similarly, when Jesus finally arrives at the house of Jairus, the question of ritual impurity again intrudes in this complicated sandwich of a story. Coming into close proximity to, or touching, a corpse also transmitted ritual uncleanness. When the crowd tells Jairus that his daughter is dead, Jesus persists in going to try to heal her, and tells him, “Don’t be afraid, just believe.”

He is not asking Jairus to sign on to a doctrinal program, or to intellectually assent to a set of propositions about the universe, morals, or society. He is asking Jairus to trust him. Remember that the Latin word credo, "I believe," from which we get the word "creed" originally came from cordem dare, "to give one's heart."

They leave the crowd behind, and come to the house, where professional mourners are already at work, ululating, weeping, and tearing their clothes. Their presence underscores the high social status enjoyed by Jairus. When Jesus announces that the girl is not dead, just asleep, and says he will go and wake her up, the crowd laughs at him.

Some probably laugh at what they see as Jesus’ stubbornness in not listening to their announcement that the girl is dead. Some laugh at his foolishness in thinking that he can 'heal' a dead person. Most are probably laughing, in typical Asian fashion, out of nervousness—this guy is not only going to cause a great scene involving a corpse, but is also going to break, right there in public, a great taboo.

For corpses, too, were a source of ritual contamination. By going to the corpse and touching it, he would become unclean, and then come out and transmit the ritual impurity to all present as well.

Despite the privileged position the little girl had in life as the daughter of a religious leader, in death she is just another corpse, just another source of ritual contamination, like the woman with the flow of blood earlier in the story.

After he puts the onlookers all out, he takes the child's father and mother and his accompanying disciples, and goes in to where the corpse is. He then takes her by the hand and says, “Little girl, get up!” (Talitha qumi! It is recorded in the words he probably actually used in his own native language, Aramaic.)

We read, “Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.”

You see, in both cases, the woman with the flow of blood and Jairus’ young daughter, compassion and service took precedence over a desire to remain pure.

This really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it if at all possible, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God. If impurity is inadvertently contracted, they need to purge it away through rituals.

As a Jew, Jesus respected the rituals. But he taught that goodness was different from purity, and far more important. In his view, moral goodness was spread to others by compassion and service. And the need for compassion and service trumped the need to avoid contamination at all times.

The theme is a subtext of almost all of Jesus’ public acts and teaching. He practiced open table fellowship with people that his religion labeled as the worst of the worst. And according to the Law, the table where one ate was one of the easiest places to contract impurity. He taught that it was what one said and did, rather than what one ate, that counted. He tended to discount ritual washings as a core issue and said they did not necessarily touch what really mattered—the heart. He told stories of religious men avoiding contamination with what they thought was a corpse in contrast to a heretic and illegitimate man (a Samaritan) who, despite the same religious rules about corpses, still showed compassion and thus made himself the fellow countryman ("the neighbor") of the man who was near death.

In so doing, Jesus was following the very best of the Jewish prophetic tradition, which itself had consistently criticized the religious establishment’s concern with purity rather than justice.

Ultimately, it would be Jesus’ uncompromising insistence on this that so alienated the religious authorities that they conspired to turn him over to the hated Roman occupiers.

We need never think that our uncleanness or impurity is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us regardless, and wants to heal us and help us understand that we are forgiven all.

What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we , like the professional mourners outside Jairus' house, end up laughing at God. But the woman with the flow of blood was so desperate that she overcame her fear. Taking things into her own hands she reaches out to touch his robes. We too need to reach out to touch his robes.

When Jairus learns his daughter is dead, Jesus tells him "Don't be afraid, just trust in me."

Jesus is saying this today, to each of us, "Don't be afraid. Just trust in me."

In the name of God, Amen.

God of the Storm (Proper 7 B)

God of the Storm
Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7)
21th June 2009
Morrison Chapel, Macau
10:00 a.m. Eucharist with reserved sacrament
Job 38:1-11, 16-18; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Mark 4:35-41

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Thank you all for welcoming me once again to Morrison Chapel.

In the north transept of St. John’s cathedral in Hong Kong, there is a beautiful stained glass window of Jesus calming the seas, the story we read today in the Gospel. Beside the portrayal of Jesus in the small boat with his disciples in the middle of Lake Tiberias, you find other figures: on one side is an English seaman, complete with navy blue peacoat, dufflebag, and pipe, looking as if at a shipping vessel preparing to load at the dock. On the other is a Southern Chinese woman in traditional clothing and woven grass rain hat looking to mend nets for fishing. The point is clear—here along the South China coast where sea faring is such a part of the economy and where risking one’s life by plying one’s trade out on the waters is a part of many people’s daily life, Jesus as a savior who can calm rough waters is truly important.


The story of Jesus calming the storm is more than just a recitation of a miraculous act of Jesus that demonstrates his authority. It is a story underscoring that Jesus is compassionate, and wholly worthy of trust and being relied on when we are in trouble.


The writers of the Gospel stories about Jesus calming the storm probably had in mind the description of the God who calls the storms and then calms them which we chanted today from Psalm 107. In Churches and parishes in port towns and in military chaplaincies for the Navy, we often hear the section of this Psalm that we chanted today, the part about “those who go down to the sea in ships.”

But what is interesting to me is this—Psalm 107 is not just about sailors. It has several different sections describing people in many different extreme situations, where they need to rely on God. The whole Psalm could be entitled, “God, the Savior of People in Distress.”

Part (vv. 4-9) talks about people who get lost in the desert and run out of water. God there leads them back to an oasis.

Another part (vv. 10-16) describes prisoners in a dark dungeon. God leads them from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom.

Yet another (vv. 17-22) talks about people suffering from horrible illness, as the Psalmist says, “because of their wicked ways.” They are near the gates of death because they cannot eat food anymore, because it has become so distasteful to them in their illness. One wonders whether whether the Psalmist has venereal disease, alcoholism or drug addiction, or some other ailment in mind, but the bit about not wanting to eat any nourishing food brings all these to mind. In the Psalmist's era, people thought disease came as punishment from God rather than from infection microbes. God heals these people when they call on him.

Finally, we see the part about those who go out upon the sea and get caught in a storm (vv. 23-32). Again, God calms the storm when they call on him. The psalm ends (vv. 33-41) by saying that God can change a river into a desert, and rich springs into dusty and arid ground. He can turn fruitful land into a salt marsh, and a desert into pools of water. The point is that God is a reliable savior in any hardship.

So the next time we hear the story about Jesus calming the storm, let’s not just think about Jesus helping mariners only.

Think about the drug addicts and alcoholics who have been helped by Jesus when they call upon him and surrender to him. And that, whatever name they might use to call Jesus, or image they might have of their “higher power.”

Think about the physically ill who have found healing and comfort in Jesus.

Think about how his message can help those lost in mental illness, or harmful ego.

Think about the poor that Jesus calls us to serve and assist.

Think about how he helps those lost in sin and self-deception, ourselves included, and lost in exploitation and deception of others.

“Master, don’t you care that we are perishing?” the disciples in the boat cry when they find him sleeping in the storm.

Before replying, Jesus calms the storm. Then he asks, “Why are you terrified? Where’s your trust in God? Where’s your faith?”

When I heard this story as a young boy, I heard this line and thought that Jesus here was condemning the disciples. "Oh ye of little faith." "If only you had faith, Peter, you could not only walk on water but also calm the sea itself." "If you have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could not only move mountains, but calm the oceans too." All this conspired to make me want to say, "I'm unworthy, unworthy."

But that is not what the story is trying to say. Remember that this is the Jesus who spent his days with drunkards and prostitutes, and when criticized for this replied, "sick people need a doctor, not healthy ones." It is the same Jesus who told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

The point is this--if we are forced by our circumstances to think we need God, then we should realize that it is God that we are in need of. God is trustworthy. God, in the idea of the Psalm we chanted today, is the savior of all in distress. Relying on God leaves little room for fear. Regardless of how things turn out, we know that, in the words of the prayer, God "is doing for us more that we can ask or imagine."

That's why Jesus calms the sea before he asks his disciples why they were afraid. He sympathizes and understands them, but wants to turn their rough fear and general sense of needing into a directed desire for the help of the One who is wholly trustworthy.

Jesus cares, and can help. We need to trust him.

In the name of God, Amen.

The Sprouting Seed (Proper 6 B)

The Sprouting Seed
Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6)
14th June 2009
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
11:45 a.m. Choral Matins
CoE CW Daily Office Lectionary Year B Pentecost 2 Primary Service
Ezekiel 17:22-end; Psalm 92:1-4, 12-end; 2 Cor 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34
God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today’s Gospel includes two of Jesus’ parables—the parable of the Growing Seed and the Parable of the Mustard Plant. They both are intended as comparisons for “the kingship,” or “the reign of God.” In order to understand what they are about, what questions they are trying to answer, we need to look a little at the history of the times when Jesus lived.


Jesus lived at a time of world empire. He grew up in Galilee, a minor client state on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Rome had conquered, bought, and otherwise swallowed up all the world known to people living around the Mediterranean. But the Pax Romana, like every “world order” put in into place by force, was largely a creation of the state’s propaganda machine: the leader of a nation about to swallowed up by Rome, is famously reported to have said, “You crucify or enslave whole populations, burn their cities and leave smoldering ruins in their place, and then use the word “peace” to describe the burned-out desert you leave behind.” The state spin-doctors would say again and again that the Emperor was God’s son, and that the Empire was the order and peace intended by the Gods. Like our world today, this was a place where might seemed to make right, and where money and power seemed to count for everything.

Judas Maccabeus

One of the peoples thus subjugated by Rome was Jesus’ own, the Jews. Just a century and a half before, they had hoped dearly for deliverance from all their foes and the establishment of God’s just and right kingdom. Judas Maccabee and his army threw off the harsh oppression of the Greek Seleucid kings left behind by Alexander the Great. The Book of Daniel, written at that time, had predicted that the Maccabees and their state would grow and grow, like a rock from the mountains cut out without hands, until it would fill the whole world and smash all systems of oppression and wrong. But that effort had gone seriously wrong. The Maccabees themselves became tyrannical, their rule oppressive and harsh, and their religious establishment hopelessly corrupt. The Temple itself became as much a symbol of oppressive taxes and impossible rules as of God’s presence on earth. Members of the Temple establishment, called Sadducees during Jesus’ time, became quickly the quisling darlings of the Romans. What Daniel had hoped would be the kingdom of God had become just another petty and corrupt oligarchy with a compromised religion and horrendous rulers.

Some Jews fled the Maccabean establishment and went into the Judean wilderness, seeking to “prepare in the desert” a way for God’s true kingdom. They called themselves the “sons of Zadok” or the “sons of Light,” and their city at Khirbet Qumran at the north end of the dead Sea, “Damascus.” They advocated a separation of true believers from the rest of the world, whom they called “the sons of darkness,” and believed they would one day destroy them in a great war for God’s kingdom, together with the evil “Kittim,” or Romans. They are the ones who wrote and left what are now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jewish historian Josephus called them Essenes.

Others reacted to the collapse of political independence with the arrival of the Romans and to the clearly compromised credibility of the Temple authorities by calling for more and more rigorous study and application of the Law of Moses, and for greater and greater distinctions between Jews and non-Jews. We call these people the Pharisees, and it is from them that all modern Judaisms trace their teaching.

Others reacted to the political subjugation of the Jews by the Romans by calling for military rebellion. According to Josephus, a Galilean named Judas led a major revolt against Rome around A.D. 5 in reaction to a census by Roman Procurator in Syria, Quirinius, to increase taxes. The Romans crushed the revolt, and then crucified thousands of the defeated Jewish soldiers. A few surviving guerillas fought on as bandits and terrorists. They are called the Zealots, and were later to lead another revolt from Rome that would bring an end to the Temple, ancient Jerusalem, and most Jewish life in Palestine.

All of these groups in their different ways were trying to answer some basic questions that trouble us even today. What is the relation of Imperial power to the power of God? What is the kingdom’s position n the oppression of the poor? Why does evil seem to be in charge? Why do good people suffer? Where is God and why doesn’t he act? Is he asleep? Is he a monster who can’t be bothered? Is he weak or incompetent? What do we need to do to make God’s kingdom come? Is God’s kingdom just a matter of trying personally to do God’s will and feel good about ourselves? Or is it about social justice? Can it be said to exist at all while evil still rules in the world?

When Jesus first began to preach publicly, it caused quite a stir. People were excited. Here was a prophet from the backwards part of Palestine, Galilee, declaring that God was beginning to act to establish his kingdom. “God’s kingship has come near, and is in your midst.” He quoted Isaiah, saying the time had come to declare liberation to the captive, freedom to the prisoner, and sight to the blind. And when he began to heal people as part of his message that God’s kingdom had arrived, they really started to flock to see him and hear him. Would he overthrow the Romans? Would he thrown out the corrupt priests from the Temple? Or would he just cause a stir and get himself and his followers killed in the process? And then, of course, people started to ask him how the Kingdom of God could have come already when the rule of evil, and of the Evil Empire, was still all too evident. How could Jesus possibly mistake his pathetic little gatherings for sermons and healings with the overthrow of evil and the great and terrible day of judgment promised by the prophets?

Jesus told stories as a means of letting people know about what he thought about these questions. He wanted to challenge their beliefs and assumptions about God, God’s reign, and what its arrival means. That is why many of his parables begin with the words, “The kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, “of heaven”) is like…”


In the parable of the growing seed, he says the kingdom of God is like a seed—it sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows that it grows or understands why it grows. Jesus reminds his listeners that the seed is God’s kingdom when he ends the story by noting that the planter, seeing the grain is ripe, thrusts in his sickle to harvest the grain. “Harvest” is one of the images used in the Hebrew scriptures to describe the “great and terrible day of the Lord,” when God’s kingdom would put an end to the reign of evil.

Jesus says that God’s kingdom comes primarily through God’s acts, not ours.

God will ultimately set things right, and settle accounts, but that is not yet now, he says.

The kingdom, however, is already here, at work, he says. It is like a seed that sprouts and grows on its own, no matter whether see are aware of it, or understand how.

The kingdom won’t come through force of arms. The kingdom will not come merely through human acts. But it will come. It will come. Regardless of how bad things are, how much the evil triumph and the righteous suffer, how overwhelming the imperial power seems to be or how corrupt the religious establishment is, it will come. God actually is in charge, and God’s reign is here and now. And its full manifestation will come. Trusting in God means not worrying that it will, because it will.

The other parable we read this morning is the parable of the mustard plant. Jesus says the kingdom is like a mustard seed—it is one of the smallest of seeds, but produces a huge plant. This parable is about the disproportionality of the kingdom now and the kingdom in its full manifestation. Jesus elsewhere uses the parable of the leaven to make the same point: the small and apparently insignificant or difficult to notice kingdom we see now is tiny compared to what its results and end will be. It only takes a tiny bit of yeast to leaven dough that makes a whole kitchen full of bread. In the parable of the mustard plant, Jesus again makes sure his listener knows he is talking about God’s reign by making allusion to an image from the Hebrew Scriptures about the coming kingdom of God: the allegory of the cedar sprig and tree in Ezekiel that we also read today. In Ezekiel, a cedar representing God’s kingdom is so huge that all the birds of the air can find shelter in its branches.

So how do these stories connect to us?

People around Jesus had all sorts of ways to excuse God for not acting, or to try to force God to act, or to act in God’s stead. Jesus focuses on the core issue, the trustworthiness of God. That seed will sprout regardless of us, and will result in something so huge that the whole world can shelter in it.

We need to trust in God. We cannot let our impatience get in the way of this trust. We cannot let our laziness get in the way of this trust. We cannot let our pride and desire to control things and have them our way get in the way. We need to surrender to God, and know, in the words of the prayer, that he is doing for us more than we can ask or imagine. That doesn’t mean we are off the hook and don’t have to do anything. But it means the first thing we have to do is trust and realize it is God at work, not us. We have to let God change us and move us to do the works of his kingdom. But again, the seed sprouts and grows on its own. We simply need to let go and let God. We need to get our will and ego out of the way, and let God do his thing.

In the name of God, Amen.

Trinity Sunday (B)

Three in One
Trinity Sunday (First Sunday after Pentecost) (Year B)
7th June 2009
Cathedral Church of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
6:00 p.m. Evening Prayer
CoE CW Daily Office Lectionary Year B Trinity Sunday Second Service
Ezekiel 1:4-10, 22-28a; Revelation 4; (Psalm 104:1-10; Mark 1:1-13)

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Tonight’s scriptures, both luminous visions of God in glory, are appointed for Trinity Sunday. I hope everyone noted that each of them is struggling to describe the undescribable: "then I saw something like a throne ...," "then there was something like a man ..." The authors are searching for words and images and are not completely satisfied with the ones they have found.

This feast day celebrates an abstract and difficult-to-understand doctrine, but that nonetheless is central. Few of us can get our minds, let around our hearts, around it.

Every week we recite the Nicene Creed to express our Trinitarian faith. But many of us still hear such words as “the Father,” “the Son,” “begotten,” “from” (as in “God from God”), and “came down from heaven” literally. So we tend to understand it in a way that places the Father as number one, the Son as number two, and the Spirit as a distant and somewhat ambiguous number three.

This understanding is precisely what the creed was trying to correct when it was promulgated by the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, and when it was edited by the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.

This mis-reading has to overlook key phrases: “eternally begotten of the Father,” “begotten, not made,” and “through whom all things were made.” People who think that “begotten” somehow refers to the birth of Jesus in history miss the point. The creed sees this “begetting” as something that occurred “from before all worlds,” or, more correctly, as a timeless event that occurs apart and outside of the space and time of the created universe. If God created time, then past, present, and future are frames seen from our perspective within creation, not from God’s perspective as creator.

I was raised in a non-Trinitarian tradition. I realized in college that I believed the Nicene Creed. This is what led me ultimately to Anglicanism. So here are a few thoughts about the doctrine of the Trinity from someone who came to the belief honestly.


It is a difficult doctrine. It seeks to describe what is by definition beyond our experience, our language, and our cognitive range.

The first impression you have when reading the creed is that it must have been the product of a committee. Contradictory phrases stand side by side, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. “There is only one God” vs. “Jesus Christ is God too, and so is the Holy Spirit.” Jewish monotheism seems to have been undermined by a Gentile tendency to deify great historical figures.

The ugly side of story behind the creed doesn’t help—the story of the Arian-Athanasian controversy. Christians killed other Christians in street rioting that exploded intermittently over a 200 year period. Wanting peace, Emperors insisted that there be a single doctrine. They called Church Councils to fix the problem, and then later ordered them to adopt specific solutions. The councils themselves were marred by behavior we don’t like to think of as appropriate for discerning the will of God: opposition bishops were prevented by trickery and by force from attending or voting. On occasion, a minority on both sides used entrapment, blackmail, and character assassination against each other. When the compromise language drawn up by the councils did not resolve the problem, but only encouraged more controversy, Christian princes on either side of the argument actually fought wars with each other. The whole thing makes the current disharmony within the Anglican Communion look like an amicable afternoon tea.

The politics of Church Councils and the promulgation of the Creed did not resolve the controversy. What resolved it was further theological reflection that made many of the specific arguments seem irrelevant. Great scholars and mystics of the Eastern Church—the Cappadocian Fathers Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianus—working on the basis of the creeds, scripture, and deep reflection in a comprehensive program of spiritual direction and prayer, expressed a new phrasing and understanding for what Christians had been praying, living, and reading in their scriptures.


They used the image of the three-in-one and one-in-three character of God, which they expressed with the Greek word trias (three-ness, or trinity). Before the Cappadocians clearly phrased the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, both sides of the controversy would merely quote scriptures at each other that they thought proved their own position. The Fathers showed that these contrary elements of scripture were actually describing varying elements of a greater mystery.

This new fusion of older materials, which the larger Church rapidly recognized as its true faith, included several elements.

Personhood is not the same as being. The fathers taught that God is one being in three persons, and three persons in one being. For us human beings, there is a correspondence between person and being: one person is one being, and that is that. So we assume that they are the same thing. But the Fathers were clear—we are made in God’s image, but God is the original, and we are the pale imitation. In God, there is no correspondence of person and being.


God is more than personal, not less. People today often will say something like, “I believe in God, just not in a personal God.” If you ask them what they mean, they generally say that they don’t think the mystery and wonder and purpose behind life and the universe that they feel at an emotional level can be reduced to the limitations of what we usually think of as a person. But because they have automatically tied the concept of personhood to that limitation, what I think they actually end up believing in is something less than a person. Something more like a gas, or a light, or another non-sentient object. The fathers, through consistently de-linking the concept of personhood with being, described a God truly personal without limitation. Rather than a gas, they described relationship or society.

“How is it even possible to have ‘person’ and ‘being’ distinct?” Remember we are talking about God, about something beyond all that we know. C.S. Lewis compares us talking about God to a flat-lander living in a two-dimensional world talking about a cube. We ask “how can three persons be one being?” The flat-lander asks, “how can six squares be one shape?” The flatlander cannot conceive of a cube, a solid geometric form whose six sides are each a square, each in its own plane.

God is social. God is love. By describing God as an eternal Holy Trinity of Parent, Child, and Sacred Breath, the Fathers described relationship apart from time. The three in unity have always been that way from our perspective within time. The parent-child relationship is a metaphor of desiring and responding, of willing and obeying, of loving and returning love. This unity of persons is so real that it itself is person. When most people say, “God is love,” they actually mean “love is God.” Saying that God is love, and has always been love is nonsensical unless you believe that within God there is a social relation between persons. Some of the fathers described the relationship as a dance that goes on and on.

Often on Trinity Sunday, we recite a statement of Trinitarian faith, anachronistically called the Athanasian Creed, that states this more explicitly. It was probably written in the fifth century after the Church had digested the teachings of the Cappadocian Fathers

So what does this mean for us? I like to think of the Holy Trinity in terms of God as transcendent, as particular, and as immanent.


God as Parent is the aspect we characterize as the transcendent, impassible, all-mighty. It is God acting across the broad sweep of history or in the national saga of a people identified as God’s. What we are not, this aspect of God is. For the average person’s needs, the Almighty is certainly strong enough to rely on in times of trouble. But on occasion he seems perhaps too inaccessible, maybe not really available. Jesus clearly saw this; his response was to call God “Father,” and to teach his disciples to do the same.

God as Child is the aspect we characterize as particular: it has a human face, and that face is Jesus of Nazareth. And it just isn’t a face of God, a mask. Jesus was a real human being with all the limitations, pains, and weakness that implies (save sin). So God as child is personal, historical, submitted, all-passionate, all-bearing As a historical person who lived and taught as a Jew in Roman-occupied Palestine and suffered a cruel and unfair death for political rebellion, he is perhaps too particular and limited; while loving and compassionate, he is perhaps too weak to rely on. But Easter, resurrection, and ascension fill the gap between “Jesus of Nazareth” and “the second person of the Holy Trinity.”

God as the Breath or spirit that makes us more that we are, is the immanent aspect of God. It is personally and communally available, transforming and sanctifying. Because this is experienced in our hearts, it is perhaps too internal and prone to being mistaken or misused. But its action in the Church, its book (the Holy Bible), sacraments, and social service serves as a corrective to solipsistic spirituality.

Let me close by affirming that I believe in one God. This one true God has revealed God’s self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, unchanged and unchanging in eternity. The way I know this God most particularly and clearly is in Jesus Christ, whom I experience through the Spirit. I am driven by the spirit to face the Father in prayer, with Jesus at my side encouraging me and modeling the way. God is love, and wants us to join in the dance.

In the name of God, Amen.

+++

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
(Symbolum Nicenum)

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, visible and invisible.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the virgin Mary, and became truly human. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried; on the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]*. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

*filioque: added later in the western Church.

+++

Quicumque Vult
(Symbolum Quicumque Athanasian Creed)

Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the catholic faith.

Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish eternally.

Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being.

For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another.

But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty.

What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit.

Uncreated is the Father; uncreated is the Son; uncreated is the Spirit.

The Father is infinite; the Son is infinite; the Holy Spirit is infinite.

Eternal is the Father; eternal is the Son; eternal is the Spirit: And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal; as there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings, but one who is uncreated and unlimited.

Almighty is the Father; almighty is the Son; almighty is the Spirit: And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty.

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

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

As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as 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; the Son was neither made nor created, but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created, but is proceeding from the Father and the Son.

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

And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the Trinity in unity and the one God in three persons.

Whoever wants to be saved should think thus about the Trinity.

It is necessary for eternal salvation that one also faithfully believe that our Lord Jesus Christ became flesh.

For this is the true faith that we believe and confess: That our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, is both God and man.

He is God, begotten before all worlds from the being of the Father, and he is man, born in the world from the being of his mother -- existing fully as God, and fully as man with a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father in divinity, subordinate to the Father in humanity.

Although he is God and man, he is not divided, but is one Christ.

He is united because God has taken humanity into himself; he does not transform deity into humanity.

He is completely one in the unity of his person, without confusing his natures.

For as the rational soul and body are one person, so the one Christ is God and man.

He suffered death for our salvation. He descended into hell and rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

At his coming all people shall rise bodily to give an account of their own deeds.

Those who have done good will enter eternal life, those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.

This is the catholic faith.

One cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.