Three-In-One

Three-In-One

Ephesians 4:1-6

August 5, 2018 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When we were in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago, I was one of the van drivers. My main task for the week was to get fifteen of us to and from the work sites, as well as to and from St. Louis itself! One of the “privileges” of having the keys to the van is that you get to get up and go fill it up with gas in the morning before the work begins! That really wasn’t a big deal, though, because Amy Woodard and I were out every morning for our caffeine infusions. Very important when you’re on a mission trip with 24 youth to be adequately caffeinated! So one morning, after getting the caffeine, we went to fill up the van with gas. I pulled into the gas station, even got the van positioned on the correct side, jumped out and began searching for the gas tank. I went up and down the side of the van, I looked in the back and even tried to pull down the license plate (kids, gas tanks used to be behind the license plate!). Nothing. Nada. No gas tank to be found. So I went back to the driver’s seat and said to Amy, “Where’s the gas tank?” I, being a man of course, got out and started looking again, but Amy went right for the owner’s manual. Lo and behold, guess which one of us found where the gas tank was! You had to open the driver’s door and leave it open to be able to access the cap on the gas tank. I had never seen a gas tank in that location before! So, anyway, we got it filled up and headed back to pick up our group.

But the whole experience got me to thinking about this sermon series. Many if not most of us, when we became a Christian and started trying to follow Jesus, just jump into things. We just start “driving,” you might say, with little to no knowledge of what is in the “owner’s manual.” That is to say: we don’t know the story. And sometimes we get pretty good at “driving,” so much so that we don’t take the time even later to read the “owner’s manual.” We rely solely on what others have told us the story is about. Until the wheels fall off. Until life falls apart. Until nothing makes sense anymore. It’s in moments like that we realize we haven’t really learned our story. So in these weeks we are re-learning our story, the bigger story that God is telling and has been telling throughout history. So far, we’ve focused on the author and on the theme of the story. But there is one more piece we want to put in place before we launch into the story itself, and it’s a piece we often ignore because we don’t understand it well. Without this piece, we can’t really understand everything God is up to in the bigger story.

The problem is that the piece we want to talk about this morning is also difficult to understand. Imagine, if you will, the disciples who had started following Jesus. They were all good Jews, which meant they were monotheists. They believed there is only one God. Every day, most likely, they repeated these words from Deuteronomy 6: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (6:4). In many ways, monotheism (belief in one God) is one of the big things that set them apart from all of their neighbors, most of whom believed in a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses. Then, they meet Jesus, and he says crazy things like, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus claims to be God, or at least he claims to be equal to God. What does a good monotheist do with that? And while they are still struggling with that, he starts talking about someone else, a Holy Spirit, an Advocate whom Jesus says will come after he is gone to testify about him, to glorify Jesus, and to lead the disciples into “all the truth” (John 16:13). Jesus told the disciples this the night before he was crucified, but it took the church a couple of centuries to figure out what Jesus meant. In the end, the church landed on a doctrine we call the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons. It sounds simple, but it’s not. Even all these centuries later, we still struggle to understand this idea, and even to know what to do with it. So we do what we always do in those situations: we ignore it. We just don’t talk about it. We have what some have called TDD: Trinitarian Deficit Disorder (cf. Smith, The Magnificent Story, pgs. 40-41). This morning, we want to ask this question: does this ancient doctrine mean anything to us today?

Of course, as some folks like to point out, the word “trinity” does not appear in the Bible. But there are a lot of words that don’t appear there; that doesn’t mean the idea is not there. In fact, in the passage we read this morning, the apostle Paul shows us some of the early understanding of God being three-in-one. In this passage, Paul passes effortlessly in his language from talking about the Spirit, to talking about Jesus, to talking about the Father. He begins with the Spirit, or the “one Spirit,” in verse 4. In this short verse, he tells us two things about the Spirit, that he lives within the body of Christ (the church) and that he is the one who guarantees our hope. Earlier in this letter, Paul says that the Spirit is a “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (1:14). In other words, the Spirit has taken care of the down payment; he’s guaranteeing that the hope we’re holding out for will be fulfilled, that we will receive what we are hoping for. And he gives us hope by living within us; to the Romans, Paul wrote this: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children” (Romans 8:16). So, by the word “Spirit” on your outline, write the word “hope.” The Spirit gives us hope, and hope will not disappoint us (cf. Romans 5:5). We will receive what we have hoped for. On difficult days, when it seems like life is against you, the Spirit will whisper to your heart: there is hope. The challenge we have is to not drown out the voice of the Spirit.

Paul then switches gears and focuses on Jesus the Son, the Lord. Verse 5 is a favorite verse for Bible memorization, second only I think to John 11:35. That one says, “Jesus wept.” This one is just a little longer: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” The earliest Christian creed was simply, “Jesus is Lord.” So by the word “Son” on your outline, write the word “Lord.” Jesus is Lord. And while that sounds simple, it was a radical statement in a world where, for the most part, Caesar was considered to be Lord. Beyond the political system, the first century religious world had a lot of different “lords,” but Christians dared to say that there was only one Lord whose claim over our lives is absolute. It’s not “Jesus and…” It’s just Jesus. He is Lord. He is the focus of our faith. It is his death and resurrection we identify with when we are baptized. It’s an unfortunate sign of our times that this act, baptism, that should unite Christians is something we fight over. We argue over how much water, the way someone should stand and what they should profess. We argue over what age at which a person should or can be baptized. We fuss over infant baptism or believer’s baptism, and over whether or not we can recognize baptism that took place in another tradition. We miss the point of the baptism altogether. It’s supposed to point us to Jesus, to identify us with his death and his resurrection, and therefore it should be something that brings us together. We’ll talk more about that in a moment, but let’s remember that baptism doesn’t really “do” anything for us. As someone once said many years ago in regard to baptism, it doesn’t matter if you’re sprinkled or dunked, it doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, it doesn’t matter when or where, if you don’t know Jesus, you just got wet.

So—Spirit, Son, and then Paul turns his attention to the Father in verse 6: “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” The title of “Father” has, in the last few years, become controversial when it’s applied to God, but the problem is not with God, and it’s not really with us or our experience. The problem is the way we have understood God as Father. As J. D. Walt recently put it, we all have a male who helped give us life but we did not all have a father. Some of us who did not have a good father in our childhood struggle with approaching and experiencing God as a good Father. That song on the radio, “Good, Good Father,” may be a hard one for us to hear because the image of father, for some of us, is forever distorted. Here’s the question, though: rather than punishing God because we had a bad earthly father, why not allow the possibility of a good Father in heaven to heal our memory of a broken father on earth? In other words, God can be the father we never had, because he is a father who will not let us down, who will always be there and who will always do what is best for us. God has no gender; to call God “Father” does not mean God is in any way male. The reason the Biblical text uses that language to describe God has to do with spiritual realities, not biological ones (Walt, Seedbed Daily Text, 7/20/2018). It has to do with the way God protects and defends us, as a good father would. It has to do with relationship, with nurture, and with provision more than anything else. And we know that. Deep within us, we know that. Why do we always instinctively want to hear the 23rd Psalm in the midst of a difficult time? Because it reminds us of God’s presence, God’s provision and God’s protection. So by the word “God” on your outline, write the word, “Protector.” God the Father, the one over all, who gives us the Son and the Spirit is, according to Paul, over all and through all and in all. He is everywhere at once, caring for his children and providing what we need.

So this is a big part of the context of the bigger story: God as three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each person of the Trinity meeting a need we have. But God is not only three persons; he is one God. This is where we jump into the mystery box somewhat, because three-in-one doesn’t make sense to us. Some developed analogies to try to explain it. St. Patrick, famously, used the three-leaf clover to explain the trinity to the Irish. He would ask his hearers, “Is it one leaf or three?” And they would respond, “It’s both one and three.” “And so it is with God,” Patrick would conclude (cf. Smith 37-38). I remember when I was younger hearing the Trinity explained in terms of roles—how each of us have many roles we fulfill in life. For instance, I am a husband to Cathy, a father to Christopher and Rachel and an uncle to a whole lot of other kids. I am one person, with at least three roles. And I remember also, early in my ministry, explaining the Trinity in terms of H20, how H20 can be water, or steam, or ice, depending on the situation. But it’s all the same chemical compound: H20. Maybe some of those analogies are helpful, but they all break down because God is so much more and so much deeper than any of that. He is three-in-one, and over and over again in this passage from Ephesians, Paul stresses the “one” nature of the Trinity. We may, at different times, call on the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit, but all are one God in some way we don’t understand. The word “one” is used seven times in this passage, which must mean it's pretty important to Paul, and to us as well.

In fact, Paul directly applies the oneness of the Trinity to the Ephesians’ and our situations when he says this in verse 3: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” The question Paul is implying is this: if God is not divided, why are his children? It’s easy today to point out and pick on the big divisions. The church, Christ’s church, is so obviously divided between east and west, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, and even Protestants are divided. Once we started protesting, we just couldn’t quit! In the United States alone, there are currently somewhere around 200 different Protestant denominations and over 35,000 independent or non-denominational churches. That’s a rather astounding figure, especially when we remember that all of us claim to follow the same authority, and all of us lay claim to the “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” Paul talked about here in Ephesians (cf. http://bit.ly/2LNptJI).

But let’s draw the circle even closer. Within our own United Methodist Church, we have developed deep divisions that, on the surface, appear to be about issues of human sexuality. In reality, the issues are much deeper, and center on Biblical interpretation and authority, what we understand the work of the Holy Spirit to be, and how God calls us to be in ministry together. I know people on various sides of the current debate, and I honestly believe most of them truly want to reach people for Jesus. We just disagree on what that looks like and how we approach particular issues. So for the last three years, some leaders in our denomination have been meeting and have proposed what is called a “way forward.” That proposal will be voted on next February, and I honestly have no idea what the outcome will be. Our Bishop will be here in the West District in October to help us prepare for that, but here’s the thing: we have to honestly answer the question of what “unity” looks like in the wake of a divided church. What does moving forward together really look like?

One more time, let’s draw the circle even closer, because we may not be able to do anything on our own about the divisions in the larger church, or even about the divisions in the United Methodist Church. But Paul’s emphasis on unity calls us to think and prayerfully reflect on what it should look like here, within this church and community. How do we live out Jesus’ call to unity right here and right now? Because we know that in any body of believers, any group of people for that matter, there are bound to be divisions. There are bound to be folks within this congregation who are upset with one another, who disagree with one another, who have trouble even being around each other, and I can guarantee there are some who are upset with one or both of the pastors. I don’t know all of the issues, I’m sure, but I’ve been around the “big-C” church long enough to know it’s true. And when we find ourselves in such situations, we really have two choices. We can take our toys and leave, trying to find “greener pastures” and better people somewhere else. That might seem to work for a while, but the problem is, we take our problems or issues with us. The other choice is this: we stay and work it out. We seek to live into the unity that God himself demonstrates with and in his very life. God is one and wants his people to be one as well.

But here’s the catch: unity is not something we can develop. There’s not a program we implement to make us more one. Unity is a gift; it’s something Jesus says we already are. Our task is to live into the unity we’ve already been given, to reflect the life of God in our congregation. So how do we do that? The first piece, I believe is to realize this truth: there is only one gospel. There is not one gospel for Methodists, another for Presbyterians and another for Catholics. There is one gospel, the Gospel Jesus came to bring. If we believe that gospel, then we are already brothers and sisters with anyone else who believes that gospel, whatever the label might be on their building (Snodgrass, NIV Application Commentary: Ephesians, pg. 198). I told you a couple of weeks ago about growing up in Rossville, where there were (at that time) only three churches. Everyone I knew was either Methodist, Presbyterian or Brethren, and we didn’t really care what you were. We did Lenten services together, we had Bible School together, we even had a combined choir from time to time. I saw that sort of unity lived out because we knew we believed in the same gospel: one Lord, one faith, one baptism. In two of my four appointments, I’ve seen pastors live into that sort of unity. The first time I experienced it was in Rensselaer, where we had a weekly prayer meeting that took most of Tuesday mornings, and in that group we had everything from what I call liberal fundamentalist to conservative fundamentalist—and everything in between! We didn’t always agree with one another, but we loved each other. And we knew that, despite our differences, we shared faith in the one gospel: one Lord, one faith, one baptism. It wasn’t easy; one of our brothers got angry and left for several weeks over a discussion about atonement. We had to work at it constantly, but it wasn’t our agreements that held us together. It was our joint, deep commitment to the gospel. It was a recognition that we were one church in different locations. As one scholar puts it, “There are not several bodies of Christ in different locales, but one body of Christ, and each local congregation is representative of that body” (Snodgrass 198). I’ve seen that happen again here, as pastors gather to pray together and work to value and maintain the unity we have been give by God (cf. Snodgrass 210). If that’s possible between churches, it must be possible between individuals who worship the same God and share faith in the same gospel: one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

At the very beginning of this passage, Paul urges the Ephesians to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (4:1). Living a life worthy of our calling means living in unity, because we represent the God who is unified love (Snodgrass 199). That doesn’t mean differences between churches or denominations or even individuals are unimportant; quite the contrary. I am proud of being a Methodist. I believe our tradition has distinctives that the world needs. That should be evident from the sermons I have preached this summer! I believe our emphasis on holiness, on living out our faith, on a deep discipleship is vital to growth in faith. None of those things are unimportant. Still, we’re called to unity, despite our differences. Here’s the problem: we often think of unity as uniformity, but those are two different things. Uniformity means everyone thinks and acts the same. Unity means we can work and serve and live together even when we are different. John Wesley put it this way. He believed that if two people’s hearts are alike, if both are focused on Jesus and the heart of the gospel, then they can join hands and work together. We must find that way forward, because if we don’t evidence unity in our day, our witness does not deserve to be heard and more than that, it will not be heard. If the children of God cannot find a way to get along, we will have no hearing in the world beyond these walls (cf. Snodgrass 211).

If we’re going to be able to tell the story faithfully, if we’re going to be able to live the story, we must find ways to embrace our oneness, our unity, in Christ. There is, perhaps, no practice that ought to evidence that more than the eucharist, or holy communion. After all, it was on that same night, after Jesus instituted this practice, that he prayed for the unity of all believers. Do you remember his prayer? “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). That the world may believe…he prayed that on the same night he gave us communion. Of course, this act has become just another way we divide ourselves. We argue over wine or grape juice, regular bread or unleavened bread, and whether or not we can use potato chips instead of bread (no kidding). But Jesus meant for this table to bring us together. He even told us if we approach the altar and find we have a disagreement with someone, we should make that right before continuing on to offer our gift at the altar (Matthew 5:23-24). This act of communion should and must bring us together. So let’s allow it to do that today. If there’s someone you’ve had a disagreement with and they are here today, I encourage you to grab them and come together to the table. Let’s allow this sacrament, this meal, to be a place of unity, a place where we are joined together by the same gospel. You can also use our prayer time this morning to ask God to work in your life, maybe soften your heart or theirs, in the life of someone with whom you have disunity. Let’s allow this table this morning to shape us more into the image of God, who is three-in-one, who is unity defined. Join me in prayer as we prepare our hearts for holy communion.