St. Stephens Blog

There are two ways that we can approach the Holy Trinity. We can, as has often been done, try and explain the how of a God in three Persons, understanding that persons of course does not mean three distinct people, nor is God somehow suffering from some kind of multi-personality disorder.

This was attemoted by Athanasius in his confession of the Christian faith we call The Creed of Saint Athanasius.

Read Creed of Athanasius or at least begin to.

Now you get it. That all makes perfect sense doesn’t it. If Athanasius can’t make it make sense, what hope have we got.

But this is to miss the point. Fundamentally, ‘how?’ is not the correct question. All too often we modern thinkers fall into the trap of asking post-enlightenment, post-modernity questions of how. We approach the Bible in the same way; asking how God created the heavens and the earth and all that is within them. ‘How?’ is not a question of writers of the Bible or those who proclaim the faith. The questions we want to be asking are ‘Why?’ questions. Why did this happen? Why was this event understood in this way by those who witnessed it? Why am I being told this story?

Athanasius is quite correct though, Christian faith must involve an understanding of one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, concluding with ‘which except a man believeth faithfully, he [sic] cannot be saved.’

There are, two essentials that define Christian faith, according to Athanasius, and I agree with him. Essential number one: God is Trinity. Essential number two: the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus who has become known as the Christ. If anyone or any group claims to be a Christian these two essentials are the defining tests. Whether they call themselves Christian or not, they are not of the Christian faith if they cannot hold to these two basic tenets.

If this aspect of the one God as Trinity is so important to us, it is not that we are able to explain it or understand it that becomes important, it is what does it mean for our life as Christians.

The Godhead is a relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in perfect community. The Godhead is relational and, although the Trinity is relationally fulfilled in itself, the relational nature desires to open its community to the other, it desires to relate, the Trinity creates the cosmos including humans in order to have something outside of itself to relate to because the Trinity is relational. And the Trinity does this in an extraordinary way. It takes upon itself the stuff of its creation in the incarnational event. The incarnation of God in Jesus is the ultimate in the expression of the relational nature of the Holy Trinity.

That the church is in decline, suggests that it has forgotten this aspect of its image and likeness in its creation. It has forgotten to be relational. It has forgotten to be incarnational. It has forgotten to relate to the world. I suspect this may have something to do with the fear of not being able to explain what it is that we believe about God. Fair enough, in this ‘How?’ world in which we live. But the point is not that we should explain it, but that we should express it and live it.

A Church that is living its faith in a God that is Trinity is a Church that is in the mission of building relationships. We have said it time and time again, our faith is a relational faith. It is not about rules and morality, it is about relationship with the living, risen, ascended Christ. If we are not nurturing our relationship with God we are letting the Father down. If we are not building relationships with one another we are letting Christ down. If we are not nurturing relationships with those who are the lost we are letting the Holy Spirit down.

God as one in Trinity is not to be explained; it is to be lived for it is our identity and it is our purpose.

Last week I introduced the idea that in order for people to be able to respond to Jesus for who he is, they need to find a place amongst those who are Jesus’ sheep; that is, they need to hang out with people who are hanging out with Jesus and hang out with Jesus themselves. So we heard Jesus say to those Jews who gathered around him in the Temple, in response to the question to state publicly that he was the Messiah, “I have told you, but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.”

Today, from the book of Acts, we hear the account of Peter’s explanation to the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem why he went to the home of Cornelius, a Roman soldier. Cornelius and his family were converts to Judaism, known as devout and God-fearing, and gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. (Acts 10:1-2) But even so, the believers in Jesus considered themselves a sect of Judaism, therefore Cornelius was still considered a Gentile with whom Jews could not associate. Besides, hadn’t Jesus told his disciples, at one stage, to go to no one but the lost sheep of Israel?

When Peter goes to Jerusalem, the leaders in the church criticised him, asking, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Peter tells his story of his triplicate vision and ‘the voice from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane,” of the arrival of the servants of Cornelius, that six fellow believers had accompanied hi from Joppa to Caesarea, and Cornelius’ vision of an Angel telling him that “[Peter] will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” So Peter went, because he believed that was what the Holy Spirit was telling him to do.

Peter explains that while he was telling Cornelius about Jesus Christ, his baptism by John, the work and ministry of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins, “the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.”

When this happened, Peter recalls, “I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

We ourselves would recall, as was important for Peter to include in his account to Cornelius, when Jesus was baptised, ‘the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”’ (Luke 3:21-22) The Holy Spirit does not appear again at Jesus’ transfiguration, when similar words to these are spoken, because Jesus has already been confirmed in his belonging to God at his baptism by the Holy Spirit.

The presence of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, fundamental to our understanding of belonging to Jesus, for ‘Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him,’ (Romans 8.9) and ‘it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,’ (Romans 8.16) and ‘In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.’ (Ephesians 1.13)

There is, then a clear difference between belonging to the church, being one of Jesus sheep, and belonging to Jesus. It seems clear that Cornelius was one of those who belonged to Jesus’ sheep – he was open to God in prayer and responding to how he understood God to be, in generously meeting the needs of others. His belonging to Jesus became marked in the receiving of the Holy Spirit and they began speaking in tongues and praising God. (Acts 10:46)

This was enough for the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem, who were silenced in their criticism, ‘And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”’ Through Cornelius it was realised that Gentiles could also share in the fullness of belonging to Jesus, not just being God-fearers. God had challenged and transformed the values of the developing early church.

There are, then two forms of belong that are related to two works of belonging. The first is our work, our choosing to belong to the church, belonging to Jesus’ sheep, hanging out with Jesus and hanging out with others who are hanging out with Jesus. But we are not saved by our work, we are dependent upon God. God’s work in our belonging, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is the Spirit that enables us to belong to Jesus and participate in the Divine Godhead, ‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.’ (Romans 8.14)

There is then, two aspects o our mission. One is enabling others to find a sense of belonging in our being church, to hang out with Jesus amongst those who are hanging out with Jesus, for the purpose of enabling them to find a sense of belonging to Jesus by his Spirit.

One of the things that give us a sense of belonging is our common values, those things that are important to us, those ideals that inform our priorities and choices. I have come to realise, in my study of how congregations operate, that some values, which may create a very strong sense of belonging for those who are a part of a parish and congregation, can mean that others feel excluded and unable to belong.

In our review of our mission action plan of 2007 we explored those things that we valued about St Stephens, the top 10 in order of importance were:
Loving People
Family
Godly Leadership
Biblical Teaching
Encouraging Others
Prayer
Forgiveness
Seeking God’s Will
Relationship with God
Evangelism
All these values are good, but it seems to me that, if we are going to ‘Grow a Christian Community for All’ there is something wrong with the priority of these values. Your Vestry simply identified and prioritised what they believed to be the values of St Stephens without looking critically at them. Relationship with God and Evangelism, for example, need to have a higher priority.

For the purpose, therefore, of creating a church with priorities to fulfil our vision, rather than hang on to the things we value, which are clearly not enabling us to fulfil the vision, we need to be creating values that will transform us as a church. If we are to be a church that is enabling people to have a sense of belonging amongst us, so that they can find belonging to Jesus, then we need to put in place values that will speak to that desire and motivate the strategies to fulfil this desire.

For this reason, as a part of our ongoing work reviewing our Mission Action Plan and its presentation, I will be asking Vestry to explore values that we need to have in order that we can fulfil our vision and mission. I know that some of these values will be different to the things that you value and this will create some tension amongst us, but, as the reading this morning shows us, God did not leave the early church in the values they had, but created in them new values to inspire their mission – and aren’t we grateful, because if God had not done so, we would not be sharing in the wonder of Jesus’ salvation of us.