Column: Our relationship with God

Published 10:20 am Friday, June 12, 2009

June 7 was Holy Trinity Sunday, the day when we celebrated our one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The task of first-year seminarians, at least back in the early ‘90s when I went to school, is to explain the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This process left me more confused at the end of the assignment than when we began. What made this exercise so challenging is trying to completely understand the complexity of anyone — their heart, motives, story, relationships, life. That is indescribably difficult to do that with even the people closest to us, let alone God. As we fumble through and get tied up in language, God starts sounding more like an idea, rather than a living one in three persons.

Another trap we fall into when we articulate who God is three in one, one in three is that we use objects. I have objectified God in children’s sermons.God is like water — you’ve got liquid, you’ve got ice, you’ve got steam; it is all H2O but it takes on different properties depending upon energy. Or we say God is like an apple — one apple, yet it has a peel, meat, a core. But once again, God is not a thing, but the living Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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Though this language is unsatisfactory because it tends to reduce God to an idea or an object, I don’t want to dismiss the doctrine as unimportant or unnecessary. The truth the doctrine of the Trinity offers us is that our God is a relational God, and God can only be understood and experienced and known in language of relationship. Someone once described the Trinity by saying, God is Father, God is Son, and the love they have for each other, the love they have for their creation, the love they have for us is the Holy Spirit.

As we get to know this God and the word in which his life unfolds, one comes to faith, comes to see about really the only thing that matters in the end is the quality of our relationships. It’s all that really matters. How we love one another, how we are loved by God.

Jesus says, “If you have a religious gift, but our at odds with one another, go and make up before you offer your sacrifice.”

Jesus says, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Jesus says, “Wash each other’s feet.”

Jesus says, “Once upon a time there was a good Samaritan. Once upon a time, there was a prodigal son.”

Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God, love your neighbor as yourself.” Again and again, in the Scriptures, in Jesus’ Word, in the story of our salvation, it is all about relationship; being connected to God, to our neighbor, to each other.

Last Sunday at Salem we honored our graduates. When I ran into them at their job, or attended their open house, I tried really hard to avoid the question they are sick of answering: “So, what are you going to do now?” I just think it is the wrong question, not a Kingdom of God question. It is the world’s question. “What are you going to do?” “What are you going to have?” “Who are you going to be?” These are not necessarily questions of faith.

If we think of our God as a relationship God, perhaps the questions we should ask our young people, and ourselves is, “Who are you going to be with?” “Who is going to accompany you through life?” “Who will go with you?”

Our God is experienced in relationship, and our Lord shows us and tells us again and again that how we treat each other, our brothers and sisters, how we love each other, is all that really matters. Meaningful relationships are always difficult. Every relationship that has lasted in your life has had two components — forgiveness and suffering. Being a family or being a church is never easy, but as we suffer with him, we are glorified with him. As we suffer with and for each other, we know the love of the Father, the love of the Son, the Love called their Spirit.

So whether you graduated on Friday night, or seventy years ago, who will go with you? Who will you spend your time with? Your life with? Jaroslav Pelikan was a renowned Lutheran scholar at Yale, who told the story of his 8-year-old daughter singing, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But Pelikan knew this was not accurate. It wasn’t accurate because his 8-year-old daughter had never read the Bible. No, she knew that Jesus loved her all right, but it was because her mommy and daddy told her so; and her Sunday School teacher and pastor told her so; and the songs in the church told her so.

She knew that Jesus loved her, because her community, the people that Jesus loved, showed her so.