Before We Have All The Answers

June 12, 2022

Hope Lutheran Church

John 16:12-15

Before We Have All the Answers

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. On this day we consider and marvel at the nature of God. God has revealed God’s self to us as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And yet God is still one. God is the great one-in-three and the three-in-one. It’s impossible for us to fully comprehend.

The Episcopal priest and writer Robert Farrar Capon described our limited ability to comprehend the transcendence and mystery of God like this: “When we try to describe God we are like an oyster trying to describe a ballerina.”

God is a trinity of one! It’s beyond our reckoning. The very nature of the divine Trinity confronts us with our human limitation. WE DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS! In this life, we never will. St. Paul put it this way:

“For now we see as through a mirror, dimly; but then, we’ll see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

The Trinity oneness of God reminds us of our limitations. God is larger than our minds can contain. This is where we dwell now. We dwell in that time before we shall see face to face. We dwell in the time before we have all the answers. For now we can only marvel at the majesty and the mystery of God.

This Trinity Sunday reminds us of our limits. And this is a gift. Recognizing our limitations gives us permission not to understand everything. In in our unknowing, there is one greater than we are. The wisdom and reality of God is exceedingly more vast and deep than our own capacity. And isn’t that the way you want it? If you completely understood God, if God fully fit within the confines of your mind, then God would be smaller than you, less than you. Is that what you want? What good is a God who is less than you? The oyster becomes greater than the ballerina!

Not knowing, not having all of the answers about God keeps us searching. We remain open and curious, we continue to search the scriptures, we listen in the quiet of prayer, we give thanks for the greatness of God.

When we feel that we’ve mastered something, we close down. We know it all! The same thing happens in our life of faith. When we as the church feel that we’ve “mastered” our understanding of God and how we fit within God’s master plan, then we become dogmatic and brittle, we adopt a superior attitude. We know! We know the heart and will of God! We can speak for God! It’s as if WE are the ones sitting at the right hand of the Father, WE are the ones who will judge the living and the dead!

But that isn’t our place. As my internship supervisor, Orlyn Huwe, liked to say, “Mary, we’re in sales, not management.” It’s been sage advice to me! We recognize that our understanding and wisdom is but a drop in the infinite bucket of our God!

On this Holy Trinity Sunday we reflect and marvel at the greatness of the living God, three-in-one. So let us take a little time to dwell in the wonder of each person of this divine One God. Here, too, we’re lost in wonder, love and praise.

God the Father. God has revealed God’s self as the Father. Now, we might run up against the sharp corners of our limitations if our relationship with our own earthly father has been a challenge. For those who did not have a father present in their lives. Or perhaps the word Father conjures up painful and confusing memories of abuse and harsh judgment.

Calling God “Father” gets mixed up in our human experience. But the point of calling God “Father” as opposed to the more generic “Parent” is to evoke a personal relationship with our creator. Certainly, we each have two biological parents, and in that sense, God could just as easily be understood as “Mother.” The first person of the Trinity has been revealed as Father. It’s associated with that first intimate connection each of us has when we enter this world – that between parent and child.

God has been revealed to us as God the Father. God is the source of our being. All of creation, in its vast diversity, has sprung from the infinite imagination of God. We are created to be in relation with our loving God! One who creates and protects us and cares intimately for us as a loving father.

This vast creation bears witness to the limitless creativity of our God. Methodist pastor Earl Langguth wrote a poem “The Wizard of Awes.” The universe proclaims the awesome greatness of our creator God: