[Guide us, Lord, to walk in the path in which you would lead us.....]

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Trinity    
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Canticle 2 or 13 Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15
St Martin’s Church, Kalamazoo
Fr. Joseph Clayton Neiman

Homily:

“What How do we speak of God?”

What do you mean, what do you believe, when you say the word, “god”?

Take the story of Jacob, age 4, and his mother.
Jacob asks: Is God everywhere?
Mother answers: Yes, dear, God is everywhere.
Jacob: Is God in this room?
Mother: Yes, dear, God is in this room.
Jacob: Is God in my glass?
Mother growing impatient: Yes, Jacob, God is in your glass.
Jacob covered his glass with his hands and exclaims: “Gotcha ya!”

All of us want to grab and control God, and we do so because our image, our vision of God is way too small. Like little Jacob, we think we can catch God not necessarily in a glass but in our theological formulas. The theological formula, which we celebrate today in part, is the dogma of the Trinity from the Council of Chalcedon in 451CE. You can read the statement on page 864 of the Book of Common Prayer. But remember when you read a Christian dogma that it is the beginning of a discussion. As Fr. Eugene Burke said: "A dogmatic pronouncement is NOT the end of the discussion of the substance of the pronouncement; rather it is merely the official beginning of the development of that particular dogma! Free and uninhibited discussion and action certainly should follow. Dogmas are living entities! "

In 1952, before some of you were born, an Anglican priest in London by the name of John Bertram Phillips found that the youth in his congregation did not understand the Bible, so he started new, fresh, more contemporary translations for which he became quite well known after World War II. Also in 1952 he published a small paperback book which sold thousands – hundreds of used copies are available on Amazon. It was called: Your God Is Too Small.

In the book he tried to do what the ancient prophet, Isaiah, and John, the visionary who wrote the book of Revelation, did, namely, help people see that their small, limited comprehension of who is God and what God does or says or wants from us is entirely too small.  Let’s hear some of that larger vision of God from the Scriptures.

Continued