Romans 8:12-17  “The Unfrozen Chosen”

INTRODUCTION

            John Calvin, the reformer who founded the Presbyterian system of church governance was a rather serious and austere character. His followers were often similarly dour in countenance.  One of Calvin’s tenets, predestination, became a hallmark of early followers of the reformer.  These factors combined to earn Presbyterians the reputation as “the frozen chosen.”  Perpetuating this reputation is our tendency to approach faith with our minds.  From childhood, we try to make sense of the words we hear.

            A pastor recalls that while friends from India traveled around California on business, they left their 11-year-old daughter with the pastor and her family. Curious about my going to church one Sunday morning, she decided to come along. When we returned home, my husband asked her what she thought of the service. 
            “I don’t understand why the West Coast isn’t included too” she replied. When we asked what she meant, she explained, “You know, in the name of the Father, the Son and the whole East Coast.” [1]

            Today is Trinity Sunday.  The Trinity, traditionally described as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is confusing, not just to children, but to adults as well.  So many questions are asked, such as, “Are Christians pantheists, believing in many gods?  Why are there three aspects of the Trinity instead of two or four or twenty?  Which one is more important—the Father, the Son, or the Spirit?  THREE IN ONE

            The basic belief is that God is three-in-one.  Three in one is a hot concept. Google “Three-in-one” and you’ll find a slew of three-in-one products, such as: three-in-one cheese ball recipe, three-in-one spectroscopy, three-in-one filling machines, three-in-one furnaces, three-in-one tree-tea oils, three-in-one tablet PC, three-in-one vaccine, three-in-one timer circuits, three-in-one convertible cribs, three-in-one flex-head massagers, three-in-one virus zapper, three-in-one casino game table — and more.[2]

          The church argued long and hard over the Trinity.  The doctrine of the Trinity emerges from the baptismal formula found in the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew—“baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”  We used this basic formula this morning when we baptized Cameron.  But arguments arose over the relationship among the three aspects of the Trinity, and eventually evolved into a semantics disagreement.

The church continued to argue about it, causing a major split between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church.          

If I talk about church doctrine this morning, I run the risk of your eyes glazing over and slumber falling upon the congregation in a wave.  Though many people want a more intimate relationship with God, most don’t want to think too hard about it.  Answering these questions about the Trinity becomes an intellectual exercise. Yet, though the Bible never refers to the Trinity per se, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Spirit aspects of God weave their way throughout the Bible.  And it is difficult to get around the import of the description when Jesus directed us to baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

THE TREE

Metaphors abound for describing the Trinity.  The following is one I like.   There is a tree in Johannesburg, South Africa, that stands in the yard of a Catholic retreat center. When viewing from a particular angle, one sees a singular tree with a very large trunk. From another angle, the tree appears as three distinct trees, down to the very roots. The tree was nicknamed Trinity — Three-in-One. The base of the tree became a meeting ground where community was experienced. There, and around its trunks, the deep things of life were discussed. No matter where you leaned on the tree, you were supported. No matter where you gazed upon it, it was beautiful. Three trunks, one tree, inseparable and unified at its base, drawing us into fellowship with one another.[3]
            Our language limits communicating about God, for God is beyond what our minds can conceive, let alone our feeble attempts to describe the Holy using words.  Rather than defining a systematic theology of the Trinity, we can focus on the relational aspect of God.  One of my theology professors in seminary described God as the “history of community-forming love.”

GOD’S ADOPTED KIDS

In this morning’s passage from Romans, Paul describes God in working in a relational way as God and with human beings.  Paul encourages his readers to put aside a focus on immediate self-gratification, desires of the flesh, as he calls them.  He states that the Spirit of God has put such desires to death.  The Spirit leads us into relationship with God.  So we are no longer enslaved to the ways of the world, living fearfully. We are children of God.  Replacing fear is the spirit of adoption as children of God.  We are God’s chosen children.

Perhaps the early followers of Calvin were focusing too much on being chosen as an opportunity to form an exclusive community keeping rules and regulations, rather than a joyous community celebrating God’s love. Often an equilateral triangle has been used to depict God with each point representing one of the three aspects of God.  But the geometric shape of a triangle is limiting. Belief in the Trinity is ultimately a matter of faith. It is not a concept that can be comprehended by mental abilities alone.  Early church father Augustine wrote: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” [4] A leader of the church during the late 7^th and early 8^th centuries, John of Damascus, described God with a Greek word—perichoresis.  The translation of this word is circle dance.  In this description, God is a dancing circle, dynamic and moving.  To see Creator, Redeemer or Spirit is to see all.[5]  We are invited into the dance, like children holding hands with loving parents, joining in the dance of life.

WHAT KIND OF FAITH FOR OUR CHILDREN

Today on this Trinity Sunday, we invite a new child into this dance of life.  Cameron will grow in faith as his parents and others who love him share the love of God with him.

Developmental psychologist, “Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto finds that despite our secularization and religious fragmentation, religious symbols and language are so widely present in society that virtually no child reaches school age without having constructed–with or without religious instruction–an image of God.”[6] It is amazing to me how many parents are so concerned about the education their children receive in school, but are totally unconcerned about their spiritual development, abandoning their children to the culture, allowing the society around them to shape their children’s concepts of God.   Shouldn’t we be as concerned for the spiritual nurture of our children as we are about their physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being?

God is understood through relationship.  Richard Norris explains in his book Understanding the Faith of the Church, that Trinity is one way to speak of our relation to God:
“It is, first of all, a relation of creature to Creator. At the same time, it is a relation of sinner to Redeemer. Finally, it is the relation of one in process of transformation to the Power which transforms. This is the threefold way in which Christian faith knows and receives the God of the exodus and the resurrection.”[7]

CONCLUSION

            Paul in Romans describes the children of God as co-heirs with Christ.  Connected to God through our brother/savior Christ, we are drawn away from  self-destructive pursuits to both experience and share the dance of love with God.  We need to get out of our heads and open our hearts to God, to feel the rhythm of the dance in our souls.  We have an opportunity to become the “unfrozen chosen!”  As the unfrozen chosen we join in God’s dance of love, not keeping to ourselves as if we were the only ones chosen to dance, but in our gratitude for being chosen as children of God, enthusiastically inviting others to join in the dance.  Amen.