Connecting the Head and the Heart

Matthew 28:16-20

May 22, 2016

Mark S. Bollwinkel

Traditionally the Sunday following Pentecost is known as “Trinity” Sunday, an annual attempt to teach the doctrine of the Trinity to the Church.  We all remember the Trinity, right, the notion of “God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

We sing about it in one of our favorite hymns, No. 64, “Holy, Holy, Holy”; (verse 4) “Holy, holy, holy!  Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity”.  We sing it in our Doxology following the Offertory.  That’s the song we sing in praise of God after we collect our financial gifts to the church, hymn number 95,  “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise God all creatures here below; praise God above the heavenly hosts; praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost”.  If you grew up in a Roman Catholic family you learned to end each and every prayer with the same phrase while genuflecting.

If you grew up in a traditional Protestant church as a kid you probably recited the Apostle’s Creed each Sunday, (No. 881):

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead and buried, On the third day he rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, The holy catholic church, The communion of saints, The forgiveness of sins, The resurrection of the body, And the life everlasting.  Amen.

The Trinity is one of the central doctrines of the Church but we don’t find the word “trinity” anywhere in the Bible.  We find the combination of the words “God”, “Jesus” and “Holy Spirit” only 7 times in the entire New Testament (Acts 2:33, I Cor 12:4-6, II Cor 13:13, Eph 4:4-6, I Pet 1:2, Rev 1:4-5a) and only once as the phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  Which is in our text from Matthew this Sunday.

The Trinity as a notion of God having “one substance and three persons”…Father, Son and Holy Spirit…came from an early church leader by the name of Tertullian (160-220AD).  He was a lawyer from Carthage and a convert to Christianity.  He was the first theologian to write in Latin.  He was the first to come up with the idea of three separate and distinct natures of the one God.

The idea goes like this:

God is the Creator, Source, and the Eternal Transcendent One.  God is above and beyond human comprehension.  This God is universal to all human cultures and time, especially known to Israel as the God who acts to save, love and forgive.  In the awe of nature, the silence of prayer and the presence of another we encounter the God that is “over” us.

God is Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this loving God of Creation.   Jesus was fully human and fully divine, the culmination of God’s saving acts.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead not only offered his disciples the same promise of eternal life, but ushered in the Reign of God on earth.  Jesus is the incarnation of God in human form, one born like us, who would laugh and eat and cry like us, and who would die like us.  Jesus is God “with us”.

God is the Holy Spirit, unleashed because of Jesus.  The Holy Spirit is the divine spark in us all that makes us alive, makes us human.  The Holy Spirit binds each individual into the fellowship of the church empowering the individual and the church to service and loving kindness in this world.  The Holy Spirit is that “friend” and “comforter” (John 14:15-31) that shapes us, moves us and carries us through the hard times.  The Holy Spirit is God “in us”.

God over us.  God with us.  God in us.  That is the Trinity.

Just like an egg.  One egg, three substances.  Shell.  White.  Yoke.  One egg in three persons, blessed trinity!

Even after learning it by repetition, as a child its meaning could be quite confusing:

After a hardy rainstorm filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in the puddle through her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five year old lad, grabbed his sibling by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole.

As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother runs to the yard in a panic.

"Why on earth did you do that to your little brother?!" she says as she shook the older boy in anger. "We were just playing 'church' mommy," he said "And I was just baptizing him…in the name of the Father, the Son and in...the hole-he-goes." (attributed to many sources)

This understanding of God was new to the Western world which up until that time had worshipped many and different gods.

Personal monotheism was a radical notion.  It suggested that an individual could actually have a relationship with the One God, Creator of the universe; a relationship based on love.  It was an idea that turned the world upside down. 

It is too bad that the notion has become so common in our lives that it is something that we recite without much thought.  We may have lost just how important an idea it was.

For the writer of the gospel of Matthew it was much more than an idea.  It was the power and commission for the disciples of Jesus to change the world.  For the apostle Paul it was much more than a doctrine.  It was a lifestyle.  To the difficult and struggling church in Corinth he reminds them, in effect, “You’re not just anybody, you are the people of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!  Now live like it!” (II Cor 13:13).

How ironic these past two weeks that the theme of the United Methodist General Conference was based on our scripture reading from Matthew this morning; “Therefore, Go!”   You may have noticed in the press that the Conference was torn by dissension and controversy with both conservative and progressive camps in the church threatening schism.   They were inviting each other to “Therefore, Go!” in an entirely different meaning than the original intention!  [Not to worry, for all of our heat and bother the UMC is not going to split anytime soon!]

What do we do with the reality of the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit?  How does Church of the Wayfarer live out its commission to “go out into all the world …in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”?

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in England, was born and raised in a devout Christian family, was an ordained Anglican priest, an instructor of Church History at Oxford University and served as a missionary to the colony of Georgia.   It was not until he was 35 years old that he would describe “his heart strangely warmed” during a vesper service in London in a Chapel on Aldersgate Street (Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley, Oxford University Press, NY, 1964, pp. 14-15).

This happened just weeks after he returned to England discouraged and depressed from failure as a missionary.   He was seeking encouragement for his faith.   He sought out fellowship and counsel from a group of Moravian Brethren to whom he was introduced on the passage home.   That evening at the Aldersgate Chapel, May 24th 1738, 278 years ago on Tuesday, while Martin Luther’s commentary of the fifth chapter of Romans was being read, Wesley understood in his heart and not just his head, that God loved him for just who he was; “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…but God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us…” (5:6-8). These verses from the apostle Paul are the heart and soul of the Protestant Reformation.   We do not have right relationship with God because of anything we do, believe, say or practice.   God loves us before all that.  God’s nature is so completely love that God offers us that grace before we deserve it, in spite of our failures, simply because God is love.

After a life of academic learning and organized piety, that night Wesley got the good news in his heart and it transformed his life and set him on the course to change the world.

He didn’t call the moment a “conversion” experience; although an important spiritual experience in his life, it was one of many  (Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists, Abingdon, 1995, pp. 80-82).   Months later he would begin the open air preaching and small group organization that would become the Methodist revival which changed England and contributed to the Protestant Reformation.  

Wesley once defined a true Methodist as “one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart”; we are to simply and profoundly love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind and love one’s neighbor as oneself (Heitzenrater, p. 107).  

When the heart and the head are connected it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

In the gospel writer John, we hear Jesus teach, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing”  (John 15:4-5).

He is describing that holistic connection between God, Jesus and those who follow his teachings and example.  Spirituality can be empty narcissism if it isn’t connected to the way one lives their life.  Pious behavior however noble and righteous can be dead if it does not come from the source that transcends ego.  

Our mission statement at Church of the Wayfarer is ‘Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out”.  It echoes Wesley’s call for the unity of personal spirituality and social responsibility.   If we follow the teaching and example of Jesus one can’t divorce the one from the other.  We can’t just love God or just love neighbor.   “Jesus spirituality” completely combines both as essential (I John 4).  In the words of the gospel writer John, we bear little fruit from our behavior if we are not connected…if we do not abide…with God’s spirit.

For Wesley, for all of his academic and pious credentials, it was in the Aldersgate experience that finally made that very connection.

When the heart and head are connected, it is a powerful force in a human life indeed.

Anne Lamott, the well-known humorist and committed Christian, has struggled with addiction and domestic abuse throughout her life.  She has no hesitancy to share that her faith in the living God has made all the difference in her life:

“I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”  (Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, Riverhead Books, 2006)

Matthew reports Jesus’ instructions to his followers shortly before he returns to heaven.  Our mission is still the same today to go and invite all into a relationship with the triune God…Parent, Child and Spirit.

We come here each week.  Something must compel us to be here, the music or the message or the fellowship of like-minded people.  Yet how many of us will invite a friend to come and experience what we find valuable enough to spend our Sunday mornings doing?

We have not come here to merely cope with the world and the difficulties of life, as important as that is.

We have not come here to maintain an institution.

We are here to change the world and ourselves.

Each week we sing and pray about “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  We don’t recite these words merely because they are tradition.  We do so because our job upon leaving this beautiful room is to spread the word about the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

We don’t do that by knocking on doors or preaching on the street corner.  We make disciples by being ones.  It’s our commitment to live out our lives as disciples that attracts people to the faith.

That means that if we want our church to grow…more members and volunteers and ministries…if we want our church to grow it is up to us to live out the love that Jesus taught us in word and deed.  And we can only do that when we connect our heads and hearts in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.