Word and Spirit

Scripture: Holy Trinity, A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

It is almost impossible to ignore beauty. You can say that it’s subjective, that it’s all in the eye of the beholder, but that’s not the point. Different things may trigger the encounter with beauty for different people, but the experience itself—that stunned silence, that punch to the gut—is universal. Beauty is one of those intangibles, like justice or truth, which we cannot fully grasp or define, but which we cannot seriously deny without lying to our innermost being.

It works best when it catches us off guard, when our pretensions don’t get in the way. We happen upon the might of the oak, the bones of the mountain, the roar of the surf, or the glittering expanse of the cosmos at night, and we are struck dumb with awe. One cannot see—truly see—the wonders of Creation without feeling deep within that we have glimpsed the handiwork of the Creator. It is humbling and astonishing and almost frighteningly beautiful.

I don’t mean that we cannot imagine other theories regarding the formation of the universe, that we cannot point to natural explanations for natural wonders. But when we encounter the beauty of our world, we are gripped by the inescapable conviction that it all means something, that it all has value. When we find goodness and truth and beauty in our world, we want to preserve it, appreciate it, commune with it. Only a madman or a fool crushes something beautiful and fails to recognize the resultant loss. Beauty has value, life has value, the world has value because it all means something, it all has purpose—which implies that it was all made on purpose.

That’s precisely why the overwhelming majority of humanity throughout the overwhelming majority of history has been religious, for religion is really the conviction that there is much more to this world than simply what we can see or touch. The world itself seems to argue this, for those who have ears to hear. Scoff if you must, but you would be in the decided minority. Even today, in our bizarrely secular world with its various technological fetishes, the majority of people who identify as nonreligious—and nearly half who call themselves atheist, if polls are to be believed—admit belief in an unseen God. Beauty will get you every time.

All over the world, the Greek philosophers, the Hindu mystics, the Chinese scholars, and even the barbarian shamans have acknowledged that Heaven is too high for Man to spy, and so we have looked to the Creation to tell us about the Creator. And you know what we have all found there? Order. Harmony. Intelligibility. We have found a cosmos that makes sense, that reflects reason and purpose, and so teaches us not just the way that things are but the way that things ought to be.

Morality, mind you, is not self-evident. If we just went by the example of nature we might conclude that we should all simply eat one another. But a chain of clear reason, combined with a deep intuition shared across cultures, has led civilizations all across the world to embrace a natural moral law. Do not murder; do not steal; be neither promiscuous nor impious nor cruel; live by just laws and cast away false gods. These are core precepts found in every developed society throughout history.

We find loopholes of course—excuses for cruelty and depravity—but all people of goodwill have eventually come to these same undeniable conclusions. If we want to breach morality, we know that we must at least come up with a good excuse. There is an order and a purpose behind the workings of the universe, an order that we can discern and by which we ought to live, because the workings of Creation reflect the purposes of God. In China they call it the Tao, but in Greek—in the language of the Christian Scriptures—we call it the Logos.

We’re all familiar with the concept of a logo, right? An image or symbol that expresses the basic intentions of a corporation or club. To put a logo on something is to sign it, to claim it as one’s own. Well, the idea of the Logos is much the same. The Logos is the divine principle of order and knowledge in the universe, the reason things make sense. It is the signature of God, revealed in His handiwork. From Logos we derive not only corporate logos but also the very concept of logic. The world means something, the world makes sense, because there is a great Mind with a great purpose behind it all. The universe bears God’s signature, God’s logo.

But that wasn’t enough for God, it seems. Our Creator did not remain content simply to let us suss out His intentions in natural wonders and philosophies. English Bibles translate Logos, somewhat inadequately, as God’s Word—the Word of God—and in the Old Testament that’s exactly what He gave to Moses atop Mt. Sinai. Scripture makes it clear that God reveals Himself to all peoples through His Creation, His Natural Law, but to one specific Chosen People, a priestly nation meant to bless the entire world, God gave His Written Law, the Law of Moses.

Nature can only take you so far: through goodness, beauty, and truth, she can point to the existence of an unknown God, and of a basic moral order. But that’s as far as we can go with her. To learn more about God we need revelation; we need God revealing to us things about Himself that we could not reason out ourselves. And so He whispered to the poets and inspired the mystics and finally carved out His Word upon tablets of stone—but this was just the beginning. Aye, God was only getting warmed up.

The greatest revelation of God, the clearest and truest picture of God’s own Self, came to all humankind in the person of Jesus Christ. We had seen the Logos, the signature of God, in the world around us. We had marveled at the Logos, the written Word of God, gifted to Israel through the hands of Moses. But now the Logos Himself, the living Word of God, chose to take on flesh and become one of us on that blessed Christmas morn.

This is pretty astonishing stuff, mind you. Remember that the Logos is God working in Creation, God revealing Himself through His actions and relationships. The Logos is what gives the universe order and meaning and purpose. The Logos is both God and also from God; it’s both Who God is and what God does. And now we meet the Logos not as an “it”—not as a shadow or a reflection or a fingerprint—but as a Who, a He, the Word of God made flesh!

Our Creator was so distant, so transcendent, so unknowable, yet now here He stands before us, a Man Whom we can hear and see, embrace and love. What a paradox, what a wonder! God is beyond us, yet right here; completely Other, yet exactly the same. This is what God has in mind all along. This was His plan, His Logos. Even back in Genesis, “In the Beginning,” the Bible speaks of God as simultaneously distant and cosmic on chapter one, while intimate and even human in chapter two. He’s both “out there” and “right here.” Who is Jesus? He is both God and from God. He is the Light and Life of the world—God’s self-revelation (Light) and redemption (Life). He’s the Logos, the reason behind it all. He is Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

But now, in the wake of Pentecost, God is not content to descend from Heaven to a fallen earth. He wants more; He wants to deepen the relationship between the Creator and Creation. Now God wants to pull us up to Heaven in Him. For that reason, the loving bond between God and His Logos—between the Father out there and the Son right here—is extended now to all of us. In Baptism, we are given the Holy Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God’s Love from within God’s own Self. And this Spirit dwells within each of us, animating and unifying Christ’s Body the Church much as the human soul connects and moves the human body. Just like Jesus, we find that the Holy Spirit is both God and from God. When we share in the Holy Spirit, we share in Who God is and what God does.

What can we say about such an astonishing God, Who plunges down from Heaven in order to walk beside us, then live within us? What can we say about a Creator Whose Logos and Spirit are so powerful and life-giving that they are themselves divine Persons within a single living God—bound as One in eternal selfless love? At the heart of Christianity beats this conviction that the One True God, sought by all and seen by none, has come down to us in love when we could not climb up to Him. And not content to dwell with us, now He dwells within us, ever striving, ever toiling, to raise us up to forgiveness and new life—if only we would let Him.

In Jesus, God has revealed Himself as Trinity: Three-in-One and One-in-Three. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Christians believe that God is a family, God is a dance. The Father is our source, Christ our reason, and love our Spirit. We proclaim that the whole world is welcomed not simply to witness the Trinity’s eternal joy, but to join in the dance, in the family, in the joy that is God, forever.

Now what could be more beautiful than that? In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.