Essence and Reality

Rebel Guru Radio

Propers: Holy Trinity, A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

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

There are more than 23,000 verses in the Bible and the most famous of them all is this:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.

John 3:16.

This is the cornerstone of our faith. This is the understanding of God that makes us Christians. Lots of people are monotheists. Lots of people know that all of Creation has but a single infinite Source: the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Creator of all that ever was or is or even could be; the One in whom we live and move and have our being. And this all men call God.

Our Jewish forebears knew this. The Greek philosophers knew this. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, even the higher forms of paganism all knew that there was one transcendent God above and beyond and within all things. What makes us different—what makes us Christians—is Jesus Christ, the only Son and Word of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Now let’s be clear what we mean by Son. The eternal God transcendent in the heavens does not go around begetting children in the manner that we do. He isn’t Zeus, fathering Perseus or Heracles or anything else on whatever’s not nailed down. The One God is Father of us all, the Father of all things in Creation, because He has created us in love and continues to sustain us in every moment of our being. And by us I don’t just mean Christians, but all humanity, all Creation, sun and moon and stars and monsters of the deep. He is Father of us all.

But Jesus is unique. He is the only Son, the only one of His kind, because Jesus is not created. Jesus is, and for all eternity forever was and will be, God—the same God who is infinite and unknowable, now become flesh to walk among us. In Christ, the Creator has entered the Creation, like an Author stepping into His own book. And while He is still God—immortal, transcendent, infinite—now He is also Man, truly and fully human, just like every one of us in every way save sin.

So when we confess that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,” we do not mean that He deputized someone else. He didn’t send His second-in-command. No, God came down Himself! No middleman, no messenger. God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. He is the Son of the Father because He is the Heart of the Father, the Essence of the Father, the visible Image of the invisible God.

God gives us Him—all of Him—all that He has, all that He is, all that He does. God pours out Himself, sacrifices Himself, for you, for love of you, that you may have life and have it in abundance.

God so loves the world that He empties Himself, limits Himself, humbles Himself even unto death—even death on the Cross. For make no mistake, it is God Himself on that Cross, God Himself who bleeds at our hand, God Himself who forgives us even as we murder Him! And that is a shocking thing, a scandalous thing. How can the Author of all life die? How can the perfect Judge perish so unjustly? Yet the scandal of Christianity is that it’s all so very true. God so loved the world that He died just for you.

And then something even more amazing happened. Death swallowed Christ, and thereby Christ conquered death. And He rose, never to die again, and returned to Heaven with all the ransomed dead resplendent in His train. And He is seated now at the right hand of the Father—seated in His humanity, in our risen flesh—and from His Throne on high He has sent to us His Spirit.

And this Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, is again not some messenger, some angel delegated by God, but He is Himself the very Life and Breath and Blood of God, the Fire of God, the Heart of God, come down from Heaven to dwell now within you. He is inside of you, He who is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God.

He burns brightly, deathlessly, deep within the truest part of your soul. And He has claimed you for His own, and made of your body His Temple, in order to make your hands into Christ’s hands, your voice into Christ’s voice. He makes you Jesus. He makes all of us Jesus! And He sends us out to do Christ’s work for the world He still loves, a world still very much in need of Him. God is still giving His Son for the salvation of the cosmos—only now we are the Son. We are the Body of Christ, still Crucified, still Risen, still suffering for this world.

And all of this is God! God beyond us, God beside us, God within us. He is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. It is God who creates us, God who redeems us, and God who sanctifies us. We are born in Him, we die in Him, we rise in Him. And it’s all the same God! One God, One Being, One Essence—known to us now in Three Realities. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: the God who made us in His love, the God who died for us in His love, and the God who continues to forgive us in His love.

Thus does God reveal Himself to us as Trinity: Three in One and One in Three.

This was the greatest mystery of the early Church, that somehow it’s all the same God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God. Yet they’re not three gods, but always one and the same God, around us, within us, above and below us. And this isn’t some illusion. It’s not like God is wearing masks. But the Father really is who God is, and the Son really is who God is, and the Spirit really is who God is. Three Realities, One Being, One Essence, One God—all for love of us.

That’s how much God loves you, dear Christians: all the way to hell and back; in every way we can imagine and infinitely more beside; love beyond all our wildest dreams. God’s love called us forth into being from nothing. God’s love saved us from self-inflicted damnation within the great chasm of nothing. And so now nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.

Now go. And be Christ for the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.