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Boasting About Our Sufferings

Trinity Sunday : 26 May 2013  : Romans 5: 1-5 , John 16: 12-15

One of the quiet revolutions that have come over the Church in recent decades has been the growth of house groups. They seemed like a revolutionary innovation in the 60’s, but now they are the norm. In fact a parish that doesn’t have small groups meeting regularly for prayer, study and mutual support is thought to be deficient.

Ironically these small Christian gatherings, or house churches as they were called, were the norm when Christianity first got going. The combination of persecution and lack of resources meant that Christian congregations couldn’t and didn’t own buildings set aside just for worship. So they met together in the biggest house available to them from amongst their membership. And what we now call the parish didn’t come into existence until quite some time after the Christianisation of the Roman Empire, when the inflow of many new converts meant that it was no longer possible for Christians to gather in one place for the Bishop’s Eucharist.

So as Paul writes to the Roman Christians this morning he is communicating with a cluster of house churches, and tenement churches in the teeming slums of the capital city. The problem is that they aren’t getting along with each other; they look down on one another, and find that the other small Christian gatherings are lacking or deficient in some way. And what fans these hyper critical tendencies is the shame/honour system that ruled supreme in Roman culture. In this way of looking of one’s social world every interaction with another human being is assessed from the perspective of whether one is raising or lowering one’s prestige, social status and reputation. It is a highly competitive world, and cruel too on those who are seen to be shamed losers.

To put it mildly this is a very unhelpful set of social assumptions for new Christians in their small-disunited house churches. So Paul sets out to break up these destructive value systems in a surprising two-step move.

First, he makes the point that we don’t have to do anything to earn acceptance or brownie points with God. God unnervingly loves us first before we did anything to get into relationship with him. So forget about having to get onside with him, or putting him in our debt. We are at peace with him, declared to be acceptable people, without having to do anything to gain status in his eyes.

Second, he raises the subject of boasting, a popular activity if point scoring against others is high on the agenda, but instead of skiting about big achievements and spiritual superiority, he points to suffering as the index of Christian worthiness. The house churches that are worthy of honour are the ones that are experiencing opposition, rejection, humiliation and discouraging difficulties. Success and popularity isn’t the name of the game - endurance, persistence and dogged courage is. Suffering for the faith is as important as brilliant preaching and sound theology. From this perspective there aren’t winners and losers amongst the Roman house churches, but rather comrades in arms and adversity, brothers and sisters engaged in costly cross bearing, and in the solidarity of mutual suffering.

Why has this reading been brought to our attention on the feast of the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity? It points I think to the nature of the God who works by these methods, and estimates his followers by this yardstick.

Two weeks ago we were hearing in the Caversham lectures about the Anglican theologian F D Maurice, who grew up in a Unitarian household, a Christian deviation still around in small numbers today. It emphasises a solitary, sovereign God, sufficient unto himself, who doesn’t seem to need to bother with people at all. Maurice left all that behind, and put the social nature of the trinitarian God at the centre of his theology.

The trinitarian God brims over with life, bringing the human race into existence so as to enjoy us forever. He, as it were, spreads life around wherever he goes because it is in his nature to share the gift of life, and to create relationships right, left and centre. This sharing, social God is the model and pattern faintly reflected in human families, friendships, affinity groups and nations.

Nor does he give up on us when we turn away from him in rebellion or indifference. Respecting our freedom, he works from within the human condition to outwit evil, and to entice attachment relationships with him from lost human creatures. Though all powerful he draws us towards him, rather than coercing our obedience. He is respectful, courteous and humble in his approach towards us. And he wants those who have tuned into him to treat each other in the same way.

This relational God has presented himself to us through a human life that makes God accessible to us as a narrative that we can catch hold of, a story that we can relate to. Jesus Christ is the life of God translated into human terms. He is called Son of God because everything that God is, is contained within him, yet in a way that is an authentic identity within the stream of creaturely existence.

This Son is available to us through the agency of a Spirit that illuminates us, inspires us, consoles us, and instructs us. The Holy Spirit exerts a gentle inner pressure on us to believe, to persevere, to experience and to know God. He puts us in touch with Jesus, because as Jesus put it in this morning’s gospel reading, "He will glorify me since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine."

Jesus prayed to Abba, the Aramaic word for Father, a nuanced word, almost a nickname, meaning the tenderly trusted source of life, the guardian of each human existence. He is called Father not because he is like an earthly Father, but because he is the originating source of life. As originator he calls each of us into existence as if we are an idea in his mind, and he is the source of his right and left hand at work in creation, the Son and the Spirit. He breathed forth the Holy Spirit, and he processed forth the Son.

In today’s John reading Jesus says an intriguing thing about the Holy Spirit. "He will tell you of the things to come," and this follows on from his opening words, "I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too much for you now."

It took a while for the Church to get to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is there in dispersed parts of the New Testament. It came alive in the experience of the Church in its worship and its mission. But it took hard theological work, a lot of tough Church politicking, and a determination to get to the bottom of all that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ means in the life of Christians, before the Council of Nicea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381 affirmed that Jesus is co-equal with the Father, and that the Spirit is conglorified with the Father and the Son. What had happened is that the Holy Spirit had led the Church into all truth.

And why this mattered is that the Trinity is God’s secret about how his inner life works, how he operates in himself, who he is when he is, as it were, at home. Lovers share secrets, it is one of the characteristics of intimacy activity. God didn’t need to let us in on who he is in himself, but it is typical of him that he delights to do this for us, that he trusts us with his secret. And this matters because it is this inner intimacy life within God that we shall share in for all eternity – this is what eternal life consists of, that we shall be as Thomas Merton put it in that quote on the front of this morning’s Pebble, "placed in the middle of the Trinity."

Which is why the Trinity isn’t an optional intellectual model for thinking about God. It is the inside running, vital and true information for who we are dealing with when we believe and trust in him. The Trinity is the guts of the matter, the centre, the content, and the vital ingredient of the Christian religion. Which is why we can’t get enough of knowing about the Trinity, of loving the doctrine, and penetrating through the veil of our ignorance to love, and praise and apprehend the triune persons more and more.