What Is God Really Like?
Matthew 28:19
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Harry G. Winsheimer
July 20, 2008

Scripture: Matthew 28:19 -- Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I visited a sick newborn in Fairfax Hospital, in Fairfax, VA.  On my way off the neonatal floor, I waited at the elevator.  (If you have spent time in a huge hospital, you know that you can wait a long time in the hall staring at closed elevator doors.)  Standing near me was a young family – father, mother, and two preschool children.  They appeared from features and dress to be from the Middle East.  He asked me, “Are you a minister?”  I replied that I was, anticipating that he wanted to talk about someone in the hospital or some emotional issue.  That has happened.  What he said, and the tone in which he said it, set me back: “There is one God, and only one God.  How can you say that there are three gods?”  I stammered that I believed in one God, not three.  He interrupted.  I attempted to explain the Christian theology of the Trinity, that God is one but known as three persons, as in my being one person, but father, husband and son at the same time.  He was not buying.  He had no intention of learning about the Trinity.  He was defending the dignity of One God.  Over and over, he stridently – I thought that he might slug me – snapped, “God is one!  You are wrong to say that God is three.”  His wife was embarrassed and quietly called him off, but he ignored her.  I was relieved to get off the elevator on the bottom floor and escape! 

What is God really like?  Do you sometimes wonder who God really is? 

We are not the first to ponder these questions.  People in the fourth century asked them, as I learned painfully during the first few weeks of seminary.  The very first semester, I had to take one of the most difficult courses I ever had: early church history.  I had come from studying geology and chemistry, and had never had a course in Greek philosophy and language.  It was like a college freshman taking a four credit calculus course after only taking high school general math.  I learned that during the fourth century a church council was held to answer questions about God.  It met in a town named Nicea in modern-day Turkey.  Their answer became very important, the foundational belief about God for Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. 

Please turn to page 15 in the "Aids to Worship" section of the "Hymnal" which is located before the first hymn.

The Nicene Creed is their answer to questions of who God is and how it is between us and God.  Not easy reading, is it?  The difficulty is due partly to the use of both biblical and Greek philosophical language.  Until about seventy-five years ago, every presbyterian, and probably every Catholic, would have memorized the Nicene Creed in confirmation or catechism class.  Did any of you?

What is the first affirmation?  God is one.  There is only one God, period. 

However, (here’s the dilemma) scripture speaks as if God were more than one person.  There is the whole creation--the sun, stars, dogs, viruses, trees, ourselves, and yes, even mosquitoes.  Was any power involved in creating all that is? The first verse of the Bible states that God created the heaves and the earth.  Also, we have the historic Jesus; the Scriptures speak of him as God.  Further, we experience God as a presence very much alive to persons with spiritual discernment.  Responding to this diversity, the Council of Nicea summarized God as just one person, but God expresses the self and we experience God in three primary ways: as the Creator/Father, the Son/Redeemer and the Holy Spirit.  These three are called persons, One God in Three Persons, the Trinity.  (Will you find the word Trinity in the Bible?  No.  It was coined to explain who God is.)

The First Person: The Creator/Father:
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5, 26-2:1 -- In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth....

"We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen." (Ecumenical version)

What an awesome thought!  Think about what that sentence says --  the universal parent, the unsurpassable power, the creator of all that is! 

Some persons, particularly those who do not use masculine language of God because it degrades women, have taken the word Creator as a favorite title for God.  Therefore, they have dropped the use of the word "father."  I appreciate why.  However, I have a problem with only using the word Creator.  Creator carries the idea that God is the innovative force.  If we think of God as a force, an earthquake or lighting, e.g., then God is impersonal.  However, God is a force that is personal, who has personality, who is capable of interaction with us.  It is a force that is a ‘who’.  Scripture tells us that God is a person, who interacts with us, as does a father.  “Father” was Jesus' favorite name for God, as in "Our Father, who art in heaven...."  The Christians at Nicea understood the need for both terms. 

Today, mother would work fine.  In cultures with the image of a strong, loving mother and weak father, mother would serve better. 

Who is God?  God is the most powerful creative force in the universe, yet a loving parent-like person.

Hymn 220, "All People That on Earth Do Dwell" vv. 2 and 3

The Second Person: The Son:
Scripture: John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes I him may not perish but may have eternal life.   II Corinthians 5:16-19 -- ...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself....

When we ask, "How are things between us and God?"  Our gut tells us that they are not as good as they could be.  Things just are not really right. 

Enter Jesus.  He plays the key role in this cosmic drama--so pivotal that we date time around him.  "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God...true God from true God...of one Being with the Father....  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human."

What did the authors of the Creed grasp about God and our relationship with God that they used these ideas? 

The incredible claim is that God was in Jesus, as if, we might say, he were a chip off the old block and carrier of the genes of God, metaphorically the Son of God.   Jesus represents, no, more than represents, he is God, God incarnate, i.e., God in human flesh.

Plus, Jesus assumes the role of the representative person, truly human.  He was physical with bathroom and nutritional needs; he cried, he bled.  He was relational, intellectual, and spiritual.  He had goals. Truly human.  For what purpose?  To represent us to God. 

So, he is both God and human.  He is God's infomercial to us, and our representative to God.  He is the messenger, the mediator, the reconciler, the bridge between us and God.

The prime message that he has for us is: God loves us, and wants to bond with us.  To demonstrate that God wants us, Jesus died on the cross.  He summarized his death, saying, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.  You are my friends...." John 15:13

I treasure the simple vocabulary of The Good News Bible, which instead of using the words reconcile or salvation, states it this way: "God was making all mankind God's friends through Christ."

Therefore, the question becomes: "Have we accepted the invitation to friendship offered through the Son, Jesus?"

Hymn: 527, "Near to the Heart of God"

The Third Person: The Holy Spirit:
Scripture: John 14:16-17, 26 -- The Advocate, the Holy Spirit...will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

"We believe in the Holy Spirit...," the third person, they said, of God.  I walked into the meeting of Church School teachers, and one asked me, "How do you describe the Holy Spirit to kids?"

How do you describe it to adults?  How do you describe what you cannot see?

You can describe symptoms.  The word "spirit" both in the Creed and the Bible is the word for wind or breath.  Can you see the wind?  I have never seen it.  Can you see breath?  I have looked for it for years and haven't seen it.  What we see are the effects of wind and breath.  We look at the trees and see leaves quiver and say that the wind is blowing.  We blow on our arm and feel a sensation and we say that our breath caused the sensation.  Therefore, the biblical and creedal theologians used an every-day word for the presence of God, unseen but the effects seen, untouchable but the effects felt.  The word translated into English is Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

I see the effect of the Spirit when you go the extra mile to take care of your Aunt Mary, when you risk your career by refusing to deceive a client, when you patiently tell your children why a particular video game undermines community, when you go on mission trips, when you pray.  I could go on and on.  I see the effects of the Spirit inspiring and helping us.

Hymn: 324, “Open My Eyes That I May See”

Conclusion
Who is God to you?   How do you describe God?

Church leaders in the fourth century answered:
"We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen."
"We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God...true God from true God...of one Being with the Father....  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human."
"We believe in the Holy Spirit...." 

BENEDICTION  At the conclusion of his second letter to the church in Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote a blessing; may it be ours: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.  II Cor. 13:13

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