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The Big Picture
From a sermon on the Trinity by Peter Gomes (May 22, 1942 - April 6, 2011)
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and
Pusey Minister in the Memorial church, Harvard University
"...I think the chief reason I want to talk about the Trinity is to invite you to think about the Christian faith as having a content that forces you to not simply act, which is easy , nor to feel, which is even easier, but to think: that is to say, to open your minds and use your imaginations and wrestle with the implications of what you find as you think about the nature of God, as you imagine for yourselves the largest possible canvass, indeed, the big picture...God is not simply good...goodness is a part of God's intention, and as the creator...always puts part of himself into what He creates, we participate in goodness because God is goodness, and we and God therefore share that which is good. Isaac Watts reminds us:
Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From Everlasting thou art God,
through endless years the same.
We must remember that the object of Christian theology is not to reduce incomprehensibilities to our small size but rather to make us grow up in some small degree to the capacity of the subject...St. John in Revelation 4:1 gives us his wonderful vision, seen through a crack into heaven, and the church has described that same vision in it's efforts to describe God in the doctrine of the Trinity -
that which was, that which is, and is to be -
time past, creation;
time present, redemption;
and time future, the ultimate justice of God.
The Trinity is the attempt of the church to paint that big picture of God and to understand it in ways that extend and expand the ordinary consciousness. She baptizes her faithful in the name of the Trinity, she blesses the living and the dead in the undivided name of the Trinity,
and the sign of the cross is Trinitarian in form and expression".
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About This Week's Prelude
