God: maker, lover and keeper

stjohnstmarkchurchburySunday, May 27, 2018

Bible Text: Isaiah 49:16 | Preacher: Ralph Mallinson | Series: Trinity

At a Baptism the priest asks the candidate, through their parents and godparents, about what she or he believes and in whom she or he trusts. Clearly she cannot answer for herself. She answers through her/their sponsors and through the whole church which she/they is joining because of this act.

It’s very appropriate therefore today, when the Church celebrates and proclaims the mystery at the heart of Christian faith, God – God in God’s very nature which we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit – to reflect a tiny bit, and on my part with great hesitation, about these questions and who it is in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust. But thank God we never shall get our minds around the Holy Trinity. St Augustine said, very many years ago, ‘If you can fathom it, it’s not God.’

We can begin to know God by what God does in the world. For God’s actions in the world mirror who and what God is.  So:
1. Do you believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist?
God is the maker of this world and all that is in it. All creation is from God and we go on to believe that the world, and men and women in it, are made by and for God. NOT for ourselves.  How else did the world come into being except by the gracious act of God the creator, the maker?  Christians believe it didn’t just happen.  And because God is good, God’s world is good. That’s not to say that there isn’t evil and bad things and bad people in it. Burma, China, Hitler and Stalin for example. But this doesn’t take away from the basic and essential goodness of God’s Creation.
2. Do you believe and trust in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again?
God, Christians believe, was shown most of all and best of all in the man Jesus Christ.  And if you want one word to sum Jesus Christ up, and what he shows us about God, it is Love. God as Lover.  If it is love that makes the world go round – and, as the old hymn has it, wherever there is love, there God is – then Jesus’ life and work and death and resurrection are the most perfect, the best, example of love there’s ever been.
3. Do you believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world?
The Holy Spirit is God within the hearts and minds of God’s people. God who leads, who guides, who consoles. Who keeps God’s people on God’s paths and in God’s ways. ‘I have engraved you on the palm of my hands’ (Isaiah 49:16). It is God as Holy Spirit who keeps that engraving fresh and alive.  It is God as Holy Spirit who enables God’s people to be and to become the people that God wants us to be and become. We’re not all pressed into the same mould. However, we each develop into that unique person who God made and whom God loves.

At our Lord Jesus Christ’s baptism, and on the mountain where he was transfigured, God proclaimed, ‘This is my beloved Son’.  At our baptism God said/says to us, ‘You are my beloved son/daughter, in whom I am well pleased’. The Holy Spirit is God enabling us to grow into that perfect person whom God has in mind.
Maker, Lover and Keeper
We celebrate today that most ancient of all mysteries, God as God is, the very nature and being of God. And really how can I, how dare I, begin to talk even a very little about such things. It may be helpful to think of God shown to us all as Maker, Lover and Keeper. One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom…