Based on Proverbs 8:1-4, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Today we are celebrating Trinity Sunday, the last holy day of the liturgical season. It also happens to be the day that we celebrate father’s – honoring all those who fulfill a fatherly role in another’s life, not just biological or adoptive fathers. These two celebrations call us to recognize the fullness of the Godhead - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and the fullness of the influence of the men in our lives, both of whom help us to acquire the wisdom of God.
I have had a number of male role models in my life who acted as mentors, spiritual directors, counselors, bosses and friends, who have provided both knowledge and wisdom and helped me understand the difference between those two entities. I have also enjoyed the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has led me to acquire spiritual and religious knowledge and experience, and then to apply those with discernment, insight and judgment. That applied knowledge and experience is what today I name “acquired wisdom”.
We live in an age where we have almost instantaneous access to facts, figures, research, opinions, lies, damn lies and statistics (the latter three as described by Benjamin Disraeli). These bits of information can help us attain knowledge, but not all of them can help us in acquiring wisdom. Knowledge, after all, is the acquisition of facts and information. I have much knowledge floating around in my brain from my decades of studying pharmaceuticals and their effect on human bodies and from directed and intentional study of religious and biblical teachings, church history, spiritual writings and United Methodist doctrine and polity. I have passed countless examinations and have been licensed by numerous boards to practice in the fields to which I have been called.
The same is true of all of you – you have all acquired knowledge over the course of your lives. Like all of us, you have applied what you have learned to a greater or lesser extent and have learned and grown from the lessons learned from that application. Knowledge that was applied with discernment, insight into context and personalities and with sound judgment (that is, applied with wisdom) returned to you with positive outcomes.
Our scripture passages for today have much to say about wisdom and how we can acquire it and then apply it in our world. Jesus is speaking to the disciples in our reading from the Gospel according to John. This snippet of a much longer soliloquy has Jesus teaching his friends about the Trinity. God the Holy Spirit will be sent to them and will guide them in all truth. The Holy Spirit will speak what it hears from the Father and the Son about what the future holds for those who believe. Likewise, the Apostle Paul in his letter to the believers in Rome teaches about the fullness of God as three persons. Paul tells us that we all have peace with God through Jesus – and that this is the work of God’s grace in our lives and world. Having the peace of God within us, we can bear all things through the muscular hope that is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The Book of Proverbs is a teaching lesson between a father and son. The father is doing his best to pass along knowledge about the presence of Lady Wisdom in the world and how to acquire what she has to share. The father tells the son that Lady Wisdom (aka the Holy Spirit) does not hide herself, rather she calls out to all in a loud voice. She makes herself visible by standing at a crossroads on a hilltop where all must pass by. She sets herself up at the entrance to the city and cries out to the people to listen to her. The father notes that her “wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.” The Holy Spirit tells us that wisdom and prudence dwell together and she possesses knowledge and discretion; counsel and judgment are mine, she says, along with insight and power.
If we wish to go about acquiring wisdom, we must awaken to the presence of God’s Holy Spirit who lives in us and our world and seeks to guide us in ways that lead to wisdom. The Holy Spirit kindles in us the desire to know more about Jesus, that we might come to love God as Jesus loves his Father; that we might come to love each other as we are loved by God. We need the presence of a Trinitarian God in order to access all that God’s wisdom has to offer us.
However, the Doctrine of the Trinity (God as one essence in three persons) is hard for people to get their minds around. How can One God be Three Persons? This is a real issue for us to wrestle with today, as on Wednesday I saw a large billboard on my drive to Roanoke that said that the Doctrine of the Trinity is false! This road sign shouted out in large letters to all who saw it the heresy of Modalism which is still being taught today here in Virginia! Modalism has been around since the late-second century and was made famous by a man named Sabellius. Modalism states that God is one person who manifested God’s-self in three different ways over time. All of our Christian Creeds denounce this misunderstanding of scriptural descriptions of the Three Persons of the Trinity. This prominent highway billboard is just one example of how the false teaching of Modalism persists and can still mislead, some 1700 years after it was denounced by Church leaders. It is a strong and timely reminder of how not all religious teaching can help us in acquiring wisdom.
Pastor Barry Howard helps us to understand the truth about the Holy Trinity writing, “…Romans 5:1–5 emphasizes that [this]: we are justified [that is, have our sins expunged] by faith in Jesus, which enables us to have peace with God and results in God’s love being infused into our lives by the Spirit. The roles are neither individualistic nor competitive but interactive toward the trinitarian goal of life transformation.
The root of the word trinity is unity. As I continue to explore what it means to worship and relate to our triune God, I find myself thinking about God as one, manifest in all three roles, without contradiction. I think of God the Father as the divine parent, beyond human gender, who birthed and nurtured all of creation. I think of God the Son, the historical Jesus, as the human manifestation [portrait] of God. I think of the Holy Spirit as the personality of God, both Father and Son, present and interactive in the world today.
Within this mystery, I continue to discover that the love of God, the grace of God and the joy of God are synchronized in the Trinity. The notion is more than I can swallow all at once. But it is a concept that I comprehend more deeply as God’s story intersects with my life and my world.”
There is much wisdom to be acquired in the synchronicity of the love, grace and joy of God that Pastor Howard offers us. God our Father and Creator wishes to be with us in as many ways as possible to help us acquire God’s wisdom in our lives, that we might work with God to transform our lives and world into God’s kingdom. The unity of God in the Trinity reflects how it is that we as distinct persons are called to be in unity with each other and with the fullness of God. The Doctrine of the Trinity calls us to discern its truth in our lived experience of God. John Wesley taught that we can acquire the wisdom of God through the Bible by using scripture as a foundation, and then using our lived experience, rational thought and church traditions to build upon it. This is what Rev. Dr. Albert Outler called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”. The truth, utility and wisdom of religious teachings can be discerned using Wesley’s guidance – and heresies can be identified and avoided.
God has given us both our brains and lived experience to allow us to hear Lady Wisdom as she calls us to deny the false teachings of highway billboards, talking heads both religious and secular, and internet influencers, and instead use the indwelling Holy Spirit to help us discern truth and to apply that truth in wise ways. In this way has the Christian Church moved forward across the millennia. If we keep acquiring wisdom, the Holy Spirit will continue to move us ever closer to God’s kingdom. Let us use our acquired wisdom to continue to spread the true gospel of the love, joy and grace of God to every person we meet. May God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit make it so. Amen!