An impossible God?

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday – which many preachers find challenging, and many congregations mystifying. Unlike all the other major festivals of the Christian year, it has no compelling narrative, or attractive imagery. No doubt we will be offered various implausible or unhelpful ‘aids’ to understanding the Trinity – from St Patrick’s inadequate  shamrock (which implies that the Godhead is neatly divided into equal segments) to the modalist image of H₂O (which suggests that God is alternatively manifested in three forms, but never at the same time.)

I once heard a lecturer say that the only non-heretical statements on the Trinity come in the Athanasian Creed, which continually negates everything it says - leading to the gloss on the clause “The Father, incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible; and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible” = ‘and the whole thing incomprehensible!’

But in truth, the belief that God is Trinity-in-Unity is central to the Christian experience of God, even if we find it all but impossible to find words to explain. Although I would love to develop the importance of the Trinity more fully another time, now I want to look at an implicit issue, which concerns the whole way we understand our faith. And that is, that we forget the essential truth about God (which the Trinity encapsulates) that “’My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8) For me, that truth is summed up the title of Gerard Hughes’ splendid 1985 book The God of Surprises. I‘m also influenced by some thoughts explored by Walter Bruegemann in an essay on ‘Impossibility’ in scripture.

Bruegemann begins his exploration with the appearance of the Lord in the visit of the three ‘men’ to Abraham and Sarah (in Genesis 18:1-15.) The Lord’s sudden announcement “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a child” understandably leads Sarah to laugh. The Lord responds “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (vs 14.) Bruegemann suggests that the Hebrew word translated ‘too hard’ (pelā’) might better be rendered ‘impossible’ (as it is in the NEB – and as the Septuagint implies - μὴ ἀδυνατεῖ παρὰ τῷ θεῷ ῥῆμα;) The Hebrew word appears in a variety of texts, where it is also rendered variously as ‘marvellous’, ‘amazing’ and in similar ways. But if we translate it as ‘impossible’ it gives us a profound insight into the nature of God and our relationship with him.

God frequently acts in ways that - humanly speaking – seem impossible. The birth of significant children to elderly or barren parents is a recurring theme – Isaac, Samuel and Samson in the Old Testament, John the Baptist in the New. The conception of Jesus is unique, and the angel reminds Mary that “nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37 - ουκ αδυνατησει παρα τω θεω παν ρημα - echoing the Septuagint quotation above.)) Likewise, God calls and uses unlikely people – Moses, Gideon, Cyrus in the OT, Peter and Paul in the NT. There is an interesting example of the ‘impossible’ working of God in Jeremiah 32; the Lord prompts the prophet to buy a field during the siege of Jerusalem. Jeremiah then declares to the Lord that “Nothing is too hard (pelā’) for you (vss 17 and 26). In fact there are two ‘impossible’ things that the Lord will do – firstly he will hand the city over to the Babylonians, confounding the complacency of the Jews;  but he will also in time bring the exiles back, and make an ‘everlasting covenant with them’ (vs 36-41). The sovereign God is not to be taken for granted, as too many of Jeremiah’s contemporaries supposed, with their reliance on the existence of the Temple. But nor is his graciousness limited; he will in an unlikely transformation redeem an apparently hopeless situation.

And so we return to the Trinity. Our human arrogance assumes that our criteria are the only ones; in our understanding, God cannot be simultaneously One and Three. But if our God is an ‘impossible’ God, then we are presented with an entirely different way of thinking about him. He does not fit into our categories. And that is not only true of the divine nature, but also of our attitude to many aspects of diving revelation – including ethics, where we are certainly prone to use our existing moral and political values as the key to interpreting the Biblical values. I’m not suggesting we adopt a literal fundamentalism, but I wonder if we should not stop and ask ourselves whether we are not in danger of setting our understanding of what is acceptable and the possible over and above what God reveals. As Karl Barth insisted, we are questioned and challenged by the Word of God; it’s not for us to question the Word!

In that sense, the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that there needs to be an openness in faith as to what is humanly ‘impossible’. Scripture is full of ‘impossible’ events – Jesus’ birth of the Virgin, most of his miracles, his death and resurrection, his bodily Ascension. That continues with the unlikely empowerment of the first disciples into a world-changing community. How impoverished our relationship with God will be if we try to jettison all  these truths, or dilute them in some kind of de-mythologising interpretation.

We need a lively faith in the God of surprises, who acts in ways that challenge our cosy and limited world-view and question our expectations. The challenge is both to the liberal and the conservative wings of theology. If our God does not radically challenge all our prejudices and pre-suppositions; if we are not open to being continually surprised by him (yes, and sometimes made uncomfortable)– what do we have to proclaim? The title of Jon McGregor’s 2002 novel If nobody speaks of remarkable things points me to consider the poverty of much contemporary preaching. We are too wedded to our social and political worldviews, too reasonable and sensible in our attitudes, too confident that we know what God can and cannot do.

Let’s allow ourselves to re-discover the God who does impossible things – who is, impossibly, One in Three and Three in One.  And let’s allow him to turn us and our world upside down – and send us to speak to others of remarkable and impossible things!