Go Team!

In America a lot of our heroes are lone wolves. They embody our idolization of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. We love the hero who can do everything and needs no one else. Perhaps that's the reason that even the success of two British heroes, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, was dependent on their enthusiastic reception over here in America. An American publisher asked Arthur Conan Doyle for what turned out to be the second ever Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four. And it was President Kennedy's recommendation of the James Bond novels that kicked off 007's international success. These heroes personify what someone has called “competence porn”: the fantasy that the hero is super-competent at handing anything that is thrown at him. Holmes is not only super-smart, able to deduce what really happened from the smallest of clues and able to break the toughest of codes, but, when it is called for, he is good at boxing, sword fighting and martial arts. Bond is not only an assassin but, at least in the films, able to pilot any vehicle, from planes to submersible cars to spacecraft. He is also irresistible to women, an expert on wines and gourmet foods, and a competent gambler. But the ultimate American superhero is Superman, who has super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, heat-vision, and can fly. Quite frankly, I don't know why he needs the Justice League of America. After Superman comes Batman, who, while he lacks superpowers, is an expert at all forms of fighting, and is super-smart, being touted as the “world's greatest detective” in his comics. It helps that he is rich and can afford every possible gadget he will ever need.

In reality no one person can do it all. Truly intelligent people know their limitations. They know their strengths and their weaknesses. And the wise know that they need others to achieve just about anything significant. The most creative person in the world still needs others to edit, publish, produce, play, display, distribute and disseminate what they write, script, paint, sculpt, or record. Scientists need a team to do research; they need grants to fund the research; they need a company or university to house their research; they need scientific journals to publish their findings. Cooks and bakers depend on farmers, food companies, and grocery stores for their ingredients, as well as those who make the stoves, appliances and utensils they use. Builders need a construction crew with skills in working with wood, steel and concrete, as well as plumbers and electricians. You only have to sit through a movie's credits to see the hundreds of people required to create the blockbuster you just enjoyed. My sermons depend on the many Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, concordances, and other books which I consult that scholars have written, as well as the internet, the people who made my computer, and the people who keep the electricity on.

We all are dependent on others. Even the lone survivalist who is building a bunker in the woods to sit out the collapse of civilization is dependent upon others for the building materials, tools, nonperishable foods, fuel, how-to books and weapons he needs. And it seems that this realization has permeated even our pantheon of heroes. The Avengers need the individual skills each hero brings to the fight. Aside from Robin, Batman relies on his butler Alfred, an honest cop named Gordon, and the R and D guy at Wayne Enterprises who makes those wonderful toys for him. Bond needs Q as well as the agents he leads when he invades the villain's well-guarded lair. Buffy the Vampire Slayer realizes that she has lived longer than slayers in the past due to her friends who help her research and fight the demons. The various incarnations of Star Trek have always focused on the crews of the ships. The Incredibles presented a family of superheroes as a team. One of the joys of the current series of Doctor Who is the fact that the Timelord's companions aren't just there to look pretty, ask him to explain what's going on and get captured by the monsters. The Doctor and his companions act as a team. In fact, a theme I enjoy is that the Doctor inspires ordinary people to emulate him in acting heroically and joining him in doing the right thing.

Don't you wish you had a team? Don't you wish you had friends with various powers who could back you up and help you in difficult situations? You do. All Christians do. And our team is called the Trinity.

I was struck by this analogy when reading an online interview where Anglican theologian J.I. Packer talked of the Trinity as a divine team. Like all analogies about God, it breaks down if you stretch it too far. But at its core are 2 key concepts about the Trinity: unity and individuality.

The difficulty of understanding the Trinity is trying to reconcile the idea of the oneness of God with the idea of 3 divine persons within God. Some people think it is a needless theological innovation. But it came about because of the way the church experiences God. The church started as a group of Jews. They were born into a covenant with the Creator of the world. The covenant stipulated, among other things, that there is one God and that they weren't to worship any other. Then they encountered Jesus. It was obvious that he was a prophet and that the Spirit of God was on him. Then they realized that he was the Messiah sent by God to set the world right. But Jesus wasn't what they expected. He wasn't a holy warrior but a healer and teacher. And when he was crucified, as far as they were concerned, it was over for him.

Then God raised him from the dead. They remembered that Jesus said, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” (John 2:19) The temple, at least before the exile when the Holy of Holies contained the ark of the covenant, was the place where God dwelt with his people. The temple was, as N.T. Wright puts it, the place where heaven and earth overlap. The disciples saw how Jesus lived—sinless—and what he did—died to pay for the sins of the whole world—and realized that only God, who is holy and without sin, could do those things. Jesus was the new temple, where God dwells. (John 14:11) Jesus is the new point at which the realm of God and the world of man overlap. (John 1:1, 14) Jesus the man was somehow God. (John 10:30) And yet he said that there was one God. (Mark 12:29)

Then came Pentecost. The church was immersed in the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised God would send as another advocate. The then still Jewish church was familiar with the Holy Spirit from the Hebrew Bible, where the Spirit is described as the power of God. The Spirit is involved in creation, in anointing the leaders of God's people and in inspiring the prophets. So now the church experienced God in another way—inside their minds and hearts and lives.

So they knew God as the Creator who is outside of them and this world. Yet God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19) And God was in them, acting in and through the body of believers, applying the love and power of God to their lives and to their encounters with the world. (John 14:17; Romans 5:5) So the Father is God. Jesus is God. The Spirit is God. But there is only one God. They may not have known exactly how this worked but they knew it to be true.

Many a preacher on this, Trinity Sunday, has tried to explain the triune nature of God by using shamrocks or cubes or the tripartite nature of humanity or the 3 states of water. All of these might help a little but none can really speak comprehensively about the deep nature of God. Even the orthodox formula of the Trinity, which we recite in the Nicene Creed and find in full in the Athanasian Creed, is not really an explanation of how this is possible but is only a way of preserving the paradox of Three in One and One in Three.

All language about God is at least somewhat metaphorical. So here is another way to look at it. And as C. S. Lewis would say, if this picture doesn't help you, then leave it alone.

One advantage to seeing God as a team is that it preserves the unity of God as well as the individuality of the divine persons. Each member of a good team has a distinct role or function and yet a good team acts as one. They have one goal, one will. But unity doesn't mean uniformity. In fact, it is the various strengths of the different members coming together that gives the team its power. A big problem I have with the Mission:Impossible movies is that they are ultimately all about Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt. The TV series was about the team, all working on the same plan, coming from different directions and using their different abilities and functions.

In team Trinity we have the Father. He is the source of creation. He is the idea guy, you might say, the Jim Phelps or Professor X or Captain Picard or the coach of the team. He looks at the Big Picture. He conceives the strategy. He sets the tone of the team. He cares for the team; it is his family.

Next in team Trinity there is the Son, Jesus Christ. He's the one who executes the plan, who embodies the idea. In the Mission:Impossible TV series he is Roland Hand, the member of the team who goes undercover and becomes an actor in the drama which the idea guy has conceived. He's the quarterback, the James Bond who is sent out on a mission by M, the Mr. Spock who knowingly sacrifices himself to save the crew.

The toughest member of team Trinity to pin down is the Holy Spirit. He's the resource person. He's like Scotty in the original Star Trek, giving the captain more power or raising the shields when necessary. Or he's like Uhura, passing on vital communications. Or Troy in the Star Trek: The Next Generation, the empathic counselor who understands and articulates our deepest emotions. Or he's like Barney on the original IMF team or Briana on the Leverage team, always toiling behind the scenes to make sure that the technical stuff will work when the team needs them. Or maybe he's like Willy. Willy was the big guy on the TV IMF team, who helped Barney or drove the truck or carried a message to Jim or acted as a repairman or did any other unglamorous job that was necessary to the plan. The spotlight never focused on Willy, this jack-of-all-trades, but he was vital. He made sure that whatever had to be done got done.

This is the team that helps you live the Christian life. God the Father has mapped out the plan and knows all the possible deviations from it and has contingencies for them all. He has given us the principles by which we live and he is waiting for us when we finish our part of the mission and make it home safely.

God the Son has the hardest part of the Father's plan. He can walk us through the plan and we can trust him and confide in him because he is also one of us; he's been where we've been as well as where we are going and he knows what we face. He has been to hell and back and so he can help us face the direst of days.

God the Spirit works with us and in us and for us so that we follow the plan. He relays messages from the Father and the Son. He translates our deepest feelings to them. He gives us power and encouragement and support and counsel and whatever we need to help us follow the plan.

So we don't have to do this on our own. God said he would never leave us or forsake us. Jesus asked his Father to send his Spirit to help us. For God decided out of love to let us join his team on earth to accomplish the final part of his plan. And our part is to be ambassadors of God spreading his good news, agents of God demonstrating his love and forgiveness and power to transform lives. Because the plan is for God to reunite with his erring creatures, to remake his fallen creation and renew it. We are to recruit volunteers for his team and to support each other as we discover and do our part.

This is our task and we have all the resources of heaven at hand. We have access to the mind who dreamt up the universe and even ourselves and who, when we screwed it up with our arrogance, put in place the plan to set it all right. We have access to the one person who understands things from both our standpoint and God's and who also knows pain and joy and life and death firsthand. And we have access to the power that runs the universe and can remake us in the image of the one who created us and redeemed us and loves us. In every situation, through every peril, in sorrow and triumph, we have ahead of us as our goal, above us as our protection, beside us as our companion and within us as our compass, the divine team of the Father, the Son and the Spirit to lead us, equip us, encourage and help us. Glory be to our wonderful, multifaceted and quite singular God!

First preached on June 6, 2005. It has been updated and revised.