Trinity II: What God Needs

Scripture: Mark 8.31-38; Romans 4.13-25


This message is part two of what we started last week, our focus on why we believe in the Trinity. This is, I admit, heavy on theology. Theology is “the study of God’s words.” This is not to be confused with “bracketology”, which is the study of random picks of basketball teams about which you know nothing. But that’s another story.

We are studying God’s words today. What does God say about himself? That’s the question we should always be asking, every time we crack the Bible; every time we gather for worship – what does God say about himself?

We don’t ask that question very often. If we’re honest, it’s because we’re not as interested in that question as in this question – what about me? We are always interested in that question. My life is a movie about me. I know this because I am in every scene. You thought life was about you. You’re wrong - it’s about me. Or at least that’s how I think, too much of the time. Theology, God’s words, reminds us that life is not about us – or at least not in the way we think it is.

Even us churchgoing disciples seem to think it’s about our preferences, our opinions - whether we’re “getting something out of it.” Who ever said church was like this? Who said you were supposed to get something out of it? Where is that verse found in the Bible? Yes, worship is primarily about what God has done for us. The cross and the sacraments are visual and vivid reminders that God has acted, God has worked, God has sacrificed, all for us. But look at the cross again. The cross beckons us to come and decide. When you come to the cross, you come to a crossroads. This is what Jesus said about it:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.

See, there are apparently conditions, requisites that Jesus puts on anyone that wants to come to God. We talk so much about what we need, we forgot to ask, “What does God need?” Now, in one sense, God, of course, needs nothing. But in another very real and pertinent sense, it’s pretty clear, from’s God’s mouth to our ears, that He does need and expect certain things from us.

The other day I saw my cat, Mavis. I mention it because I hadn’t seen her in several months. She doesn’t live us anymore. See, we got a big dog last year and Mavis doesn’t like the dog. It could have something to do with the dog trying to bite her in half. So, Mavis took to living in the garage for a while. We put her food and water and litter out there. It worked fairly well until about November, when it got too cold for Mavis out there in the garage. So she left. Without so much as a goodbye, I might add. I know, it’s a sad story. We hadn’t seen her in some time, as I said. I thought she was dead. So did my wife. Until the boys saw her last week down the street, and then I saw her the other day. She runs away from us now, like she doesn’t know us. Typical cat behavior.

I know this a stretch – cats aren’t exactly a biblical animal – but I think we expect God to hang around the margins of our lives the same way we expected our cat to. We expect our faith in God to survive on occasional feedings and waterings and a compartment in the garage. We forget that God needs more.

He needs us to put Him first. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. . .”

God needs to talk with us and eat with us. “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me.” (Revelation 3.20)

God needs us to love Him and his words more than we love the world.

When the hit show, Everybody Loves Raymond, went off the air, Ray Romano, the star of the series, spoke to the studio audience after the last day’s filming. Because of the series, Romano had gone from a struggling stand-up comedian to one of the highest-paid actors on television. Romano reflected on the series and his past and future with the audience that day. He read a note his brother had stuck in his luggage the day he moved from New York to Hollywood nine years earlier. It said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” A tearful Romano looked up and told the audience, “Now I’m going to work on my soul.”

What good is it if you love the world so much and so well your whole life, but only find out at the very end that the world doesn’t really love you back? What if, at the end, you need for someone to speak a good word on your behalf, and the only one who can do that for you is the One Man you were embarrassed to admit you knew in this world? (my paraphrase).

Sometimes it’s hard to love God. Sometimes his words are just hard. Peter thought so. Peter wished Jesus would be quiet. He was embarrassing himself! All this talk of suffering and sacrifice and death is going to turn people away. Financial support will suffer. People will think we are weird. But Jesus talks about these things quite openly.
God keeps talking, seemingly oblivious to what we think we need. God rearranges our needs.

What also causes me embarrassment, and sometimes tears is the knowledge that we are living shadow lives right now. We have an idea of how we ought to live and who we should be living for. But we have this shadow mission, the thing that’s going on in our hearts and minds all the time. One man, a good, prosperous, giving man by all accounts, admits that if he could, he would “just sit around in my underwear, eat chips and watch football, all the time.” That’s his shadow mission. He’s not alone. How easily our lives can descend into trivia!

But Jesus keeps talking. The Trinity keeps talking. God seems to think that his words can change us. He thinks his words are destroying and creating worlds. He is “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” (Romans 4.17) Conversation = Creation.

The Bible tells us that there is going to be a big conversation on the last day of this world. I think it’s going to go something like this:


God: Yesterday, we created this world. Remember how we made humanity in our image. We were so full of love for them!

God: Ages and ages of their history have come and gone. It’s today now. Do they love us? Do they trust? Have they listened to us? Have they understood?

And all the holy angels will gather around and lean in to listen to how God answers those questions.

How do you answer? In the shadow of the cross, what decision do you come to?