Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
The book Three Bags Full, recently made into a movie, The Sheep Detectives, is set in the picturesque village of Denbrook. There, a shepherd by the name of George Hardy tends his flock. He makes sure they are well fed, cares for their illnesses, and reads murder mystery novels to them every night. His sheep are blissfully ignorant of life’s calamities—in part because they can will themselves to forget by counting to three. They don’t understand death, believing it is something made up in stories. For their part, they believe that at the end of their lives, they turn into clouds and float away.
As innocent and naïve as the sheep are, they can understand English—they just can not speak it—and they have one glaring flaw: they ostracize any sheep born in the winter, calling them “winter lambs” and refusing to give them proper names. One morning the sheep wake to find their shepherd murdered and thus begins the great adventure of The Sheep Detectives.
The Sheep Detectives is the beautiful story of how a flock—specifically an intelligent sheep named Lily, an outcast sheep named Sebastian, a wizened older sheep named Mopple, and a winter lamb—help solve the murder of their beloved shepherd. But that is just the basic plot line. The real beauty of this movie is that it is a parable trying to uncover the mystery of God and death and the true purpose of life.
When the sheep begin their quest for justice, Lily and Mopple turn to Sebastian to help them navigate the local village and give meaning to the places and events they encounter. Sebastian is a worldly sheep who often wonders away from the flock and offers helpful perspectives on life in the village—especially for two sheep who have spent their entire lives in a single, grassy meadow. One of the first places they visit is the graveyard next to the beautiful stone church in the middle of town.
Lily asks Sebastian what the place is and he tells her it is the church where someone named God lives.
She asks him, “Who’s God?”
Sebastian replies, “It’s a bit confusing, God is a shepherd.”
Mopple then asks, hopefully, “So he could be our shepherd?”
Sebastian replies, “No, because he is also a lamb.”
Lily, now thoroughly confused, asks, “What?”
To which Sebastian only further confuses them by saying, “And he’s also invisible. And he’s made of bread. And he damns things.”
Lily, trying to clarify, says, “Dams things? Like a beaver?”
Sebastian replies, “Yes.”
Lily sums it up nicely by saying, “So, God is a big invisible beaver, made of…bread.”
Sebastian replies, “Yes. And they eat him on Sundays.”
To which Mopple replies, “Poor God.”
Poor God indeed. This is almost the exact conversation every preacher imagines when they try to explain God and the Trinity. There is simply no way anyone could fully understand the mystery of the Trinity, much less describe it without wandering into heresy. So, I’m pretty sure that Sebastian the sheep has done a better job than most preachers will this Sunday.
We are more like Lily, Mopple, and Sebastian than we might care to admit. We seek easy answers to life’s mysteries. When Lily begins her quest to discover George’s killer, she confidently states the four rules of every murder mystery: the victim is the most important clue, the killer always returns to the scene of the crime, an outsider comes and shakes things up, and there is always a motive. But she soon discovers that real life murders are not so easy to solve.
God is not so easy to solve either. A shepherd who is also a lamb and a beaver is almost as good an explanation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Just because we are accustomed to this language, does not make the Trinity any less wooly. But I wonder if the point of the Trinity, is not so much about naming God as it is inviting us to discover God.
In the Creed we speak of the three persons of God. This is not something we just made up in a book—it is what we believe about God as Trinity. We begin by professing our belief in God as Father and Almighty—he made heaven and earth and all that is in them. Next, we profess our belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God—not of the Father—Jesus and the Father are one. Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father, meaning there has never been any separation between them, ever. They are one and the same, or, as the Creed says it “true God from true God.”
We encounter Jesus in a particular historical moment but, he has always been, is now, and will always be. Our first introduction to Jesus is not the Gospels, but in Creation itself: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” God speaks and says things like: “Let there be light.” And there is light. The spoken Word is the entry point of Jesus. We even call Jesus, “the Word.” Jesus is there with God the Creator at the very beginning. And so is the Holy Spirit.
The Creed concludes with our profession of belief in the Holy Spirit—eternally connected to God, both Father and Son. The Spirit is that breath of God that “swept over the face of the waters” in the beginning. The Spirit continues to give us life. We hear about the Spirit through prophets, see the work of the Spirit in the Church, receive the Spirit in baptism, know the Spirit through forgiveness, and are guided by that same Spirit into the life of the world to come . The Spirit is sustainer, a nurturer, the very breath of God.
Though I can describe these things, I, like you, remain a long way from truly understanding them. They are meant to be mystery. Unlike The Sheep Detectives or any good whodunit, this mystery is not meant to be solved. Once we think we fully “know” and understand exactly what or who God is, we risk losing the wonder of faith. Faith is not knowledge; it is trust and love.
This is what Lily the sheep finally realizes after discovering the killer. Her quest was never really about George’s murder; it was about trust and love. For what sheep really teach us is that the most important thing is “cherished belonging.” They allow themselves to belong to us and so we find that we belong to them.” That is the mark of any truly good relationship.
Maybe the deeper truth of the Trinity Is not found in trying to describe God—no matter what names you use: Father, Son, Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Shepherd, lamb, beaver made of bread that you eat on Sundays. Maybe the deepest truth of the Trinity is cherished belonging.
God tells Abraham, “You will be my people, and I will be your God.” You belong to me, and I belong to you. As simple as that sounds, it is the hardest mystery of all to uncover. And yet, it is the real purpose of our lives.
Amen