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This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "One is the Loneliest Number." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are

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reserved. Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourselves or others is heartily encouraged. [Music]

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[Music] He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, and he shall gather the lambs with his arm. With his arm.

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[Music] He shall feed his flock like a shepherd, and he shall gather the lambs with his arm. With his arm.

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[Music] And carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. And gently lead, and gently lead those

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that are with young. [Music] Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke, the first chapter, beginning at the

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twenty-sixth verse. "And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail thou that art highly favoured; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among

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women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary; for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the

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Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the

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Highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord;

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be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. At five o'clock last night I felt fine, and then I went out to throw some trash out, and

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by seven o'clock I sounded like this. And I sound a little better now than I did a half an hour ago. So please bear with me. I'm doing the best I can. Christmas is a family affair. Christmas is the celebration of the gift which the family of God is gives to the family of God that is the Church. I want to say that again because

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that's a rather confusing sentence. Christmas is the gift of the family God is to the family of God which is the Church. Now as soon as I use a phrase like "the family of God is" or "the family God is," I'm immediately referring to the doctrine of the Trinity. And as soon as you mention the word "Trinity," a lot of people throw up their hands in horror. Someone

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has said that the Trinity is a doctrine which if you don't believe it you lose your soul, and if you do believe it you lose your mind. I don't know if either of those are true, but I do know that it is a difficult doctrine and there are many people who consider it only to be a kind of theological curiosity, some kind of an abstraction which has little

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to do with the living of life. I assure you that is not the case. The doctrine of the Trinity has immediate and compelling importance to us as Christians in the world today. If I were to say to you, "There are only six more shopping days until Christmas," you would all immediately understand what I mean. In like manner, and much more to be regretted,

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if I were to say this sentence to you, you would also understand it. There are a lot of people for whom Christmas will begin next Monday morning and end next Monday night. There are a lot of people for whom this sacred day is nothing more than a sacred day. It lasts for 12 or 18 or 24 hours and then it is gone. Those people need to know more about

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the Trinity and to understand the gift which the family of God is, that's the Trinity, and which that gift, which that family gives to us, the family of God on earth, the Church. This concept of the Trinity is what Christmas, in the end, is all about. So it would do us well, it seems, to think for a moment about the Trinity, and I would point out to you

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first of all that it's not some doctrine which a bunch of theologians thought up just because they wanted to think of something hard. It was the fruit of the experience of the early Church. The early Church understood the one supreme being, God. Then they encountered this Jesus, whom they understood to be divine, yet there could not be, by definition, two

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gods. And while they were puzzling this question came the experience of Pentecost with the dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and God was evidenced to them in yet another expression of his being. How could they understand that the Father was God, and Jesus was God, and the Holy Spirit is God, yet there are not three gods? They chose to do it by saying

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that there is one God evidenced in three persons. Now when they used the word "person" they did not mean by it what we mean when we use the word "person." They specifically used the word "persona." And the persona was the mask which was worn by an actor on the Greek or the Roman stage of that day. You've been in theaters where when you've looked up toward

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the screen you've seen either to the right or the left two masks, one smiling and one sad. Those are the personas. The masks were worn, they were much larger than the face, in order that the expression of joy or of tragedy would be clearly visible to the person sitting in the back of the amphitheater. And the mask was also large in order that a small

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megaphone could be built inside of it to amplify the voice of the actor who was speaking. Now when the early church said that God was one God in three persons, they were saying one God in three masks, in three expressions or manifestations of himself. They were saying that God was so great, this being, this one who in fact was before being and is the ground

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of all being, so sublime, so awesome in his infinitude, that when the time came for him to express himself to us, he had to come down to the level of expressing himself not in one blinding manifestation, but in simpler manifestations which we might more easily comprehend. Now this doctrine of the Trinity is basic to the Apostles' Creed which we say

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every Sunday morning. We begin by asserting there is one God, "I believe in God." And then we go on to assert the three persons, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," and so on. Here is the expression of the Trinity.

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Perhaps it is most beautifully revealed at this time of the year when we read the Christmas narratives. The passage which I shared with you a few moments ago tells us how God wants to reach out to the world. So as the Father he reaches, as the Son he comes, but what is the instrument of his coming? "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, Mary, and you

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shall conceive." The Holy Spirit is the instrument by which the reaching God comes in the person of his Son. It's a very beautiful picture, this picture of the Holy Spirit hovering above Mary. The Holy Spirit is often seen as a dove. In the early chapters of Genesis, we have the first mention of the Spirit when it says, "The Spirit of God hovered over the waters,"

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and in the Latin, that word "hovers" comes out "incubatat." It's the word from which we get our word "incubate." The dove, you see, hovering, brooding over the whole creation, bringing it into being. John Milton in Paradise Lost phrased it like this, "O Spirit, thou from the first was present, and with almighty wing outspread, dove-like, saddest brooding

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on the vast abyss, and madest it pregnant." That same picture is present here when Mary has the Spirit come upon her, overshadow her. The word "overshadow" means to envelop. He surrounds her, and she conceives the expression of God, which is the Son, and all by the power of God as known in the Father. Now, these three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

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dwell together in a perfect unity because they are deeply in love with one another. Love is the essence of the Trinity. Jesus says of his Father, "Father, love them as you love me." The Father says of the Son, "This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him." And Jesus, speaking of the Trinity, says, and specifically of the Holy Spirit, "If you

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love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he will give you another counselor, which is the Spirit of truth. And in that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you." The unity of the Spirit with the Father and the Son is love, perfect, magnificent love. It's a kind of a beautiful thought,

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isn't it, to think that because one is the loneliest number, even in the Trinity, though we have one God, he is, as it were, a family, a council, where the voice of justice and the voice of mercy are both heard, and where the voice of love overshadows and encompasses all. So great is the love which exists within the Trinity that it was only broken for one

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moment in all of history. That one moment was on Calvary, when the Son, having taken upon himself all the burden of the world's sin, became sin. And in that moment, the Father, who is too pure to look upon iniquity, turned away. It was a moment so breaking to the Trinity that God covered the whole scene over with darkness, that no one might see it in all

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of its awful clarity. And Jesus in the darkness cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This was the deepest hell of the cross, the moment when the love of the Trinity was strained. But notice that that love was strained precisely in order that the love of the Trinity might be expressed to us. On that cross, Jesus Christ was dying

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for us. The Father's heart was breaking for us. The Spirit was suffering for us. The moment when the love of God, which exists within God for the persons that are God, the moment that it hurt the most was the moment when all the love of God was being poured out for us. You know, I used to think those chapters in the Bible, which consisted of nothing but

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long lists of names, were a real bore. Preachers call them the "begattitudes." And when I was in seminary, I used to hope and pray that when it came my turn to read the Scripture, it wouldn't be one of those chapters. I still feel that way. They're tough to read. But I understand why they're there now. They're there to show us that God does not love men

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en masse, but as individuals. He said to Moses, "I know thee by name." And he says the same thing to every one of us. He loves each of us as if there were only one of us to love. That's how great the beating, loving heart of God is. Infinite love between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And infinite personal love poured out to us. And Jesus says that

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this same love, this love which exists inside the Trinity and outside the Trinity, this love which takes away that oneness which brings loneliness and instead makes a family, the family that God is and the family of God which we are, this love is supposed to be duplicated in us. This is what he says. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even

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as I have loved you, that the same love might be in you that is in me." And then praying to his Father he says, "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfectly one so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved

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me." That pure, holy, personal love is prayed for by Jesus that it might become a reality in our experience. This last September, together with some other members of GPC, I was in Rome. And one day we traveled outside of Rome to Castel Gandolfo, which is the summer residence of Pope Paul VI. And there we were part of a papal audience. It was held in the new audience

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hall which seats some 6,000 persons. And it was jammed to capacity and there were another 2,000 people standing outside. We were very fortunate, through a personal friend of mine, John Cardinal Wright, who is the secretary of the congregation of the clergy, we were given seats way down front, at least $15 seats. Now, the procedure in every papal audience

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is the same. The pope is carried in in all of the splendor which is part of the Roman Church. And then he speaks to the whole assemblage, speaks in Italian. That didn't mean much to us. And then they proceed to read lists of the names of all the groups that are present. First they read all of the groups that speak Italian, and then all of the groups that speak

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French, and then all of the groups that speak English, and then all of the groups that speak German, and then all of the groups that speak Spanish. And after each one of these lists of names is read, the pope speaks for about five minutes in that language, in English or French or German or Spanish, whatever it happens to be, to the people from that group.

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Now there were two or three hundred groups there that day. Each list had many, many names on it. And as the lists were being read, three times the pope interrupted to make a personal comment to a group. The first time was a church in Italy, which the pope was congratulating on its 425th anniversary. The second time he interrupted was a church from France, which

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he had visited when he was a young priest years and years ago. He was delighted to see that representatives of that congregation were there. And believe it or not, the third time he chose to interrupt and speak personally to a group was to the group from the Glendale Presbyterian Church. When we were introduced, he spoke to us. And this is what he said,

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"I am deeply touched that in your travels so far from your own country, you have seen fit to visit me. I am glad you have come, for it gives me opportunity to speak of the affection in which I hold the Presbyterian Church. There is much that separates us, but there is more that unites us. Miles, traditions, understandings, these are between us, but

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we are one in Christ Jesus and one with each other. I am grateful to God for your brotherhood, for your kinship, for our oneness. Tell all those in California who are one with us of the love in which we hold them, and tell them that I send to them my apostolic blessing. And I call on all of those assembled here to express their delight in your presence,

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even as I do." And then there was a tremendous round of applause. It was a very beautiful moment. And it touched us. It touched us because, you see, it's absolutely true. Though we might be separated by history, separated by miles, separated by ideas, though there's a difference between the left-hand side of this sanctuary and the right-hand side of this sanctuary,

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though your theology and your tradition might not square with the person who's sitting right now on your hat, though there might be all kinds of differences and divergencies within us, still we are to have flowering inside of us, expressing itself through us, the same love, the same oneness which exists within the Trinity and which the Trinity has

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for all men. One is the loneliest number, but it should never apply to us. Now, let's be honest enough to admit the fact that we fail at this. I don't exactly know why that is. We come into the world loving. You know how a baby loves its mother. Psychologists call that a primitive "we" group. Even when a child is old enough to begin to talk, you'll

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hear him say things like, "We drank our milk," meaning that he and mom drank it together. There's a real tightness and unity there. But somewhere along the line, the child calls out for mother, and mother isn't there. She's gone next door to borrow a cup of sugar. And for the first time, the child wonders, "Will there always be someone there? Maybe I better

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get ready in case there isn't." Then we teach the child to share. And the child grows up sharing, and one day he shares his wagon with another little boy, and the other little boy hits him over the head with it. And that leaves its mark, not only on the head, but also on the heart. Sometimes you share with people, and they clobber you. And as these impressions

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continue to be imposed upon us, we begin a retreat back into a little secret cell of security where people can't hit us, where people can't do things to us that we don't want them to do. We kind of lock ourselves away. And that's very sad, because that's when we become one. And that's when we become lonely. Have you seen Fiddler on the Roof?

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There's a scene in it in which Tevye, the old Jewish father, has gone through three tempestuous love affairs with his daughters. His daughters have fallen in love with three young men, and they're wonderful stories, each one. And he's quite thrilled by all of this. And he's sitting with his wife. They've been married for many, many years. And he's

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talking about the romance that these girls have, and how they keep talking all the time about how they love these boys. And he turns to his wife and he says, "Do you love me?" And she answers, "I've been darning your socks for over thirty years." And he says, "I know, but do you love me?" She said, "I cook your food, I clean your house, I bore your children,

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I reared your children, and you ask me a question like that?" "Yes, I ask you a question like that. I know you've done all those things, but what I want to know now is this. Do you love me?" "We've prayed together. We've gone to synagogue together. We've suffered together. We've laughed together. I know, but do you love me?" And she says, "Yes, I love you."

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And he answers, "You know, after all these years, it's rather nice to know." You know, we don't ask each other that question because we don't even like to admit to one another that we need to know. And when we do ask one another that question, "Do you love me?" we answer, "I've been sitting beside you in church for ten years. I taught your kids in Sunday

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school. We went out on the Everymember canvas together and greater love hath no man than that." But do you love me? Do we ask it? And when we're asked it, do we say, "Yes, I love you." If you haven't seen Fiddler, have you seen Man of La Mancha? Don Quixote's an old fellow, senescent. He dreams he's a knight, a knight-errant, and he takes his portly little

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sidekick along as his squire. They ride and flee, bitten old horses. They go to an inn. He thinks it's a castle in his deluded state. He has himself made a knight by the innkeeper, and he wears as his helmet a barber's bowl. Everything he sees, he sees through the eyes of his delusion, and at dinner he sees the servant girl who waits on the table. She's

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a prostitute. She's been abused by almost every man that's ever come to the inn, but when he sees her, he sees her as his lady fair, and he asks her for some boon. He asks for her kerchief to wear upon his lance. He calls her Dulcinea. She replies, "My name is not Dulcinea. My name is Aldonza. I was conceived in a stall. My mother was a whore.

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I don't know who my father was. I've slept with many men. I'm not a lady. I'm not fair. I'm not Dulcinea. I'm Aldonza." But he never sees her that way, always as Dulcinea, always with love. And at the end of the story, he lies dying, and his mind is clear now. And she enters, and she has become Dulcinea. Having been loved so tenderly, she's become

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tender. Having been thought of so highly, she's climbed higher. The trouble is that now that his mind is clear, he doesn't see her as Dulcinea anymore. He sees her as Aldonza. So she says to him, "Be the way you were. Once more, dream the impossible dream. Reach out for the unreachable star." And he does. And that's beautiful. Because you see, in

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every one of us this morning, there's an impossible dream. In every one of us, there's an unreachable star. But if we'll love one another, as Christ calls us to love one another, we will bring to pass in one another the fulfillment of that dream and the reaching of that star. There's no end to what you can do if you know you're loved like that. It's not easy. And

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you can take this axiomatically. You can never so love anyone else until you so love yourself. The love of the Trinity for the world begins with the love of the Trinity for itself. And you can never come to that kind of love for yourself until you know how God loves you. And that love of God is made evident to you when the Holy Spirit broods over you and Christ

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is born anew in the manger of your heart. He will not intrude into your life. One of the reasons we call the Holy Spirit the dove is that the dove is the only bird that will not fight back. The dove will permit itself to be pecked to death and never will peck in response. The Holy Spirit never pushes. He comes like he came to Mary. Gently. In

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beauty and tenderness. In a soft loveliness. I think she must have been terrified of that angel. Oh, I know it doesn't sound like she is, but remember, she told these words to Luke a lot of years later. I imagine she kind of made things sound a little better than they were. And by the time Luke got done writing it with that masterful pen of his, it comes

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out like it ought to be in the Bible. But at the moment when the angel confronted her, she must have drawn back in fear. That's the reason why when the moment of conception came, no angel, just the tenderness of the Spirit. When next you say in the Apostles' Creed, he was conceived of the Holy Ghost. Think about that. And think about how he,

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Jesus, the love of God incarnate, can be conceived in you by that same Spirit. And think too of how that Spirit gives you in him the love which belongs to God, is spread on the earth, buds in you, and becomes so magnificently beautiful that Christmas isn't just a day, not a pine scented candle anymore, but a light that burns and burns and warms and cheers

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every day of your life. Accept the gift of the Trinity this Christmas, won't you? For Christ's sake. May the love of God the Father, the peace of Christ the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit the Comforter be and abide with you and all those whom you love and all those whom nobody loves forever and forever.

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[Choral singing] [Choral singing] [Choral singing]