June 7, 2020
Holy Trinity Sunday
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20
Divine Wellspring of Unity
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. Every year we dedicate this Sunday after Pentecost to ponder the nature of God. God’s nature is a great mystery. It’s beyond our ability to fully comprehend. God is one, but yet this one God has revealed godself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This divine mystery is greater than our minds can comprehend. But by being of a scope so beyond our knowing, God’s very nature challenges and expands our thinking. Like the ever-expanding universe, God stretches our imaginations.
So we try to understand how this one God can also be three “persons,” as we say. But these three persons are not three gods; just one God. In trying to fathom this three-in-one God, we ultimately resort to geometry. We end up drawing triangles.
But not just any triangle. No, not the Isosceles, with two sides of the same length. The Isosceles has always scored as my personal favorite triangle. But it’s not helpful for our conversation on the Trinity.
And not the sturdy old Right Triangle, either, with its helpful 90% corner. The Right Triangle is ever so useful to carpenters, but for theology, no good!
And then there’s the odd duck, the Scalene Triangle. All three sides are of varying lengths. The angles are all different. The Scalene is definitely the exotic in the triangle family. But again, it’s not the triangle we call upon for when we consider the trinitarian nature of God.
No, on this Holy Trinity Sunday, our minds look to the Equilateral Triangle. Its name derives from its equal values. All three sides of the triangle: the same length. All three angles of the corners: the same 60 degrees. The Equilateral Triangle is a perfection of equivalence.
So we look to the Equilateral Triangle as we ponder God’s trinitarian nature. There is an organic equality within God’s nature. God isn’t a hierarchy.
God the Father isn’t greater than God the Son. And the Holy Spirit isn’t any less or more powerful than the Father or the Son.
Radical Equality. It’s not something we have many models for. Much of our world is hierarchical. Corporations and the military are hierarchical by nature. That structure is necessary for their functioning. Someone needs to be in charge. But the divine Trinity is equal and unified.
We rarely ever use the Athanasian Creed. We’re familiar with the Apostles’ Creed and the longer Nicene Creed. But we never recite the Athanasian Creed on a Sunday morning. The main reason is that it’s so very long. What makes the creed so lengthy is that the writers of the creed went to great lengths to describe the trinitarian nature of God. To drive home the point, everything is repeated in triplets:
What the Father is,
the Son is,
and so is the Holy Spirit.
Uncreated is the Father;
uncreated is the Son;
uncreated is the Spirit.
The Father is infinite;
the Son is infinite;
the Holy Spirit is infinite.
Eternal is the Father;
eternal is the Son;
eternal is the Spirit:
And yet there are not
three uncreated and unlimited beings,
but one who is uncreated and unlimited.
The creed declares clearly the radical equality within God’s nature. It sums up thus:
And in this Trinity,
no one is before or after,
greater or less than the other;
But all three persons are in themselves
coeternal and coequal;
This equality, this unity of divine being, is fundamental to the nature of our triune God. We worship a God who is relational in nature! God dwells within a triune communion!
The Trinity isn’t static. God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, dwells in a dynamic, interactive, divine relationship. There’s an energy within God, like the energy within an atom. The Trinity is ever circling and moving in concert as one God. You could say it’s a dance, the dance of the Trinity.
In this divine community, our three-in-one and one-in-three God shapes the universe into being. God creates all things, and in doing this, community is expanded.
The book of Genesis tells us that God created humanity in the image and likeness of God. We bear the image of God.
When children are born, old family photos are hauled out and dusted off. The baby pictures of Baby’s parents are carefully compared with Baby. Who does Baby look like? Where does that red hair come from? Who has that nose? Those family similarities can also manifest themselves in behaviors. The turn of the head, the posture, the laugh. Someone will say, “That’s just like your grandpa!
Whose image and likeness do they bear? The Bible answers that about humanity as a whole. We bear the image and likeness of God! Wow!
So what we see in the Trinity tells us something critical about ourselves, about who we were created and shaped to be.
First of all, we were created to be in communion with one another. When God created the universe, everything was declared good. All of creation is good. But then, something came along that was NOT good. God said, “It’s not good for the human to be alone.”
We are made to be in communion with one another! In this we bear the image and likeness of God! This triune God, who dwells in divine communion within godself, has fashioned us to live in community with one another! We need each other!
If there’s one thing we’ve discovered during this pandemic winter, it’s how much we crave to be with other people! It’s not good when we’re alone! When we have passed through this season of necessary isolation, I hope and pray that this experience will shape us. May we be more sensitive and attentive to the lonely and isolated in our midst! May we value human community!
There’s a second divine genetic marker we carry within our humanity. The radical equality of the Trinity has shaped us. We believe and confess that no one person is greater and worth more than another. And we also believe and confess the reverse: that no one person is less significant and worth less than another. We have been created in a radical equality. Each one of us is beloved of God! Every single person is one for whom Christ came to save and heal!
This essential equality is at the root of who we were created to be. It was meant to shape the heart of our life together. It defines what our community was intended to look like. Where we value this fundamental equality, our human community will flourish as God meant for us. Decisions will be made for the good of all, for every individual will have worth.
But sin has corrupted our vision. Eyes that once saw the equal value of each brother and sister have gone blurry. In the astigmatism of our broken vision, certain people have diminished in size and scope, while others have become enlarged and greater. We’ve created hierarchies and relative values that were never intended to be there! This myopia has restricted our vision of the human community. In our short-sightedness, we’ve focused more attention and regard on the people closest to us and most like ourselves. We’ve ceased to see or even be aware of the people who are further from us. We’re unaware of their situation, we don’t know the stony road they’ve trod.
This broken vision has affected the way we treat one another. It’s tipped scales in our decision making. Because of it, the very structures and rules that regulate and order our life together are skewed.
Our current national conflict has laid bare the old, festering wound of racism. It has cursed our nation for generations. Our nation was founded on the principle that all people were created equal. On paper, we confess this radical truth.
But in reality, we have fallen short of our ideals. We have taken the graceful balance of the Equilateral Triangle, and we’ve skewed it. We’ve misshapen its once equal sides and perfect angles. We’ve contorted it into a grotesque Scalene Triangle. Nothing remains equal. Some members have been stretched into far greater prominence while others have been diminished.
Any person of color can share stories of their diminishment. Just because of the color of their skin, they’re pulled over more often in traffic. They’re eyed with suspicion while doing ordinary things, shopping, relaxing at a pool side, using athletic equipment in the gym where they have a membership. They’re questioned, “why are you here? Do you belong here? Show me your ID to prove you belong.” Mothers of mixed-race marriages are eyed in grocery stores when their light skinned children are with them. “Are these your children?” people ask. White people ask.
We find ourselves these days enveloped by a biological pandemic. But there’s an older and more persistent pandemic affecting our nation. A social pandemic. It’s gripped us since the days when slave ships landed on our shores. Since the days that native peoples were pushed off their lands and claimed by another people as their own. We’ve lived in the grips of this social pandemic since the beginnings of our nation. It informs an unspoken creed within our land.
But this is not our way. This is not our Christian faith. Our faith informs us of our true origins, our true reality. Faith tells us whose image and likeness we really hold. For we have been spoken out of the mouth of the triune God. And from that mouth, from that holy breath, we ALL bear the image and the likeness of the divine. Not just some of us. All of us. In and through this holy, dynamic interplay of the divine dance we now live and move and have our being.
So come, let us enter the dance! This is the dance we were born for! It’s the dance of the Trinity! It’s never the same thing twice! This dance expresses the remarkable diversity and creativity of our incredible God! In our dance, we show just how wide and how high and how broad is the scope of God’s imagination. We embrace and lift up one another in this dance. We dance as the equal partners that we are. We dance as kindred, children of the same heavenly maker.
And as we dance, we reflect the image and likeness of the one in whom we were made. Like the spiraling arms of a galaxy, like the ever-expanding universe, this dance spins and moves across this beautiful globe. It stretches from shore to shore across this beloved nation of ours, blessed and made stronger by the diversity of its people. All equal in worth, in stature, in promise. Come, join the dance of Trinity!
