WE ARE THE TRINITY
Genesis 1:27
Gracious God, bless now the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts. Breathe your Spirit into us and grant that we may hear, and in hearing, be led in the way you want us to go.
Amen.
Today is Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the entire Christian Calendar which celebrates a doctrine. It's a day when we honor the triune nature of the one true God; it’s also a day when we can get lost in the worst sort of theological abstractions.
One of the first sermons I delivered at Saint John’s Worthington, without realizing when I agreed to preach, was Trinity Sunday 2011. I have to tell you, this is the Sunday when even the most seasoned clergy quake in their shoes - they try to avoid preaching and get the deacon to preach this Sunday! This Sunday is probably the most difficult because the concept of the Trinity and three-in-one is hard enough to understand for those trained in theology.
Since Pope John XXII, the western church has set this Sunday aside for reflection on the mystery of the Trinity. When we sing the words of one of our best-known hymns, Holy, Holy, Holy, we sing
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
Praising the Holy Trinity has been going on for almost 1,696 years since Emperor Constantine called 317 bishops from all over the Christian world to settle the question of the divinity of Jesus Christ in 325 CE. The church fathers had spent hundreds of years trying to reach an agreement on the doctrine of the Trinity. And, yet today, we, as preachers, are supposed to pull something ‘out of the hat’ that explains the Trinity. I will
say, since 2011, I have been studying and researching, bound and determined that I would purposely select this Sunday and give my best try at explaining the Trinity.
I have concluded, after almost ten years of study, that we CAN NOT fully explain the Trinity. . . we can only speak of things that we can understand to suggest the Trinity. What on earth could I say about the Trinity that was new?! How do I even begin to explain the mystery? So it came to me -- I CAN'T explain the mystery. No one can. No one can fathom the mystery, so we express it in symbols -- and we look around the church and find Trinitarian symbols.
However, there are two concrete facts about the Trinity:
• There is absolutely no reference in the Bible to the Trinity
• There is absolutely no reference in the Bible to the Triune God
So, here is the important question: If we are created in the image of God as scripture tells us in Genesis 1:27, then just how are we really like God?
Though God is often depicted as an old man with white hair & a long beard sitting on athrone, in reality, we know that God cannot possibly look like us. That would make our God too small and limited, and as I have said, it is impossible to define God. God is beyond our comprehension. So perhaps, we should look at what it is about us that could be anything like God.
How could we possibly be made in God’s image?
We have a physical body, living, changing, finite. It enables us to live on this earth as Jesus did. We have a mind, an intellectual capacity for surpassing that of all other living creatures. Other earthly creatures are marvelous to behold and possess many amazing abilities and instincts, but none except human beings, can contemplate themselves, can reason, can reflect. No other creature is aware that it will die, or fears pain or the future.
None can create, reason, and embrace concepts, or discover and problem-solve like human beings. No other animal lives with the depth and complexity of human beings, coming close, I might dare to say, to the creative love of God. Finally, while other earthly creatures have instincts, no other animals have the expanse
of emotions, intuitions, or insights that we humans have. Animals live by rules of nature, day-by-day, but we humans are constantly seeking ‘more’, asking why, looking beyond what we can see or touch, and responding to guidance and ideas that often come spontaneously. Only humans seek forgiveness, comfort, or strength from something outside themselves; and more often than not, we receive that guidance and comfort to our faltering spirit.
From where? From where does it come?
From an invisible but profound and entirely believable source to whom we pray, to whom we cry out in despair and need –a spirit and power that calms, inspires, heals, and loves our spirit?it is the Holy Spirit Jesus promised God would send us after his body left the earth.
So there it is; God is at once a creative mind who continues to create the cosmos and everything ‘seem and unseen’. A creative power who came to earth
in human form as Jesus the man . . .
to live in a physical body as we do . . .
and to help us learn how to live with joy and meaning while on this earth.
God is an omnipotent power, who after Jesus’ physical death, left us the Holy Spirit to live inside us and guide and strengthen us if we but call upon her.
So, we are then body, mind, and spirit; we are three-in-one, and as such we resemble, perhaps weakly and faltering, but in reality, our God, the triune God.
So, for me the Trinity is no longer a doctrine of strange theology about God, a father-son?holy spirit concept, that is distant and complicated. Rather, the Trinity helps me understand who I am on my journey and what my relationship with God is.
Let’s not get stuck in theology; let’s move to how we live, how we think, what we do. Let’s listen to what God is telling us, is telling our spirit. And let that spirit move in us, be expressed through our lives, and affect the world for beauty, for truth, for justice, for kindness, and love.
Just as we are one person with three parts, our Triune God is one. And God wants us to share that Oneness with every living thing on this earth – that we all may be one.
We are called to worship the one who created everything, seen and unseen. We are called to worship the one who loved enough to come into the world and invite us into a relationship with him through one another and all of creation. We are called to worship the one who comes as the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen us as we seek to love and live with wisdom and understanding.
Let us pray:
In the name of the Father,
In the name of the Son,
In the name of the Spirit,
Three-in-One:
Father, cherish us,
Son, cherish us,
Spirit, cherish us,
Three all-kindly
God make us holy,
Christ make us holy,
Spirit make us holy
Three all-holy
Three aid our hope,
Three aid our love,
Three aid our eyes
And our knees from stumbling[1]
Amen.
Delivered at Saint John’s Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH; 30 May 2021
[1] Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (Hymns of the Gael) Hymns and Incantations, Angus Matheson, 1954, pg 63; Esther de Waal, editor, The Celtic Vision; Liguori, MO: Liguori/Triumph, 1988, 2001, pg 19
