Who Or What Is The Holy Trinity?

John 16:12-15

As you know, Bishop Price was scheduled to make a visitation today, and I usually accompany him when there is not a deacon present. Unfortunately, Bishop Price became ill and has just been released from the hospital. I don’t know any details, but it appears he will have surgery in the near future. I am asking that we all hold and Mariann in our prayers.

This service is going to be a little different than ones you are used to because as a Deacon, I can’t consecrate the host. But, by permission of Bishop Price, and because you have reserved sacrament, I will be able offer a slight modification of the Eucharist. Thank you for being understanding as we proceed.

I have to thank, Whit, who managed to print out a sermon for me. We can thank the wonders of modern technology that I could pull up a sermon down from the cloud and he could print it! And thanks to Sheryl Wise who doodled on the organ until I could get it together.

One of the first sermons I delivered Saint John’s Worthington, without realizing when I agreed to preach, was Trinity Sunday in 2011. I have to tell you, of all the Sundays in the year, this is the one that makes even the most seasoned priest quake in their shoes. This is probably the most difficult to preach on because the concept of the Trinity and the concept of ‘three-in-one’ is hard enough to understand for those trained in theology. There is an inside joke among clergy:

When Father Applegate was figuring out the preaching rota for Saint John’s this year, I told him I would preach on every other Sunday on the calendar, but NOT on Trinity Sunday– I didn’t have anything else to say! He is really going to get a chuckle out of today!

Today is Trinity Sunday. Since Pope John XXII, the western church has set this Sunday aside for reflection on the tremendous 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 1690 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. They settled the question of whether Christ was

simply another great prophet and teacher -- even a high-ranking angel from God -- or was he the divine Son of God, co-equal and co-eternal with God?

The church fathers had spent hundreds of years trying to reach agreement on the doctrine of the Trinity. And we, as preachers, are supposed to pull something ‘out of the hat’ that explains the Trinity as a matter of fact. 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. . . may I leave you with some understanding and no more confusion than you had before.

I have come to the conclusion, after almost eight years of studying, that we CAN NOT fully explain the Trinity… we can only speak of things that we can understand that might suggest the Trinity.

Did you know that Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in the entire Christian Calendar which celebrates a doctrine; and it is an unfinished doctrine, a mystery that is not completed or understood. And many would say that there is reason that only one doctrine is celebrated; because nobody wants to hear a sermon on a doctrine.

But today is Trinity Sunday -- 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 has the ability to fathom the mystery, so we express it in symbols -- and we look around the church and find Trinitarian symbols.

A doctrine by its nature is an abstraction – never referenced directly in scripture; others still, would state that the Trinity is the most unattainable doctrine of them all.

There are two concrete facts about the Trinity:

• There is no reference in the Bible to “Trinity”

• There is no reference in the Bible to the Triune God.

The Trinity has been explained in many ways from very heavy philosophical ideas to picture metaphors like a three-leaf clover. With any of these, it is important to remember that none of them describes God in his very being or essence. That cannot be done. The Trinity is a statement of how God relates, not how God is. When it comes to our relating to God, we can’t pin God down to one thing or one way. When we consider one way to view God there is always another way. But why three, as in the Trinity? Who knows? But we do know that just as we can’t pin God down to one of our simplistic ideas, we also can’t pin God down to three either, or any one of the three.