In the name of the most Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes,
you’ll hear preachers lament about having to preach on Trinity Sunday. After
all, it is the only Sunday of the Church year in which we focus on a doctrine
instead of an event. And it doesn’t help that there is no direct reference to
the Trinity anywhere in Scripture. But that doesn’t mean that today’s readings
aren’t important. Sometimes the doctrine of the Trinity is glossed over and
people will wonder “what difference does it make to me when I have cancer that
God is three-in-one?” or “how does the Trinity affect my day to day life?” And
these are valid and faithful questions.
Often when the Trinity is discussed or described the word “mystery” comes up, and today I’d like to spend some time considering the Trinity as mystery. Now, we don’t tend to like mysteries. Sure, we enjoy reading a mystery novel, but only so that we can get to resolution in the final pages. And murder mystery movies do well at the box office, but cliff-hangers often are not well received. Americans are problem solvers, we are inquisitive, and we prefer to have all of our loose ends wrapped up. We don’t like the unknown, even when it comes to faith. And yet, when it comes to the Trinity, an unresolved mystery is what we are given.
And for some,
this is problematic. Secularists might say “well, if you can’t explain it, then
why should I believe it?” CS Lewis once said that “the best is perhaps what we
understand least.” Paul Tillich understood this as well when he wrote about
faith and doubt. He defined faith as the finite being tuned to the infinite.
But by definition, the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, and so he claims
that all acts of faith are acts of courage. As God says through the prophet
Isaiah- “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” There is uncertainty built
into the very nature of faith, and we might call that uncertainty “mystery.”
Doubt, then, isn’t rejecting these mysteries, but rather comes about from the
inherent insecurity of such truths. Faith and doubt are poles of the same
reality- of the mystery of faith.
The mystery of the Trinity means
that God is always just beyond our grasp, which is probably the right place for
us to be. The mystery of the Trinity brings us deeper into God’s reality. And
this mystery really is something to celebrate; you might even call it a gift.
The first thing to celebrate about the mystery of the Trinity is that it
liberates us from bad theology. I listened to a sermon recently where the
preacher said that he had a seminary professor who summarized the entire Old
Testament in three words- “God did it.” And you can see where that thinking
comes from. Our reading from Genesis is just the first of many instances in
which the story seems to be saying “God did it.” And because we don’t like
mystery, we rather often buy into this brand of theology. We want there to be a
reason for everything that happens. We find comfort in telling ourselves that
God is in control of everything and we just can’t see the grandeur of the
divine plan.
But this line of thinking gets us
into serious trouble. Sometimes bad things happen, and they’re not what God
would want. I really have trouble seeing terminal cancer or a hurricane as
something that God does. And I don’t think it’s a Biblical view either. Jesus
teaches his disciples to pray “your will be done on earth as in heaven,” which
assumes that sometimes things happen that aren’t God’s will. But this leaves us
with the uncomfortable reality of mystery. How is it that God is both sovereign
and that bad things happen? We can come up with theories and theologies that
strive to address this, but at the end of the day, God’s ways are higher than
ours.
Mystery also allows us to more fully
experience God. Have you ever noticed that in the Church we have lots of big
words? Words like incarnation, sanctification, and epiclesis, just to name a
few. We take Hebrew thoughts and we impose Greek logic on top of them. As an
example, how is it that Jesus is both God and human? It’s based on a beautiful
concept found in Isaiah, of Emmanuel- God with us. Well, we have thousands of
books written on the subject that try to explain it and impose logic on
something which defies all human logic. Yet, at the end of the day, it remains
a mystery. And often when we try to explain away a mystery, we end up missing
the beauty and meaning of it. When our daughter was born 19 months ago, my
heart instantly learned how to love in a new way. I can try to rationalize my
thoughts and emotions, but I can’t explain how, from the first time I saw her,
that I loved her with every fiber of my being. Sometimes the best parts of life
are mysteries to be enjoyed, not problems to solve.
A healthy sense of mystery keeps us
wondering about God. We try to put God in a box, in effect, to control God. We
like God to be a part of our hospital visits, but prefer to keep God out of our
bank accounts. But mystery doesn’t allow for this. Mystery means that we could
be surprised by God at any moment; that God is doing something new and
exciting. The Trinitarian God of mystery shows up in the places we least expect
to find the Divine. If God is a problem to be solved, or a doctrine to
understand, then God becomes an idol. One theologian said that the way to tell
the difference between a god and an idol is that an idol will never surprise
you. A God without mystery will never surprise us. But our God is truly an
awe-inspiring God, a God who lives and breathes, who creates, redeems, and
sustains, who is a mystery to encounter and grow deeper into.
I met with a new couple to our church
this past Monday and they were asking me about the Episcopal Church’s beliefs
on the Eucharist, as they were coming from Methodist and Catholic backgrounds.
And essentially what I told them was “I don’t know.” I told them that I believe that in the Eucharist
that the veil between heaven and earth is at its thinnest and Jesus is present
with us, but that I have no idea how all that gets worked out with regards to
the laws of physics. And as they had more questions, I found myself giving a
similar response- “well, yes, maybe.”
The Episcopal Church is uniquely
gifted through our heritage of Anglican theology to handle mystery. We are
living in a culture in which people are not always satisfied with the answers
that the Church has given in the past. Bishop Curry has eloquently described
this reality with the metaphor of Galilee- living in a secular and
post-Christendom culture. And I think the Episcopal Church is perfectly
situated for the future which lies before us. We are okay with ambiguity, we
appreciate diversity, we are tolerant, and our liturgy and music, with all of
their beauty, testify to mystery. I am really excited about the future of the
Episcopal Church and what surprising things might happen next.
Mystery is the essence of our faith, not as a crutch for avoiding tough subjects, but as an honest assessment of the reality and nature of God. So with the importance of mystery in mind, does it really matter that Christians claim that God is a Trinity of persons in a unity of being? What can we say about the Trinity that impacts our life? Well, again, I don’t know how it all works that the Father is in the Son and the Spirit is in the Father. There is a reason why any attempts to define the Trinity always end up with some statement that has been considered heresy at some point in the Church’s history. But if we look at the Trinity as a divine revelation and not a problem to solve, there are some important points to take with us.
The first is that it shows us that,
by definition, God is in relationship. Even before God began to create in
Genesis, God was in relationship of love. Earlier, I know that I said that too
often we use big words to explain mysteries that would better be left alone,
but there is a good word about the Trinity that I think is helpful here, and
that word is perichoresis. It comes
from a Greek word that means to dance around. And this is a really helpful way
to understand the Triune God.
God as Trinity means that part of
the essential nature of God is to be in a loving relationship. It means that
Creation was formed as an overflowing of this dance of love. It means that we
are loved, even if we think we are unlovable or reject that love. God is not
some distant deity, but rather a loving Creator, a present Son, a nurturing
Spirit. And so the fact that God is Trinity makes all the difference. We are
not just here as the by-product of randomness and evolution, but rather we are
here because God’s love is boundless.
And the triune nature of God is also
an invitation for us to be a part of that divine relationship and to
participate in the divine dance. Most translations of the Bible begin with “In
the beginning…” but the more accurate translations read “When God began to
create.” Creation began with those first words “let there be light,” but it did
not stop there. Creation is continuing to unfold, striving more and more to
reflect the Kingdom on earth as in heaven. The Trinity is not a god that put
things in motion and went on vacation. No, the work of God continues.
One of my favorite icons (in fact, I
have it on my desk), was written by Andrei Rublev of the Trinity. It shows
three figures, often thought to be the Father, Son, and Spirit, sitting around
a table. What I like so much about this icon is that the side of the table
closest the viewer is open, and it is not hard to read this icon as an
invitation into the life and love of the Triune God. Our task is to live into
the name of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – which we all
carry with us by virtue of our Baptisms. This holy work is about living into
the mystery of the Trinity.
The response of the disciples to
this mystery is interesting. Matthew tells us that while some doubted Jesus,
others worshiped him. It is very interesting that, here, the opposite of doubt
isn’t faith, but worship. And so it really is a question of what will we do
with this mystery. Will we try to impose logic and rules to better control the
mystery, or will we live into this mystery through worship and service?
The Holy Trinity is a mystery. Can
we see that as a gift to embrace instead of a problem to solve? Will we accept
the call to join in the divine dance of love? Will we be paralyzed by our
doubts, or will we accept doubt as a part of the journey of faith? May God
grant us the courage to be faithful and worship the mystery of the Holy Trinity
as we seek to further the love of God. Amen.
