Sunday, June 16, 2019

June 16, 2019 - Trinity Sunday



In the name of God the Holy Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
            Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity, one of the Principal Feasts of the Church year. It’s a fairly unique feast day in that its basis is not a Biblical narrative or a specific person, but rather a doctrine of the faith. Today, our focus is on the nature and essence of God, which is, admittedly, a rather lofty topic. It is the revelation that God is Trinity that makes Christianity unique. When it comes to interfaith dialogue, we can find a lot of common ground. But the Trinity really distinguishes our beliefs from that of other traditions. This is because the doctrine of the Trinity goes right to the core of belief, as everything that we believe is rooted in God, and the Trinity is fundamentally who God is.

            You’ve likely noticed that the Triune nature of God envelops much of what we do as Christians. Nearly every prayer that we pray in this Church includes some sort of Trinitarian formula at the end, such as “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and for ever.” The Trinity is central to what we profess – we see this most clearly when we recite the Creed. And much in the same way that the Trinity is about God’s identity, it is about our identity as well. As different as Christian traditions can be from one another, whether it be Romans, Orthodox, Lutherans, Baptists, or Anglicans the one thing that we all hold in common is the Baptismal formula: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Having water poured over you in that name is what makes one a Christian. And push comes to shove, in a pinch, you can probably make a decent argument for using substances other than water in a valid Baptism, just as long as you do it in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So this doctrine of the Holy Trinity is at the core of who we are as worshippers of God.
            At the most basic level, the doctrine of the Trinity is that God is three persons in a unity of being. If you want to read the classical definition of this, you can check out the Creed of St. Athanasius, which is found in our Prayer Book on page 864. There is no ranking between the Father, Son, and Spirit – all are coequal, all are eternal, and all are Divine. But they cannot be reduced into one another. The Father is not the same as the Son and the Son is not the same as the Spirit, and yet, they cannot be divided from one another. For Christians, the math on this really is 1+1+1=1, not 3.
            This, I know, seems a bit heady and it’s not unreasonable to think, “I’ve got aging parents, or struggling children, or overdue bills, or am waiting for test results, or am struggling with depression. What difference does the inner nature of God make in my life?” That’s a valid question. What I hope to do in this sermon is to give you two reasons why the fact that God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit very much matters to how we believe and live.
            The first is that it reminds us that God is always a mystery to us. The Trinity defies explanation, because any attempt to explain how the Trinity works always leads to the dead end of a reductionist analogy or heresy. When Christians were thinking how to put into words the revelation that they had been given, after having seen God manifest in Jesus of Nazareth and in receiving the power of God in the Holy Spirit, they had to invent a word, as one didn’t already exist. So they came up with Trinity – “tri” meaning “three” and “inity” coming from the Latin word for “one.” The notion of the Trinity doesn’t fit into the boxes of language or logic.
            Though there have been attempts to explain the Trinity by analogies or examples, they all fail. So though the “math” doesn’t involve big numbers, it is quite complex. We must always remember that God is not something that we can understand. Anything that you can understand is something that you can predict, control, and domesticate. And, sadly, much of religion has done just that to God. We have forgotten the radical mystery that God is.
            Ever since Ellie was born, I have been waiting for her to be old enough for me to read CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia to her, and we’re now about halfway through book six out of seven. As an aside, I’m sure many of us read some of those books as children, but I can’t tell you how much more profound they are when you read them as an adult – so go back and read them again, or for the first time. But in one book, one of the children in Narnia is learning about Aslan the Lion, who is a divine Christ figure in the novels. When learning that she will meet this lion, the young girl is scared and asks “Is he tame?” The reply is “Of course not. He’s a lion! He’s not tame, but he is good.” When we are not dumbstruck and awe-filled by the Holy Trinity, we might end up praying to, serving, and worshipping a rather tame version of God. The Triune God is not tame, but rather is a wild and wonderful mystery.
            Any god that you can understand isn’t a god worthy of our worship. And so the Trinity is a question of what you do about the things that you don’t know. I’m sure you all have met those sort of people who, no matter what, say “Oh, I know that.” We are an answer-based culture – everything is data-driven, we measure children’s academic success based on what on whether or not they can get the right answer, regardless of whether or not they actually understand the answer, and we can ask Siri, Alexa, or Google nearly any question and get a decent answer within seconds. But God is not like this.
            In a sermon that I heard a few months ago, the preacher commented that he has a friend, who when her first child was born, discovered what she calls “a love much greater than evolution requires.” We all know this to be true. Love is a mystery and is not at all required. Certainly, it’s helpful from a biological perspective to have parents who love their offspring. But the love that we experience in life is greater than the amount of love that is required for evolution. God is the source of love that is beyond knowing, of grace that is beyond deserving, of abundance beyond imagining, of beauty beyond comprehension.
            But we’ll only encounter these things is we have minds ready to receive them instead of minds ready to categorize and dissect them. What an appreciation for the mystery of God does is to make us humble. A while back, I heard Bishop Rodman say that humility is about proximity to God. The closer we get to God, the more confident we are of God’s love for us. Humility isn’t about thinking that we are lowly and deserve to be on the bottom, rather humility is about experiencing the mysterious grandeur of God and knowing that God is God and we are not. It’s no coincidence that some of the most humble and godly people are those we’d call “the mystics.” These are people who embrace the mystery of God instead of trying to explain it.
            So how do you enter a mystery? Worship is one – the more often you read Scripture, pray, and participate in Sunday worship, the more you will be drawn into this mystery. It’s sort of like Saturn – on some nights you can look up and see something that looks like a star that is beautiful, but the closer you get to it the more of its beauty you will see as its gravitational pull begins to have an effect on you. The same is true for the mystery of God – get close enough so that you can be drawn in.
            Another way to participate in the mystery is to do the sort of things that Jesus told us to bring us closer to God – serving those in need, giving generously, and taking time to enjoy the “lilies of the field” can all draw you into this mystery of God’s being. These sorts of things not only keep you grounded, but they will also prepare you to encounter God who shows up in mysterious people and places.
            One other thing that we can learn about God from the Trinity is that God is a relationship. God is not static, as in one person. God is not binary, this-or-that, as in two people. But God is a Trinity, meaning that God is dynamic. Whatever we want to say about God, God is those things in relationship. So if God is saving, or gracious, or compassionate, God does those things as a relationship of love and unity. The Father alone is not God, nor is Jesus alone God, nor the Spirit. And yet, each of these persons is fully God. Again, it’s a mystery. But it’s a relationship of mystery.
            The Trinity reminds us that relationships matter. Much like I said in the sermon last Sunday, we are our relationships. What makes us who we are is not what we do, how much money we have, or what awards we have been given. What gives us our identity is our relationship to God, to ourselves, and to others. The Trinity reveals to us that God is not God without being in a relationship.
            What this aspect of the doctrine means is that relationships matter and all that we can do to cultivate healthy relationships is doing the work of the Triune God. The relationships that we have with those around us mimic the relationships of the Trinity. In Genesis, we are told that humanity is made in the image of God, a God who is a relationship. We are created to be in relationship. So where there is estrangement, seek reconciliation. Where you need to swallow your pride to repair a bridge, do it. Where you need to reconnect with someone you’ve lost touch with, do it. Where you haven’t told someone how much they mean to you, say it. Every single person that you encounter is a relationship that can bear the fruits of holiness.
            How the Trinity is helpful is that it takes us beyond moralism and towards peace. Moralism tells us how we are supposed to act and how to treat people. But we all know that we don’t like being told what to do. When read as a law, “love your neighbor as yourself” can be a burden. But when read as a way to align ourselves with the deepest truths of life, loving our neighbor becomes saving grace. Because the Triune God is about relationships, the more care we give to our relationships, the closer we come to the peace that comes from living in the light of the Trinity.
            The Holy Trinity is how we describe the mysterious relationship of love at the very heart of God. This mystery humbles us and the relational nature of God reminds us of the importance of connections. By the grace of God, the Trinity is a mystery that we can be pulled into and it is a relationship that influences our own. The Trinity is so much more than a doctrine, rather it is an expression of the deepest truths of Creation – God’s majesty and God’s love. The abundant life that God intends for us is found in the Holy Trinity, may we worship the unity and root ourselves in the love of God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.