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.
