In the name of the Holy Trinity, one God ✠ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity, which might come as a surprise to you as this holy day doesn’t have a section in the greeting card aisle and there are no mattress sales associated with it. You might wonder why we have these church holidays that seem a bit obscure and detached from reality. To put it simply, we keep these feasts because this is who we are.
Imagine
a society or a family that had no rituals or holidays – no birthday gatherings,
no annual beach trip, no fireworks on July 4th. It wouldn’t take
long for that family or society to disintegrate without such identity forming
customs. The Thanksgiving parade in Salisbury or the way you celebrate
Christmas morning gives wonderful memories and occasions to come together, and
these habits have shaped us into the people that we are. It is no different in
the Church. The things that we do shape us and teach us in ways that we are
often unaware of. This is why “intentional worship” is a part of our identity statement
– we know the power of liturgy and tradition and we want to use these great
gifts which God has given us.
Something
that I often say is that the Church has to keep its calendar, because society
won’t keep it for us. Now I’m not saying that things are as simple as
Christians having the Church calendar in their daily planner – but it wouldn’t
hurt. Even most congregations don’t keep the feasts of the Church, and there is
a great danger when we stop doing the things that make us who we are. It’s a question
I ask couples who are preparing for marriage or facing struggles in their
marriage – what are the things that you do as a couple that make you “you.” The
advice is to make sure that you keep those things up, and when times get hard,
make sure you’re doing those things to stay connected. It’s no different in the
faith. Once we stop celebrating the things that are central to our faith, well,
then our faith becomes little more than superstition, wishful thinking, and
moralism instead of being a testament to the all-surpassing love of God.
This
brings us to the Feast of the Holy Trinity. In various ways since the 2nd
century, the Church has set aside particular times to contemplate and celebrate
that God has been revealed to us as Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It
was about 1,000 years ago, at the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
that this commemoration should happen on the Sunday after Pentecost. The
mistake that so many preachers and theologians make about the Trinity is that treat
it as a doctrine instead of a description. “Doctrine” implies a theory or
concept that we have deduced from Scripture and reason which has little to nothing
to do with reality. For many, talking about the Trinity falls into the same
category as talking about how many angels can fit on the head of a needle. It’s
a preposterous, unfortunate, and disastrous misunderstanding. The Trinity is
not a doctrine to read about in books or listen to lectures about.
Instead,
knowledge of the Trinity is the gift of having a description of God. The
Trinity is descriptive, not doctrinal. What an amazing and glorious gift it is
that we have been given – a glimpse into the very nature and being of God
Almighty who created heaven and earth, who was born, lived, died, and
Resurrected for us in love, and who dwells within as Spirit!
It
is true that the word “Trinity” never appears in Scripture, but the triune
nature of God is clear throughout. The Father is clear in Scripture, the Son is
clear in Scripture, and the Holy Spirit is clear in Scripture, and it is clear
that each of these are God while at the same time being clear that there is
only one God. Somehow God is both one and three. And through the centuries, these
Scriptural descriptions of God were summed up in the word “Trinity.” It would
take centuries for the Church to be able to articulate what exactly we meant by
the word “Trinity,” and we still are working at it.
The
more important point though is that this happened as a process. Each generation
receives as stewards the gifts and legacies of those who have come before, we
strive to be faithful during the brief decades that are gifted, and then we
pass things along to those who come after us. So, in a sense, each generation
has to discover these truths afresh. We aren’t starting from scratch, but like
an onramp to the interstate, each person and each generation does have to build
up speed before getting anywhere.
This
is why wisdom and discernment are so important, and tragically, they are in
short supply both in the Church and in our society. We heard in Proverbs the
question, “Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?”
Proverbs notes that wisdom is found at the gates of the city and at the
crossroads. Now, we don’t live in a city with a gate or a central crossroad.
But ancient cities were built differently – imagine if everyone coming in and
out of town had to come and go through the same gate. And they’re not zooming
through in a car or with headphones on. Everything comes and goes through the
gates – soldiers, dignitaries, merchants, farmers, livestock, and visitors. Imagine
how different the Square would be if Innes and Main were the only streets in
town. That crossroad would be what everyone and everything travels through. Well,
that is exactly where Proverbs locates wisdom. All things go through, or ought
to go through, the wisdom of God.
And
what is wisdom? Well, wisdom is knowledge that is beyond us which we gain
through experience. Wisdom has to be listened to, conversed with, and thoughtfully
applied. Wisdom takes time, it takes vulnerability in admitting that we don’t
know it all and might be wrong, and wisdom has to be done in community because no
one has a monopoly on it. Simply put, we live in an unwise culture. We trade
slogans and soundbites instead of having conversations. We do not listen well
to others, especially those who are different from us. We do not easily change
our minds, admit that we are ignorant about most things, or acknowledge that we
are dependent on others.
When
we close ourselves off to wisdom, we close ourselves off to God. In John, we
heard Jesus say that he had many things still to say, but that we weren’t ready
for it. Today, God still has things to say to us. Some of them we are ready to
hear, some of them we aren’t and so we will only have partial truths that will
become stepping stones for a future generation to know. Jesus tells us that he
is the truth and that the Spirit will lead us further into this truth. But if
we’ve already made up our minds about what the truth is, we’ll never find the
living God. If we say that all truth is subjective and that there is no such
thing as truth, we are essentially saying that we are atheists. If we say that
there is no truth, then we are saying that the Trinity is a made-up doctrine
instead of a description of truth itself.
To
be clear, I cannot explain the Trinity to you. How is it that God is both one
and three? We’re at the limits of my intellect. When Jesus was on the Cross, was
the Father there as well? No one can say for sure. How exactly was Jesus of
Nazareth also the eternal Word of God? I can’t really say. And if we view the Trinity
as doctrine, doctrine that we can’t really make sense of it, we, rightfully,
reject it. A doctrine that isn’t helpful and doesn’t make sense ought to be
rejected. But the Trinity isn’t doctrinal, it is descriptive.
And
what the Trinity describes is that God, fundamentally, is relational. This is
why we can be so confident in saying that God is love. Love really does make
all the difference because love is our source, love is our destination, love is
our purpose, love is our cure, and love is our hope. The core of God’s essence
and being is described as Trinity, meaning that God is about the beauty, connection,
love, and beloved community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And by God’s
grace, we are given the gift of knowing about and participating in this beloved
community. This is why the Trinity is not a doctrine to keep in our heads,
rather it is a description of reality.
This
relational nature of God tells us that God wants to be in relationship with us.
God is not satisfied being known only in one way, but in three. Through the
splendor of creation, God is known. Through the life, teachings, and Pasison of
Jesus, God is known. Through the wisdom and guidance of the Spirit, which we
experience as love, as peace, as wisdom, and morality, God is known. God is all
about relationship and can be known in this diversity of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit so that we might all come to know the love out of which we are made and are
destined for.
Though
God is certainly three, God is also one. The Father, Son, and the Spirit are
not identical and yet they are not in competition with one another. In the
Trinity, we are given an image of unity without uniformity. Yes, I am as guilty
as anyone of wishing that more people saw the world like me, agreed with me at
all times, and did as I tell them to. And I’m sure you feel the same way about
me – wishing I would get with your program. Fellow sinners, this is just how we
are. But the Trinity shows us something better to strive for. We need not all
look the same, we need not think the same things or do the same things, but we
can still be united. We can work through our disagreements and witness to the
Gospel message of reconciliation, repentance, and hope. Because the Trinity describes
God as being at unity in the midst of diversity, we can therefore adjust our expectations
of other and what a good relationship looks like. And this is possible because,
as we know from First Corinthians, that love hopes all things, endures all
things, and bears all things. The love of the Holy Trinity can hold our disagreements
and differences in a union called beloved community.
Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit is a shorthand way of describing the entire story of our
salvation. That we have been created in love, redeemed in love, and empowered
by and for love. This is what Trinity Sunday is all about – not a doctrine, but
a description of the God who created us in that holy and Triune image. Through and
through, the Holy Trinity is about an all-encompassing love that surrounds us
on every side. This is exactly why Church traditions and calendars matter so
much – they help us to respond in gratitude and praise to the Holy Trinity, they
steep us in the story of our belovedness, they draw us deeper into God’s all-encompassing
love, and they equip us to share this love with the world. May all we do be
done in the name of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
