Sunday, June 12, 2022

June 12, 2022 - The Feast of the Holy Trinity

Lectionary Readings

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.