Trinity Episcopal Church
Towson, MD
RCL Year C (Trinity Sunday) - May 26, 2013
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
It is probably not a surprise to any of you… but the word “trinity” never shows up in the bible. It’s just not there. Jesus never refers to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as “the trinity.” However, in the celebration of the life of the church, and the calendar year today is “Trinity Sunday.”
This is the Sunday that scares most preachers to death, as they stumble about trying to explain what had been discerned by the early church and revealed to us in their teachings as the mystery of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. (Probably the reason for my floundering around this morning with the kids - trying to explain Trinity using the image of the tricycle)
So how did the concept of the Holy Trinity (the triune God) end up with its prominent place in Church doctrine, if it doesn’t show up in the scriptures? I for one, don’t think that they sat around one day and just dreamed this stuff up. It took the church nearly 350 years of prayer and discernment, arguing and struggling to articulate their faith to one another in terms that they understood. Reasoning about how God had been revealed to them, and what it all meant.
So, in effect, if we look at it, the Holy Trinity is God’s revelation to the Church, it is how we perceive God… as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is our perception of a mysterious divine relationship of the ONE, true and Holy God.
You can find graphical representation all over the place, some that even originated in medieval times, but they don’t do the trick of giving an explanation to the unexplainable. Because that’s what God is… to our limited feeble minds… (regardless of how educated we are)... God is the unexplainable, the incomprehensible, the divine mystery… But for some folks, that’s not good enough. They need to be able to explain the mystery – so it’s not a mystery anymore, but fact!
But every explanation that we could ever come up with, only leads us to further confusion and a deeper need to pray and reflect on the mystery. To me, I like to view the mystery of the trinity as a divine relationship. It helps me get my head around it. There are many images that come close to describing this relationship. Most of the best ones are from the early church, and they still speak to us today...
In the 16th Century, St. John of the Cross explained it, “God is the One who loves so completely that there must be a co-equal lover to God to receive that love; and the love between the two is so dynamic and powerful that it is the third person. God is Lover, Beloved and Love.”
But, for my favorite, and probably the most profound that I have ever heard, you have to go back real early… it is the way Tertullian describes it. Tertullian was an early Church father that lived between 160 and 220 a.d. He said, the Trinity is like a plant with a flower... "God the Father is a deep root, the Son is the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit is that which spreads beauty and fragrance."
Tertullian’s description is definitely one way that we can try to understand Trinity, but it still comes up a bit short, because we are still trying to describe the indescribable – and explain the unexplainable.
There have been some that say: The Triune God is such a mystery, that any attempt to explain it would be heresy. But the Trinity for us, the Church, especially Trinity Church in its complexity of divine mystery and all things unexplainable... it becomes for us the lens through which we view the world. And if we let it, it helps us put things in perspective so we can build the bridges for ourselves off of what we know.
We know the person of Jesus Christ, who is the word that the prophets spoke, the word that become flesh and dwelt among us. Who lived and died as a human being, yet without sin. Who while he was on this earth, he taught and healed, preached justice and peace, and casted out demons and raised the dead. Jesus died on the cross as a perfect sacrifice of sin for the whole world, to open the way of access for us to have a relationship to God.
We know that the person of Jesus Christ taught about God, and referred to him as Abba, (Father) which is a term of endearment - probably more like “Daddy” – a term of deep compassion and respect, a term of admiration and equality. And we know that God, Abba, Father, created everything that is – and is the source of all being.
And We know that the person of Jesus Christ spoke of the Spirit of Truth that guides us into all truth… the Sophia or wisdom… called the pneumas or Ruach – the mighty breath of God or a violent rushing wind (like we heard about last week when the disciples experienced the wind at the feast of Pentecost) that guides and sustains the Church into all truth.
So we know God, by how we have experienced God… We know God as the One God who created us, and we know God as the One God who redeemed us, and we know God as the One God who sustains us – and we refer to God in terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. and referring to God in those terms gives us the words that we can use to share the wonderful story of divine relationship.
God is complete in God’s self as One God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… And I hate to break it to you… But God doesn’t need us, God doesn’t need any one of us… It is us who so desperately need God. But even though God doesn’t need us, God loves us, his created image. He loves us so much, that he desires to have a relationship with us… He desires that relationship to the point that he became one of us so that he could invite us into himself = the divine relationship.
We may not be able to completely understand it, but we trust and strive to live into that relationship on a daily basis… And as we participate in that divine relationship, we invite others to participate with us… It is our purpose in this life, and it is how we find true communion and unity with God and with each other.
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