The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN
Year B - Trinity Sunday - May 27, 2018
Today is “Trinity Sunday.” The day when we celebrate the unique “oneness” of the living Triune God. 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 Christ, and the church calendar year today is “Trinity Sunday.”
This is the Sunday that scares most preachers to death, as they stumble about trying to explain what was discerned by the early church… and what has been revealed to us through their teachings as the mystery of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
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 nearly 350 years of prayer and discernment after Jesus’ resurrection, 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 the mysterious divine relationship of the ONE true and Holy God.
To our limited feeble minds… God remains unexplainable, and incomprehensible… God is 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! They need to be able to explain God. But every explanation that we could ever come up with, only leads us to further confusion and frustration and a deeper need to pray and reflect on the mystery.
To me, I like to view the mystery of the trinity as divine relationship. God is relationship… Relationship in God with God’s self - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God in Relationship with us, God’s creation… As the One who creates, redeems, sanctifies and sustains…
There are many images that come close to describing this relationship. I think the best ones (or the ones that resonate with me) come from the early church, and they still speak to us today through the ages...
In the 16th Century, St. John of the Cross explained it this way: “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. Therefore, God is Lover, Beloved and Love.”
But, 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, "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 wrap our heads around it, but it still comes up a bit short, because (like I said) we are still trying to explain the unexplainable and describe the indescribable.
There have been some that say: The Triune God is such a mystery, that any attempt to explain it would be committing heresy… But the Holy Trinity for us, the Church, in its complexity of divine mystery and all things unexplainable, it becomes for us the lens through which we view the world. If we let it, it helps us put things into perspective so we can build the bridges for ourselves off of what we know and can relate to.
We know the person of Jesus Christ, is the WORD of whom the prophets spoke… the word that become flesh and dwelt among us. He lived and died as a human being, yet he was without sin. While Jesus walked on this earth, he taught and healed, preached justice and peace, and he casted out demons and even raised the dead. And though he did nothing wrong, He was tried and convicted as a criminal… He hung on a roman cross… But on that cross, he continued to teach us about himself, and about ourselves... And about living in relationship and about forgiveness… On that cross he opened the way of access for us to have a direct relationship to God. We know that Jesus also rose from the dead, showing the mighty power & work and wonder of God – continuing to show us portions of that divine mystery.
We know what the person of Jesus Christ taught us about God when he walked on this earth, he referred to God as Abba, (or Father) which is probably more like the term “Daddy” – a term of love and endearment, 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. The Great I AM as was revealed to Moses from the burning bush.
And We know that the person of Jesus Christ spoke of the Spirit of Truth that guides us into all truth…
And the Sophia or wisdom… also called the pneumas Dei 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 experience 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 continues to sustains us – and so, 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 that wonderful story – that wonderful story of love and divine relationship.
God is complete within God’s self as ONE God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… And God loves us so much, that God desires to have a full relationship with us… and God desires that relationship to the point that God humbled God’s self and became the incarnation (became human)… Became one of us, so that God could invite us into God's self = Into the divine relationship of the Holy Trinity. And through that divine relationship we are re-created… we become new and we are promised eternal life with our God. We may not be able to completely understand it, but we must trust and strive to live into that relationship on a daily basis… And as we participate in that divine relationship, we also want to 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 one another.
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