Trinity Sunday
A sermon by the Rev. Sue Singer
May 22, 2005
Genesis 1: 1-23
2 Corinthians 13: 5-14
Matthew 28: 16-20
I have some great news for you: today we celebrate the feast of the Trinity! Now, I don't see a huge amount of enthusiasm in your faces about that; somewhow I don't get the feeling that you're thinking, "Whoopee, Trinity Sunday! We look forward to that one all year." In fact, if I had to hazard a guess at what is running through your minds right now, I would say it was more likely to be, "Trinity Sunday? Ho, hum, Pentecost is much more fun," or even, "Trinity Sunday? So what?" When I broke it to Bob Honeysucker before church, he allowed as how he was, "palpitating with anticipation," but I think that was his fine sense of irony talking!
Trinity Sunday is a very odd feast, I will admit. It's the only feast of the church that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event in Jesus' life, or in the life of the church. It feels strangely impersonal to be coming together to give thanks for something we know about God, especially if we find that "something" more than a little confusing, if truth be told. I think "So what?" is a very appropriate question, under those circumstances.
But I also think it's a very useful question. I am a religious educator, so I am what is known in the academic trade as a practical theologian, and the business of my research and teaching is centered around the "So what?" question. It's one of the most helpful things we can ask, because what it does is bring together our faith and our lives in a constructive way.
There's an ancient prayer that choristers often say before rehearsal or services, which goes: "Grant, O Lord, that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives." All of us should embrace that prayer, because all of us are practical theologians, in fact, answering the "So what?" question by making living connections between what we say and what we believe and what we do.
My job as an academic and an educator is to think in an organized way about how we do that, to find ways to talk about it coherently, and to work on enabling us all to do it more consciously and effectively. But all of us have the responsibility of stepping up to the theological plate, responding to the "So what?" question, and making our faith show forth in our lives. So, our task for this morning is to reflect together on how the doctrine of the Trinity can be a practical doctrine for us, today, now, here.
The first thing I want to say is by way of background, but I can't say it strongly enough: our words about God in this doctrine are by no means to be taken as the literal or exclusive or complete truth about the mystery of God's Being. One of my young adult friends here at All Saints often wears a T shirt that says, "God is not a boy's name," and she is absolutely right about that.
When we say we know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit we are repeating an ancient formula. It was developed using the best tools of Greek philosophy, in order to enable the early Christians to say something about the ways in which they experienced God. The Trinitarian formula developed over centuries, not overnight, and it was the subject of heated controversy for ordinary people as well as theologians, because all Christians wanted to make it as adequate as possible.
But that was a long time ago, in a very different context, using a different language and thought-forms, and some of the things that made the concept of "one God in three persons" so useful then have been lost in translation. The English word "person" is actually not a very good translation of the Latin "persona," and that in turn is not a very good translation of the original Greek "hypostasis." "Hypostasis" refers not to an individual person, but to an aspect of personality, and "persona" was the word used in ancient drama to speak of the mask the actor wore, the face that he turned towards the audience to indicate his role.
So the doctrine of the Trinity is not talking about one plus one plus one equalling one, in ways that confound our arithmetic, it is naming three of the different faces that we experience God turning towards us. Each of these three faces (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is wholly God and the whole of God, but these three names alone cannot sum up God's nature completely. They can and should be expanded, we must dare to use the philosophical tools of our own age and find freshly-minted metaphors to speak the language of praise.
Our words about the divine Mystery are not scientifically accurate, watertight definitions; they are more like a baby's babbling and cooing at a parent, like a lover's terrible poetry, like the shorthand expressions of deep regard that are exchanged between old and good friends. When we try to praise the infinite and ineffable God, we can only sink into repetition, as we borrow the words of the angels - "Holy, holy, holy" - or the Psalmist - "Praise, praise, praise." And so nothing we can say can tie God down with a single definition, but everything we say can form our lives in relationship to God, if we are willing to ask the "So what?" question and act upon the answer.
One helpful way to start doing this is given to us by the ancient Irish hymn, St Patrick's breastplate. "I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity." The doctrine of the Trinity is a strong name, and what we do with it is bind it to ourselves, rather like we would bind ourselves to a lifejacket in a stormy sea, or like we would bind ourselves into a climbing harness when tackling a sheer cliff. On a more personal scale, when I was getting ready for my job interview and comprehensive exams, my husband gave me this bracelet, so I could bind these words: "courage, balance, truth, grace, wisdom," to myself on those days.
Last week we bound the name of the Trinity to Olivia, the latest Christian to be baptized here at All Saints. We named her identity in God, in obedience to Christ's command in today's Gospel, and we recalled that we all share that identity through our baptism into Christ in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
So, when we say the Creed today, I invite you to remember that its Trinitarian language is not just talking about God "out there," but inviting all of us to allow God "in here" to shape us, to challenge us, to direct us.
"We believe in one God..." So what? Do we really act as if God is one, infinite, and free, unbounded by our little boxes? Or do we act as if we have a corner on God, as if those of other faiths or none have no shared identity with us as God's children?
"Maker of heaven and earth ..." So what? We just heard the story of the amazing act of creation, in which God spoke and the whole universe was formed. How do our deeds affect the created order? If we are made in the image of God in our creativity, does what we create enhance or destroy, nurture or dismember the fragile web that supports us?
"We believe in Jesus Christ .. our Lord ... born of the virgin Mary ... made human ..." So what? Would someone know that Jesus Christ is our Lord by looking at our lives? Do we act as if our humanness, our bodiliness, our life in the present, has been redeemed? Or do our lives say that Christ is only a spiritual redeemer, not interested in broken bodies and hearts, broken relationships, broken power-structures, broken ideologies, broken nations?
"We believe in Jesus Christ ... who descended to the dead ... and rose again ..." So what? What deaths do we still allow to terrify and appall us? What holds us back from tackling the death-dealing powers of the world, secure in the knowledge that Christ has already overcome them? How brave will we let our lives be in response to these words that we confess?
"We believe in the Holy Spirit ... who has spoken through the prophets .." So what? Are our ears attuned to hearing the Holy Spirit still speaking? What if we were called to be those prophets in our own time?
"We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come .." So what? Are we a watchful people? Are we on the lookout, always and everywhere, for God's power breaking in on us? How might we show the world that we are risen from the dead? Where is the new life in our midst?
This is what it means to do practical theology; this is what it means to take the doctrine of the Trinity and bind it to ourselves, to let it shape our actions and our lives and our identities, to keep us afloat like a life jacket, to support us like a climbing harness. A church or a person with a Trinitarian identity is certainly not perfect, that's for sure; we are a work in progress, we are still growing into the full stature of Christ that is our true baptismal identity.
When we hear Paul's words to the church at Corinth we can detect their struggle and his struggle to do just that. The Corinthian Christians were a fractious, confused, willful lot, and we don't have to read far between the lines to know the trouble Paul had had with them. But at the end of his letter he has not given up on them. He asks them to keep on doing their practical theology: "Examine yourselves, to see whether you are living in the faith." And he has three things to offer them as they do that task, the only three things they need: the unshakable fact that their identity comes from Jesus Christ living in them, their need of each other as they live that out, and a Trinitarian blessing on their efforts.
Grace, love, and communion, interwoven in the life of God. One of the most ancient understandings of what the inner life of God is like is the metaphor of an eternal dance of mutual and joyful celebration. So what? So our life together is to be like that too.
We need each other, we complement each other, we are called to dance with each other and live in peace, so that the God of love and peace can be with us. Even though we are imperfect and incomplete, even though our lives do not always show forth what we profess or believe, even though in our dancing we tread on each other's toes as much as we swing our partners, we are called onto the dance floor all the same, bound to each other and bound to God by the strong name of the Trinity.
And so finally, brothers and sisters, not just farewell, but thank you. Thank you for being my partners on God's dance floor these past three years. Thank you for being the unique, feisty, daring, incomplete, striving community in whose midst I have experienced the power of the Holy Trinity. Thank you for inviting me into the dance you are dancing with God, thank you for letting me be bound to you in many-fold bonds of affection, thank you for allowing me to share with you the task of practical theology, answering the "So what?" question together.
I will miss you dearly, but I know that "We believe in the communion of saints," and the answer to the "So what?" question there will be found in the ways your witness will continue to shape my life and ministry in years to come. And so "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of us." Amen.