Trinity Sunday
We have now completed the major cycles of the Church year. Starting in Advent when we expect the coming messiah (and his coming again), then we moved into Christmas and celebrated the incarnation (God with us- in the flesh). From there we moved into Epiphany when we see the manifestation of Christ’s power and divinity, and then we followed Christ into the desert for the 40 days of Lent as (in repentance) we seek to be purified as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter (where we remember the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus). The season of Easter is completed with Pentecost, which is after Christ ascends and God sends the Holy Spirit to fill the disciples to carry on his mission. … And it is appropriate that, as this part of the cycle completes, we are given the vision of the Trinity as we enter into Ordinary Time, or the Season after Pentecost. In the Book of Common Prayer, the upcoming season is named according to its relation to Trinity Sunday (1st Sunday after Trinity, 2nd Sunday after Trinity, etc.). … Today we are celebrating Trinity Sunday.
The Trinity is one of those topics that Christians tend to be afraid of. We tend to see it as complicated and confusing, so we tend to not want to get into it. I think some of us even become suspicious of the doctrine of the Trinity because we see it as difficult to understand.
In a sense, though, every aspect of our lives has a depth that is beyond our comprehension. For example, take a single blade of grass. It seems very simple, but put it under a microscope and you will see a complicated structure of veins. … Zoom in more and you will see plant cells that contain chloroplasts, mitochondria, lysosomes, golgi apparatus, and other parts that have complicated functions to keep the plant alive. … Then we zoom in more and we see the organic molecules that make it up, … and then we zoom in more and there are atoms, … and zoom in more and there are protons, neutrons, and electrons. … Then we can go in further and get into the quantum reality where there are things that act like particles and waves at the same time. Then we get into dark matter and dark energy. … All that is in a blade of grass. … That doesn’t say anything about God. It just says that even simple things, that we think we understand, have a deeper side that stretches our ability to comprehend.
Look at the people you know. Do you feel like you know those people in a such a way that they can never surprise you? Have you ever been baffled by someone’s behaviour, or something they said? Take the person you know best, could you write a book that encapsulates everything about that person so that meeting them would be exactly the same as reading the book? … I don’t think so. … Again, this doesn’t say anything about God. It says something about the complexity of reality. … And if we strain to understand the reality we live in, then surely trying to comprehend some of these aspects of God is going to be a stretch for us, as well.
As the Church was processing the original Apostles’ experience with Christ, they poured over the writings of the New Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures. They also took into account their worship. From the very beginning, they worshipped Jesus. And, in the Scriptures they found references equating Jesus and God, like in the letter to the Philippians (which was probably a hymn that Paul was quoting)
“… Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (2:5-7).
And in The Gospel of John, where Jesus is identified as the “Word” of God we read,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn 1:1-3).
From reading in John is seems like Jesus had an existence before he was born. In our Gospel reading Jesus says that he descended from Heaven (Jn 3:13), and later in that gospel he will say
“Before Abraham was, I AM” (Jn 8:58),
which speaks about his existence before his birth, and also speaks God’s name given to Moses (in reference to himself!). Moses was told (through the burning bush) to say that “I am” sent him, when he asked for God’ name (Ex 3:14). … In the letter to the Colossians we read,
“He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:15-17).In the teaching of the Apostles (The New Testament), Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit as a person. The Advocate, The Comforter, was a “him”, not an “it” (Jn 16:7-15). (I know that gendered language can be a bit problematic when talking about God. For our sake, it means primarily that we are talking about a person, not an impersonal force.) In Acts chapter 5 Peter equates God and the Holy Spirit, saying that Ananias had lied to the Holy Spirit (5:3), and has therefore lied to God (5:4). … We might also look at the baptism of Jesus where the Father speaks and the Holy Spirit comes to Jesus like a dove (Matt 3:16-17). … When Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in our Gospel reading (Jn 3:1-17), he says that to enter the Kingdom of God you have to be born of the Spirit (3:5). The Spirit is an active presence in what Jesus is doing. … When we look at the kinds of things that the Spirit does, they seem to put the Spirit on the God side of things. For example, in our Romans reading, to be “led by the Spirit of God” makes us “children of God” (Rom 8:14). We can’t imagine creating a division by saying that some are led by the Spirit and some others are led by God. That wouldn’t make sense in experience of the Apostles. To experience God leading you and transforming you is to experience the Holy Spirit. There is no division.
The doctrine of the Trinity is interesting to use when reading the Bible. For example, when we look at our Isaiah reading (6:3) we see the six-winged seraphs worshipping God saying, “… Holy, Holy, Holy …”. We pray these words at the Eucharist (the Sanctus). Many Christians have seen here an interesting correlation between the later understanding of God as a threeness, and this three-fold “holy”. … Many have seen the same correlation regarding Abraham’s 3 visitors in Genesis 18. The chapter begins by saying that the “Lord appeared to Abraham”, but in what follows Abraham encounters three men. Again, the Lord is experienced with this threeness.
When we read about Jesus’ great commission we read,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” (Matthew 28:19).
There is a threeness going on here that has to be accounted for. … No angel or prophet is given this kind of status. … And these people who are worshipping Jesus are also Jewish, and while increasing in Gentile numbers, they are still using the Hebrew Scriptures (The Old Testament). One of the marks of the Jewish belief in God is monotheism. We read in Deuteronomy,
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (6:4).
And in the Prophet Isaiah,
“I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god” (45:5). …
So, the early church had to find a way to talk about God that was honest about the threeness without losing the oneness. More of God was revealed through their experience with Jesus. The experience of the Apostles with Jesus made it impossible to understand God apart from Jesus, and Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit. … The Church’s doctrine of the Trinity helps us to place a boundary around our talk about God. It helps us know when we are talking about the Christian God and when we have stopped talking about that God.
This is what the church concluded- In essence, it can be boiled down to this. God is one nature. If you ask what God is, the answer is “God”. If you ask what I am, the answer is human. My nature is “human”. … If you ask who God is, the answer is “Father, Son, Holy Spirit”. God is three persons. … If you ask who I am, I say “Chris”. I am one person, with one nature. … God has one nature, and three persons. … I think that is the root of our confusion around the Trinity. We are used to associating one nature with one person. But, God obviously doesn’t have our limitations. …
The roots of this teaching about the Trinity don’t spring out of nowhere, but in the 300’s they really hashed this out and came up with a statement at the council of Nicaea in 325AD, and they kept working on the details into the council of Chalcedon in 451AD. … I know that is a lot to take in, but I think the doctrine is so foundational for Christianity that we should talk about it at least once per year. … It might seem to be a bit of a strange teaching, that God is both one and three- One in nature, and three in persons. But, this teaching comes out of the church’s encounter with God. The teaching of the Trinity is the result of the church struggling to find words to describe that profound experience, so I think it is important that we honour what they have passed on to us- that we take it seriously, in trust that they (through the Spirit’s guidance) have done their best to guide us into truth.
AMEN
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