Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, but when speaking of the Trinity, it is very, very easy to get confused or fall into rather bad theology. As one professor told us, “Almost everything people say about the Trinity is heresy.” But still, we try, and we’ll try again today.
Here’s a little joke to demonstrate the point:
Jesus said, Whom do men say that I am?
And his disciples answered and said, Some say you are John the Baptist returned from the dead; others say Elias, or other of the old prophets.
And Jesus answered and said, But whom do you say that I am?
Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Logos, existing in the Father as His rationality and then, by an act of His will, being generated, in consideration of the various functions by which God is related to his creation, but only on the fact that Scripture speaks of a Father, and a Son, and a Holy Spirit, each member of the Trinity being coequal with every other member, and each acting inseparably with and interpenetrating every other member, with only an economic subordination within God, but causing no division which would make the substance no longer simple."
And Jesus answered… and said, "What?"
But difficult as it may be, the Trinity is truly one of those doctrines that clearly distinguishes Christianity from all over faiths. No one else worships a Trinitarian God (and it’s also quite possible that no one else understands it either. More than one person has accused Christians of being polytheists.) But when you dig deep, you see that our faith is indeed monotheistic, and yet a little paradoxical. The Trinity truly is one of the most awe inspiring mysteries of our faith and that is why we set aside a day, today, to observe and even celebrate its’ wonder.
But what can we say about the Trinity without getting too bogged down? Essentially we believe that God has been revealed as three persons but one God. Those three persons have always existed, co-created our world (like we read in Genesis), and are all equally involved in the work of redemption and reconciliation. We are called to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And you can hear hints of the Trinity in Genesis from the text we just read. Listen again: “Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;” God is speaking of God’s self here in the plural, not singular. Yet Judaism has always affirmed monotheism, the doctrine that God is One. The famous Jewish prayer the “Shema” opens with the very clear statement: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” Likewise, Islam declares its belief in one God in their famous declaration: “There is no god but Allah” which is another way of saying, “There is no god but God.” Even Hinduism, which many people mistakenly define as strictly polytheistic, is actually monotheistic at its core and origins: Brahman is the unity, the one divine entity and the other “gods” like Vishnu and Shiva are simply various aspects or faces of that unity---like different expressions of the one God. But this is all a bit complicated and people get easily confused.
One amazing attempt to describe the Trinity is found in a Creed called the Creed of Saint Athanasius, which I always like to point out on Trinity Sunday because it is in our Prayer Books and is often recited in church on this day in England. We don’t know who authored it, but it has been in continual use by the church since the 6th century. I invite you to turn to it in your Prayer Books to page 864. We won’t read it today, but I’d like you to glance over the language. It contains such lines as “The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.” You may leave scratching your head with this language but it shows us how painstakingly the early church tried to parse out an accurate description of the Trinity. This is serious business!
So, indeed, we do affirm as Christians that God is a Trinity of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and yet one God. But what impact does that doctrine have on your life personally?
Here is the really exciting and wonderful thing about the doctrine of the Trinity: we have not invited into a stagnant interaction with a sole being, but into a dynamic relationship of love already being shared among and by the three persons of the Trinity in self-giving, each one revealing God to us in a unique way. In other words, God is like a community. And it is the most incredible model of community imaginable. Not only are we invited to share in that life, but we can establish our own lives based on the Trinitarian model where our relationships are mutual, based on justice, peace, love, self-giving, and equality. The Trinity then is a model for our own families, churches and communities!
Certainly love requires more than one person to exist, right? And God’s very nature is love. An understanding of the Trinity then, allows us to proclaim, not just that God is loving, but that God “is love.”
On a recent TV show we were watching, a vain teenage boy was asked by a wise old wizard whether or not he was in love, in order to help break a spell that had been cast. “Yes, I am in love” the boy replied. “With whom?” asked the wizard. The boy responded, “With myself!” “Oh” said the wizard, “that doesn’t count.”
So for God to be love, God must have an subject to love, independent of you and I, and independent of mere self-love. God can truly “be love” because that love exists within the context of relationship within the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
And so it is no slight distinction that God is three persons in one God. It is a radical shift in our understanding of the very essence and nature of God as love.
So how does the Trinity impact us as individuals? Our whole reality is altered: because the very basis of our reality is none other than the loving communion of three persons who exist in perfect unity: the life of the Trinity is the basis for our life. Because of the Trinity, we can declare and know and experience that God IS love and we can live in that late. Then go and share the love! AMEN.
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