Today is Trinity Sunday......a
curious day in the Christian calendar year.....when we remember and celebrate a
theological understanding of the divine: One God in Three Persons, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. This is one of 4 major Feast Days celebrated by the Church
down through the centuries, the others being Christmas, Easter and Pentecost,
each of which celebrates a different Person of the Trinity. Christmas, although
the birthday of Jesus, is actually the date on which we celebrate God the
Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the first person of the Holy Trinity, who
according to Christian theology, enters into human flesh in the form of a
little baby. The heavenly choir is singing praise to the Father who is making
this bold new initiative in Creation (Luke 2:13). Easter is the day we
celebrate Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who having finished his
earthly life on the cross, has now been resurrected to new life. On Pentecost
we celebrate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God's indwelling
presence, on into the future, in the lives of all who love the Lord. Trinity
Sunday is the fourth feast day, on which we celebrate the 3 distinctly unique
ways that God Almighty reveals himself.
The concept of the Trinity, though
woven throughout the Old and New Testaments, did not become a distinctive
doctrine in Christian theology until the 4th and 5th centuries, when
4 Church Councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon) put this
mystery (one God in 3 persons) into words. In the process, the reputations of
some leading theologians were enhanced, while others were ruined. One heated
debate concerned whether to use the word "homoousion" ("of one
substance") or homoiousion" (of like substance") with the Father.
Out of that heated debate came the expression "one iota of a
difference".
Over the centuries, preachers have
walked a very fine line indeed in trying to explain what the heck the TRINITY
is all about, leading to a lot of pretty esoteric and, in some cases, very
boring sermons. While I believe it's important to deal with the Holy Trinity on
this particular Sunday, I'm going to attempt to make my sermon more concrete
and hopefully not too boring, by sharing some personal reflections on how I
became Trinitarian in my theology. It didn't happen all at once. In fact, I may
be a slower learner than others.
When I was a kid growing up, I was
fortunate to have a father who loved the outdoors. At an early age he
introduced me to sailing, to bird-watching, to star-gazing on dark nights in
the field in front of our summer cottage, and to hiking in all kinds of weather
conditions in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Green Mountains of
Vermont. A Creator God, awesome in wonder and power, became intensely real to
me at an early age. Every advance in understanding that science has uncovered,
far from explaining God away, has only increased my awe in the Master Creator
of the Universe.
The second person of the Trinity,
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was harder for me to grasp and embrace. The
Virgin Birth, his miracles, walking on water, multiplying loaves and fishes,
his Resurrection and Ascension, all defied logic and common sense. I liked his
parables, teachings, passion for social justice, compassionate love, high
regard for women, and his willingness to defy social convention in his outreach
to sinners and outcasts. But I had my questions, doubts and wonderings. Was
this man for real? the Son of God???? I wanted to satisfy for myself that all
of the claims about Jesus had a foundation in reality, and were not just
wishful thinking.
When I entered seminary in 1974, I
met twice a week in a discussion group with 6 classmates, two seniors and two
professors. We had lively debates about faith, hope and religion. On one
occasion we were given the task of reading the accounts of Jesus' Resurrection
and writing a short reflection. In doing so, I was struck by a portion of
Matthew's account in which the Pharisees ask Pilate to place a guard at Jesus'
tomb lest his disciples steal his body and claim he'd been risen from the dead.
What a horrible thought – all this might be nothing more than a cruel hoax. All
of those other stumbling blocks – miracle stories, Virgin Birth, walking on
water, paled in comparison.
This was the real deal
breaker....if Jesus wasn't resurrected from the dead, I mused, he is little
more than an insightful, spiritual leader akin to the Buddha or Confucius. When
I shared my concerns with my group, with quite a bit of anxiety I can assure
you, one of our professors recommended that I read The Passover Plot,
whose author, Hugh Schonfield, asserts that the Resurrection is indeed a hoax.
Decide for yourself, he urged, whether you think his argument has merit.
Wouldn't you know it, that very afternoon, while browsing in a bookstore, I
came across The Passover Plot. I summoned up the courage to read it, and
came away totally unconvinced that the Resurrection is a hoax. The incredible
changes that happened in the lives of the disciples, turning them from timid,
fearful men into bold proclaimers of the Gospel, could not have been sustained,
I believe, on the back of a hoax...nor could the profound effect the life of
Jesus has had on millions of people across 2000 years of human history.
This was a significant turning
point in my spiritual journey. I found myself saying along with the father of
an epileptic boy in Mark 9:24 “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief.” I let go of
the need to solve mystery logically, and relaxed into the arms of a merciful
Lord. I accepted Jesus as the window, the gate, the doorway to God. If we truly
want to know the personality of the divine we have only to look to Jesus. As
Jesus asserts in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one”.
This brings me now to the Third
Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Growing up, as I did in the Episcopal
Church, I held a pretty intellectual view of the Holy Spirit. It's what
inspired writers of scripture. It's what the disciples experienced on the Day
of Pentecost. It's God's presence in people's hearts and lives down through the
centuries. But.....all of that Holy Roller stuff, Charismatic Christianity,
talking in tongues, and being slain in the Spirit...it seemed so undignified,
and to be perfectly honest, bordering for me on terrifying. Yet, in the early
1990's I accepted an invitation to go to a weekend retreat in the mountains of
Colorado hosted by the Episcopal Renewal Ministries.
The only words to describe that
week were that I was bathed in the Holy Spirit; I felt a barrier melting between
my brain and my heart; I felt the presence of God deep within my soul, and it
erased my fears and terror of those who are deeply moved by the Holy Spirit in
their lives. The Holy Spirit became for me a reality beyond an intellectual
construct. I felt it, I lived it, I breathed it.
It took me a lengthy time to bring
the 3 persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit together in a unified whole,
not just in my head theologically, but more importantly in my heart and soul.
There are many different ways of expressing this three-fold nature of the
divine, one of my favorites being: God beyond us, with us, and within us. God
beyond us as the Creator....far more awesome and powerful than we can even
begin to imagine. God with us in His incarnation in Jesus, his ongoing
companionship in prayer, support and sustenance, his presence in the fellowship
of faith, the Church; and God within us in the still, small guiding
voice, in the power of emotion that surges up in prayer and worship, and in the
discernment that allows us to acknowledge the presence of the Holy in our
lives.
In the name of the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit....Maker, Redeemer and Sanctifier... Blessed be the Holy
Trinity...the 3 fold nature of the divine. Amen.
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