The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8 Psalm 29 Romans 8:12-17 John 3:1-17
“Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
I’m slowly but surely learning that whatever I “think” I might be preaching about any given Sunday is always up for revision. I have a routine in how I approach the lectionary texts for the upcoming week that include an ecumenical clergy discussion with clerics from local congregations as we discuss what they’re thinking and what themes are appearing from the readings as we plan to put together our respective sermons, a day of lectio divina, a contemplative attempt of reading the scriptures, followed by studying several commentaries, notes from seminary classes, and reflecting on my life experiences that might bring some specificity and color to the sermon. I mentioned to the Bible study class this last Tuesday that the likelihood of me taking on the “task”, rather the “opportunity” to expound on the doctrine of the Trinity was virtually zero. I was all geared up for studying Nicodemus’ interaction with Jesus as my number one option for today’s sermon and yet, here I am on this First Sunday after Pentecost, offering several thoughts on a basic tenet of our faith, the mystery of the Trinity.
I think it is a fair and accurate statement that as Episcopalians, we tend to embrace the ambiguous, the mystery, the aspects of faith that seem both paradoxical and confounding. Our faith takes into account the critical importance of inspired Scripture, the traditions handed down from the ancient “Fathers” of the Church, and the sense of personal responsibility and agency in using our God-given intellect as ways we seek to encounter
God, in other words, the proverbial three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Our Anglican ethos frames and encourages us to embrace and engage the mysteries of God as we collectively journey on our pilgrimages of faith together, even when our ideas about these mysteries rub against each other. The exploration of our faith and what we believe is honed in our conversations with one another as we seek the guidance of divine inspiration. In many ways we hold our faith lightly, willing to revel in the wonder and majesty of God. We are a people of the Incarnation, that God revealed himself in flesh and bone and died a human death. We acknowledge and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit as we discern “next steps” and “what-ifs” as the wind of renewal inspires us.
One of these conversations took place during the Bible study this past Tuesday. We always have good discussions, raise good questions, explore different possibilities, affirm various insights, and ponder how God is present to us in the readings and our experiences. As we grappled with the ideas surrounding the Trinity, one of the participants interjected that when she prays, it’s primarily offered to “God the Father,” an image of God within the Trinity with which several others concurred. This idea of “seeing” or “understanding” God predominantly as “Father” got me thinking of my own experiences with this Triune God and how we might inadvertently put God in a box when we limit ourselves to one understanding of the Godhead, either as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
As you know, I was raised in the Baptist tradition and even though the church of my youth was rather formal in style, Jesus was the center of our devotion and worship. This Jesus-centric understanding of God revealed the urgency of having a personal relationship with Jesus as our Savior. This relationship was critical to our chances for salvation and it was up to us individually to affirm our desire for Christ through the weekly service-ending altar call. I remember attending a Billy Graham Crusade at the Oakland Coliseum with two other busses filled with folks from the church and many of us responded to Dr. Graham’s call to come forward at the end of the service for prayer and to receive Christ as our Lord and Savior. I remembered the assembled choir singing verse after verse of
“Just as I Am” as we made our way down the aisle to the baseball diamond infield. As I looked back, my memory was that Jesus was God-in-the-flesh, that my relationship with him could be that of a brother. This image of Jesus as God was the one to whom I directed my prayers and offered my thanks and worship. But as I matured in my faith, this idea of such an intimate relationship with Jesus as if he were my brother started to nudge me to explore other ideas and aspects of who God was and I subsequently found myself attending several Presbyterian churches during my time at college and after accepting my first professional job.
The experiences with these three Presbyterian churches could not have been more different than what I experienced growing up in the Baptist church. God, presumably intentionally articulated as “Father”, was front-and-center. The style of worship, the prayers offered, the music sung, and the sermon’s intent consistently reflected the first person of the Godhead. Unlike the “familiar” God in the form of Jesus I experienced in the Baptist church, my Presbyterian prism reflected a God of majesty, mystery, hidden “somewhere up there.” The piety exhibited was one of reverence and awe and all three congregations were well mannered, appropriately dressed, and where the coffee hours were times of cordiality and proper pleasantries.
Truth be told, I’ve never attended a Pentacostal church and I probably have some stereotypes of what God looks like for this strand of the Christian faith. That said, one of the families in my neighborhood growing up was always referred to as “Holy Rollers.” One day I was riding the school bus after school when one of the sisters in the family sat down next to me. While I knew who she was, we weren’t really friends. The route from the school back to the neighborhood took us past a church painted white and a rather plain sign out front painted with red letters that identified it as Northgate Pentecostal Church in Christ. She mentioned to me that that was where her family attended and we got to chatting. After a few minutes of what seemed like small talk, I finally blurted out the question: “What is a Holy Roller?” to which she shrieked in laughter. Over the next several bus rides we talked about how the Holy Ghost was alive and well and that if you
were filled with the Holy Ghost, you would most likely find yourself flailing and dancing like a crazy person. She mentioned that it hadn’t happened to her yet, but it had happened plenty of times to members of her family. She said that the church was a tight knit group and not many visitors showed up as they were probably too scared to come through the door.
The only piece of accepted Christian doctrine I’ll offer today is taken from the Athanasian Creed, a historic creed from the 5th century found in the Book of Common Prayer within the section titled Historical Documents. It reads in part:
And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Person, nor dividing the Substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.
It continues:
So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons;
one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
From this doctrine, the Prayer Book’s Catechism deals specifically with the issue of the Trinity in this way:
With respect to God the Father, the Catechism states “We learn that there is one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heavens and earth, of all this is, seen and unseen.”
With respect to the Son, “that Jesus is the only perfect image of the Father, and shows us the nature of God.”
With respect to the Holy Spirit, “The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity, God at work in the world and in the Church even now.”
My friends, it seems to me that we will experience the fullest expression of God when we learn to embrace all three Persons of the Trinity. If we ignore any of the three we run the risk of missing out on the bountiful riches of our relationship with this Triune God. As we continue with our service, listen intently to the depth of our Trinitarian understanding of who God is as we encounter the Trinity in the Nicene Creed, the Absolution of Sins, the Eucharistic Prayer, the hymns, and the Blessing. We are a trinitarian people and as we embrace the majesty of the Father, the intimacy of the Son, and the wisdom and wonder of the Holy Spirit, we will encounter and experience God in new and exciting ways, ways that change us from who we are to who we can become.