Trinity Sunday, 05/18/2008

Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20, by James V. Stockton

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

When we think about the Special Sundays or Feast Days in the Church's year we see that the Feast Days memorialize either Saints, e.g. All Saints' Day, or they remember events in the life of Jesus or his followers, such as Easter or Pentecost. Trinity Sunday is the exception. It is the only Principle Feast Day dedicated to a teaching. At the ideal level, it provides the Church a chance to recall an ancient Christian insight into the nature of God. And on the practical level, this is an occasion when many of us, out of good Christian charity, come together to act like we actually enjoy the explication of doctrine and dogma just for the sake of those few of us who actually do.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the teaching that says that God is Three-in-One. But the real situation is that there is little in life that helps us grasp this doctrine. So, let me offer a rather limited analogy. Suppose that here is an ice cube, here is a glass of water, and here is a steaming teapot. None of us would claim that ice, and water and steam are alike. Yet, we would all likely agree that each is the same H₂0. That said, it barely begins to indicate why it is that the Trinity is a core doctrine of the faith. Even when we can concede that God is Three-is-One, can we then say we know why this is so important?

In his book Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era, Stanley Grenz notes that the doctrine of the Trinity "has become marginalized...by theologians who see it as an abstract and indefensible example of the excesses of speculative theology...." And further, he suggests that even as an academic exercise, the idea of God as Trinity holds a shrinking interest. Perhaps this is why Grenz can further note that "Christians [in general]...view the doctrine as inherited dogma that is of no relevance to the modern world or to daily life."

Now add to this the fact that our world is shrinking. Religious faiths which, in our parents' time, were espoused only by total strangers who lived far away have in our lifetime come as near as neighbor, friend, and family. And if we're not careful, it can seem as if we're just trying to use word games to make ‘our God' seem better than ‘their god.'

So if the doctrine of the Trinity is simply a mental gymnastic, and a source of needless contention then may we let go this very peculiar idea that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? And the answer is ‘Yes.' If God as Trinity is irrelevant, and so also needlessly divisive, then we have good cause to put aside this ancient and puzzling teaching, and move on.

Yet, as our reading from the Apostle Paul's letter, and today's reading from the Gospel, show us, the idea of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has its origins with Jesus and the Disciples. Even before it was a formal doctrine, this teaching was already a tenet of Christian faith. The reading from Genesis suggests that the ancient Hebrew understanding of God always held that God is One, but, also that God somehow is plural. "Let us make humankind in our image...." God the Creator creates through the Word, and the Spirit of God is hovering over it all and moving through the process. The point is the Trinity appears in scripture, whether by implication or overtly in the formula, Father Son and Holy Spirit. And as, Ted Dorman argues in his A Faith for All Seasons, this gives the doctrine weightier significance than if it were merely the product of speculative philosophy. The doctrine of the Trinity is biblical revelation.

For this reason, rather than resign the doctrine of the Trinity as obsolete, we might instead ask if its seeming irrelevance might be due less to the antiquity of its origin, and more to humanity's ignorance of its message. If it this teaching is divisive at all, we might ask if such division is based less in God's purpose for it, and more humanity's misuse of it for just that purpose.

Like any revelation from God, God means to provide an answer with the doctrine of the Trinity, chiefly in order to move us on to the next and better question. In this case, the next and better question is: why does God want us to know God as the Trinity?

Through the centuries of the Church's life people have expressed their experiences of any or all of the three persons. In modern times, C. S. Lewis puts as well as any might when he says that we experience God as out there, calling us as the Father to pray to Him. And we experience God as the one helping us, as the Son, to pray. And we experience God as the one moving within us and through us, as the Holy Spirit, praying God's own prayer. And as blessed as we are with experiences of each of the three persons of God, throughout history people have continued to try to grasp the internal unity of the three persons in God's own self, lest we cease to know and proclaim the One True God of all; and substitute three demi-gods; each a lesser thing, a god for only some. And they have continually found insight into the Life of what C. S. Lewis called Christianity's ‘Three-Personal God' by comparing it with a central aspect of what it is for each of us to be a human person.

In the 5^th century, writing on the Trinity, St. Augustine, says: "[L]ove is of someone that loves, and with love, something is loved." "Behold, then" he says, "there are three things: the one who loves, and that which is loved, and love [itself]." In the 12^th century, Richard St. Victor, a favorite of mine from the contemplative writers, likewise reminds us that scripture plainly says, "God is love." Next he notes that love is always directed toward another. But in God's case, says Richard, no mere created being can be a sufficient object for the fullness of God's love. Thus, there must be two persons in the oneness of God. But then, Richard says, each of these two persons, full of God's own holiness and goodness, would not wish to hoard their love, but would wish to share it; so that the Third Person of God is also and equally essential. So from what we see ‘perfected' in the ‘trinity of persons' we can see that the internal life of God is characterized by one thing over all others; namely: love. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the next century builds on all this, and says, basically, God the Father is the source of God's Love, God the Son is the object of God's Love, and God the Holy Spirit is God's Love itself. And into modern times, this continues to be Christianity's understanding of God's internal life. "God is love," says C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, "and that love works through [people], but this spirit of that love is, from all eternity, a love going on between [God] the Father and [God] the Son."

The point of this doctrine and dogma, then is this: even with its cryptic three-in-one language for God, and perhaps because of it, the Trinity most clearly of all doctrines demonstrates, and most purely reveals, that the single thing that describes God and God's existence, is Love; and it describes God absolutely. And maybe this is why the Church in her wisdom asks us to endure an annual explication of this old doctrine. It shows us that beyond anything else of God that we can know, we know that God's first act is to Love; God's chief quality is Love; God's very identity is Love. And if it reveals to us something of God's inmost being, it reveals to us also something of ourselves as God's people.

Ours is a time of increasing violence in the mid-east, with terrorism spreading the infection of fear, anger, and distrust, much of it claiming a base in religious doctrine. Our own beloved Episcopal Church is struggling in various places to deal faithfully with disagreements that at least seem to be rooted in issues of doctrine and dogma. Here locally we are faced with the possibility that the upcoming election of our next diocesan bishop could be shaped, if we let it be, by disagreements over a various doctrines pertaining to Holy Orders, marriage, and sexuality.

With the doctrine of the Trinity, God calls us to respond to these, doctrinally. He calls you and me to pray deeply, give generously, and work purposefully to carry this teaching of the Life and Love of God into a world that can easily lose sight it. With this fine old doctrine God calls us from afar to seek first to give love; by it, God guides us make ourselves available to receive love; through it, God empowers us from within simply to be love.

The doctrine of the Trinity: to the Glory and by the grace of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. James V. Stockton
Episcopal Church of the Resurrection
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: jstockton@sbcglobal.net

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