Sermon Trinity Sunday

Today is one of those days in the church year that is—how shall I put it?—not embraced with open arms by preachers.  We have that rather awkward theology of the Holy trinity—God in Three Persons; Three in One.  We affirm that every Sunday in our Creeds:

I believe in God,

the Father almighty,

creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit

and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again

to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic Church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

God the Father; Jesus Christ his only Son; the Holy Spirit; and yet we are monotheist.  Non-believers like to ask how can we claim to be monotheist s when we believe in three Gods?  If you really think about it they have a point.  How can there be three persons and yet one God?  Theologians have been dancing on the head of that pin—probably from the beginning of the church.  And we poor preachers have to try and address it on this day every year in 10 or 15 minutes. 

The Creed was supposed to settle it once and for all.  If you believe that I have a great investment opportunity that will give you annual returns of 100%.  Theologians are still writing and debating it and probably always be. 

And what does the churchgoer in the pew think about it?  Well more to the point do they think about it?  Probably not.  Be honest how many of you think about the Trinity—perhaps except this Sunday when we celebrate the Trinity?

Does it really matter; should it matter to us?  In some ways perhaps it doesn’t.  What does it matter if we believe in the Trinity or not give it a second thought —much less an third or fourth or fifth?  Well, It actually does matter.  Not so theologians can dance around the subject and get into debates about it.  With apologies to my systematics professor, Gary Badcock, does that really matter to you and me—at least on a day to day basis in how we live our lives. 

What I believe does matter is the image(s) we have of God.  This is tied inextricably to the Trinity.  If you ever engage in conversation with someone who says he or she is an atheist, ask them who the God is that they don’t believe in.  They will probably  say they don’t believe in a big man in the sky who will give us things if we ask in the right way; as Janice Joplin sang; O Lord won’t you give me a Mercedes Benz.  The question is then, who is the God you believe in?  Or you might consider which God do you believe in? What image of God do you hold in your mind even when you don’t think about it? 

Is it one of God with the long white beard sitting on a throne in heaven with Jesus his son, with blue eyes and blond hair on his right hand and the beautiful white dove that descended on Jesus at his baptism flying above their heads?

The wonderful and absolutely essential thing about the Trinity for me is that it gives me a more complete picture of God—more but not the whole picture.  No picture can capture any more of God than a possible glimpse but it does give me the best picture that I can conceive of—at least in this point of my life.

So what then is the image I have of each of the persons in the Trinity?  That is something that I find changes for me depending on where I am in my life.  One that I found quite interesting was proposed in a novel that was very popular a few years ago; The Shack byWilliam Paul Young .   It is an allegory in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progress.  It gives us an allegory for the Trinity in the form of three people—not persons.  Each of the persons of the Trinity becomes a character in The Shack. The Father is Papa, a deliberately peculiar name for an African American woman. Jesus, true to reality, is a man from the Middle East. And the Holy Spirit is Sarayu, an Asian woman. 

I like Young’s allegory for the trinity for a number of reasons.  First it gives a picture of the three Persons that is very non-traditional.  God the Father is a woman —an African American at that; the Holy Spirit is an Asian woman and Jesus the Son is a middle eastern man who is “wearing jeans covered in wood dust and a plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up above the elbows revealing well-muscled forearms.  His features were pleasant enough, but he was not particularly handsome—not a man that would stand out in a crowd”. 

No blond haired blue eyed Hollywood Jesus here.  Second, I like that women are in the majority—two women and one man.  Third, God the Father becomes God the Mother and a black Mamma at that named Papa— go figure.  We need to have our stereotypes and expectations turned on their heads.  In that way we will have to consider and not just assume we know who and what God is.  If our image of God has not changed for a while perhaps it should. 

The Trinity can, if we do not try and put God in a preconceived box, give us as full a picture as possible of the Divine which is the thing that creates and continues to sustain all of creation.  We will inevitably try and give an image to all that God is.  The problem is when we freeze that incomplete and of necessity, inadequate image and believe we know what and who God is.  This is one of the reasons I prefer the old words of the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father which art in heaven; which rather than who; being rather than a person.  It goes on, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.  God is working in this world and in us and enabling us to grow as things grow in the earth. 

Think of your image of God.  Who and what is God for you.  How does that image of God affect how you live and breathe and have your being?  How does that inform how you live your life today and every day?  Think about what else God might be that you had not even considered before.  Think of how that God loves you and each and every part of God’s creation.  Thanks be to God.

OF Things Liturgical

The following is part of a discussion on with a friend on Facebook concerning the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Alternative Services in the Anglican Church of Canada

Desmond — thank you for your thoughtful and extensive comments.  There is some in what you write that I agree and some with which I disagree.  I believe language and symbols such as passing the peace are important.  They are integral to the Anglican worship and symbolic of much more.  There is a great deal more to what the two services — if we take just the Communion or the Eucharist in both prayer books.  The things that are emphasized in each service are quite different but there are similarities.

The BAS does differ from the traditional Anglican service in both form and content.   However, in part it is a matter of emphasis rather than stark differences.  The BAS does emphasize the communal nature of worship opening with the gathering of the community — when two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name he is there — and the emphasis on community continues.  The BAS does have an emphasis on US but there is that element in the BCP.  The confession is communal, ‘We acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness’.  The creed in the BCP is ‘I believe’ however, the BAS uses most frequently the Apostles creed with ’I believe’.  There is also the Nicene Creed in the BAS which is communal.  However, you can hardly call that a modernization as the Council of Nicea was rather a long time ago.

 Certainly agree with you that there is a downplaying of repentance in the BAS which is unfortunate in my mind and theology.  We all have the need for repentance and come to the communion rail as sinners and in need of God’s grace.   Perhaps this is another case of emphasis as we are all created in God’s image and God declared it very good.  We have been expelled from the Garden which I take as a myth in the best sense.  However, that is not because of original sin in the Augustine sense.  We needed to rebel against God if we were develop as fully human beings but this did, of necessity, leads to a separation from God.  What would humanity be like if it has remained in the Garden?   This is non-traditional theology which I readily admit.  We do need to repent our separation from God which is inevitable because of our human nature and mostly because our egos see us as the center of our being rather than God.

This brings us to the crucial issue of scripture and how you understand it and what you/we believe.  I believe that contrary to what you declare we must look at the direction of scripture and of Jesus’ message rather than the specifics of different passages.  What you say is logical but I don’t believe that logic has priority for Jesus or for God’s interaction with people.  To perhaps be illogical and take one passage to support this I turn to Paul.  As Paul says to the Church in Corinth, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (KJV).  If we are to live in true charity with our neighbours and ourselves we will be following Jesus commandment to love one another.   I turn to Jesus and the woman caught in sin about to be stoned.  None of us is without sin.  However, he does say go and sin no more which is often held up as the last word against same-sex-blessing.  We are to turn back and repent.  However, there is another approach of Jesus which is presented in the parable of the Prodigal Son.  The father does not wait for the son to give his well-rehearsed speech of repentance.   The father accepts the son as he celebrates the reunion.  He does not say you may come back home but sin no more.  He accepts him unconditionally.  The question for me is how are we to live in love and charity with our neighbours? 

The BAS does present things in what could be called a logical fashion.  There is little mystery in what has been presented which is part of the problem with the liturgy.  As my wife Lorna noted it tries to pin down God as good and gracious and loving and only that.  But there is little of the mystery of God which is essential as we try to understand God.  This is beyond our abilities as finite human creatures.  I want to conclude with a quote from Richard Rohr:

For me, it really comes down to this: the individuals I know who are most genuinely happy and also fruitful for the world invariably relate to God in a way that is deeply personal, intimate, and almost conversational. Yet these same persons would be the first to admit and recognize that their personal God is also transpersonal and sometimes impersonal, and “the one in whom we all live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and, finally, beyond all names for God. God is humbly recognized as beyond any of our attempts to domesticate, understand, or control the Mystery. All names for God are “in vain.”

That is I believe not logical and it cannot be as God is beyond our logic.  For me that is the mystery of God.