Trinity Sunday
June 3, 2007
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-11
John 16:12-15
I’m sure you are well aware by now that this is Trinity Sunday. This is the Sunday we celebrate the mystery of the Godhead, a mystery which we will likely never understand, but a mystery which does not need explaining, either. Nevertheless, I am sure you are expecting a sermon from me, so I am obliged to share some of my thoughts about the Trinity. But I want you to know that I don’t understand the Trinity. And I know that I cannot explain it. Because the concept of a Triune God, a God who reveals himself in three persons, seems contradictory to a religion which established itself as monotheistic, a religion of one God in a world of many gods. And yet the Doctrine of the Trinity continues to be fundamental to our faith and our religious practices as Christians. Even though the truth of it remains a mystery.
The best I can do is tell you how Christians experience a God who has revealed himself to us in three distinct persons, and why we believe each of those persons belong to One person in the unity of the Godhead. As you might imagine, that, in itself, is no easy task. Scholars and theologians have spent centuries trying to understand this one God in three persons. Their task has not been easy because the doctrine of the Trinity does not come to us directly from scripture. We cannot proof text it. There is nothing in scripture which clearly states that God is three persons in one Being. And yet, scripture yields many passages which do more than suggest that God revealed himself to us in this way. Like the passages we have heard from John the last two Sundays. Jesus assures us that when he leaves us God will send his Spirit to be our advocate. Jesus tells us that the advocate will guide us in the ways of God because just as God dwells in him and he in God, so God dwells in the Spirit who dwells in God. All that is to say, that as the ancient world knew God by Jesus’ presence in it, we know God by the Spirit’s presence in us.
Such scriptural passages indicate why a doctrine of the Trinity came to be and why it continues to be so important to the Church. But the doctrine did not even come into existence until the fourth century, long after the apostles had established the Church without it. It seems pretty clear that the Doctrine of the Trinity came about by necessity. And we would like to think it was God’s necessity for a church which was growing and spreading rapidly in all corners of the world. The result was a church which was losing its unity and identity as it accommodated to the circumstances of diverse social, political and geographical cultures.
It became clear to church authorities that something had to be done to restore the Church’s unity with Rome, so bishops of the church who were also scattered far and wide were called together to meet in councils to deal with the issues which threatened the church’s unity in its beliefs and practices. It was at the Council of Nicea that bishops developed a unifying doctrine of the Trinity in a creed we all know so well—the Nicene Creed. And it amazes me that a doctrine which had no clear or certain basis in scripture became one of the most sure and certain doctrines of belief established by the Church. So sure and certain was the Church’s belief in a Triune God, that church fathers wrote several creeds which became the foundation of our teachings and worship. To this day, as Christians in the Episcopal tradition, we recite a creed at every Sunday Eucharist. Our common practice is to confess our belief in a Triune God in the Apostles Creed at every baptism and in the Nicene Creed at every other Sunday Eucharist. The Apostles Creed is a personal confession of belief which begins with, “I believe.” This creed is appropriate at the time of baptism, when each of us acknowledges our own baptism in the renewal of our vows or in the vows taken by the candidate. The Nicene Creed, however is appropriate for our corporate worship. It begins “We believe,” and it binds us together in a confession of faith as a community of faith. From their inception our creeds have formed the basis of the Church’s teachings around God as Father, God as Son and God as Holy Spirit.
That is a sketchy summary of how the Doctrine of the Trinity came to be expressed in our creeds. But it is helpful to understand why the Church continues to find it important to confess our Trinitarian faith in our creeds. It is clear from the beginning that our creeds are belief statements which are meant to describe the Trinity, but they are also meant to unite us in a pledge of faith and trust in One God who reveals himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Modern challenges to this patriarchal Godhead has led to a change in description of these three persons in a new worship supplement to our Book of Common prayer. In it members of the Trinity are referred to as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of life. This recent change is clear evidence to me that the Church is ever more convinced of the fundamental necessity of this unifying doctrine of the Trinity which serves a unifying purpose for the Church. Like most belief systems, Trinitarian doctrine and confessions of faith expressed in creeds are meant to solidify communities of faith and help them see their unity with the Church at large. Creeds and doctrines also continue to keep the Church from succumbing to influences which would threaten its unity and weaken its beliefs and practices. From the beginning, the Doctrine of the Trinity as expressed in our Creeds has given the Church her identity.
Identity is a good thing, but rigid adherence to belief systems can also present problems as it did for Christians 1200 years later who began to be influenced by the skepticism of modern science and the individualism of political democracy. Christians began to test their belief systems and religious practices by these new measures and the Trinity continues to be a popular test case. You will find Christians in the church today who are not afraid to tell you that they don’t believe in saying Creeds, and there are whole communities of faith (like Jehovah’s witnesses) who do not adhere to the Doctrine of the Trinity at all. And yet, these are believers who regard themselves as no less Godly or Christian. In fact, they see their faith as less encumbered by theological and dogmatic assumptions derived from Trinitarian doctrine. And priests like myself will not try to argue with them or persuade them otherwise. Because we can’t. We cannot prove the mystery of the Trinity to be true. We can only experience the truth of the mystery, and testify to it.
I recall an encounter the priest of my home church had with a young man in our new member inquiry class. The young man could not accept the Trinitarian theology of the Creed and he did not want to have to say the Creed at worship. Fr. Don respectfully listened to his well-informed and well-thought through reasons, then he made an astute observation and a simple request. He told the young man that our Creeds were written for the purpose of unifying the Church. He told him how it was important for the diverse body of Christ in the Church to speak in one voice—to acknowledge our unity in our prayers and in our hymns, and in our creeds—to feel our unity with God and with each other, despite our diverse understandings of God and our different experiences of him. He told this young man that saying the creed was much like saying the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Boy Scout Pledge or any other pledge we make to an institution or organization we belong to. Because in the end, regardless of what we believe about the truth or accuracy of that pledge, or how able we are to live up to its standards or into its promises, the pledge itself lets us know that we belong to each other. He went on to say that pledging ourselves to God and to each other forms a bond of relationship which helps us grow in faith and become formed as Christians. And then Fr. Don made his request. He asked the young man if he would be willing to say the Nicene Creed during worship for the sake of that bond of unity which holds us together in relationship as members of the body of Christ in the Church. To this day, this young man joins his brothers and sisters
in saying the Creed.
I raise this example of modern skepticism over the Creed and its Trinitarian theology and I tell the story of Fr. Don’s encounter with this young man because I believe that a doctrine conceived by the Church based loosely on scripture should not keep anyone from the worship of God in a community of faith. It should not be a stumbling block for people. There are many of us in the church who have had to overcome our issues with Church doctrine and rules of dogma in order to maintain our life as practicing Christians. We have come to realize that unity in our faith does not mean that we have to be in agreement about what we believe and how we practice it. If truth be told, there are many who leave the church or who never come into the church at all because of its doctrinal requirements for membership. Such people are driven away or kept away by churches who insist that one must believe in church doctrines and abide by the rules of church law or live according to strict and literal interpretations of scripture in order to be regarded a true believer and a member of the Church in good standing. I have personally known people who have defected from churches or people who have never considered belonging to one for the same reasons, and it grieves me.
It grieves me even more that I was one of those persons for at least two years in my adult life. Until one day I was invited to sing in the choir of an Episcopal Church. My plan was to sing the great music of this church and go home. But I soon found that I could not resist the beauty of worship in a community of faith who accepted me despite my differences with the church. It was the Episcopal Church that welcomed me with all of my doubts about God and all my issues with the Church. The Episcopal Church was the only Church I had ever known that did not require me to pass a litmus test of belief and follow a set of man-made rules made to look as if they were ordained by God. They simply invited me to worship. They told me that what they pray is what they believe. Eucharist was central to their experience of God and mission and ministry was central to their life in community. There was only one stumbling block for me. They said the Nicene Creed every Sunday. Unlike the young man, however I went along with it because all the other aspects of my worship experience felt so authentic; so real and so engaging. And it wasn’t long before I became truly engaged in saying the creed as well. And I know why that happened. It happened because I began to experience God in the three persons of the Trinity. I could no longer argue with it. I began to experience the God who created me in love out of his goodness, the God who redeemed me in love in my fallenness, and the God who sustained me in love in every aspect of my life. I did not need an explanation or proof for what was happening to me. I realized I was experiencing God in the unity of his completeness, in his self-revelation as three distinct persons serving three very distinct needs of his human creatures. I began to realize that saying the creed became more than a pledge of unity; it became another way to pray.
This is what the power of the Trinity can evoke in persons who are open to experiencing the mystery of it. Persons who do not need to explain it away, and people who do not need to make it a rule of faith. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus comes the closest to indicating a Trinitarian theology of God. But he does not require us to believe THAT what he is saying is true; he asks us to believe IN the truth of what he is saying. And there is monumental difference in believing THAT something is true and believing IN the truth of something. To believe THAT the Trinity is true requires that we put this doctrine to a test; a cerebral exercise which requires proof. But believing IN the truth of the Trinity can only come from the experience of faith. An openness to a mystery which enables us to have a complete experience of God in the person who loves us into creation, the person who redeems us in the dark and difficult places of our life, and the person who sustains us in this world by his real presence.
I can’t explain why, or how that happens, but I know it is true. I experience God in three persons every day of my life. And especially in my experience of worship, in this community of faith we call the Episcopal Church. I believe you do, too. And so I think it is appropriate to end this sermon with an invitation for us to confess our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed. Even as I stand here in this pulpit. (Please stand.) Let us share in this mystery of our faith. Let us be mindful of the truth we experience in these words. And let us celebrate the diversity of our lives and the diversity of a triune God in this pledge of unity with God and with each other.