Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness. The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon leap like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning. The voice of the Lord shakes the desert; the Lord shakes the Desert of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in his temple all cry, “Glory!” The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever. The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses his people with peace.
(Psalm 29:1-11)
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Well, today is the day that Christians the world over wait for with great expectancy, and in anticipation of this festive occasion I’m sure that none of us were able to sleep last night, so pumped up were we all about coming to church to celebrate – Trinity Sunday! It’s the Sunday after Pentecost which we set aside to reflect upon the central doctrine and perhaps the identifying belief of the Christian faith – the Trinity. The God who is both Three in One and One in Three. But rather than just listening to me speak about it, I want to introduce you to Connall, Donall and St. Patrick – and we’ll give them a shot at explaining this greatest of all Christian doctrines this morning.
You Tube Video: St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies
You get it now – right? The Trinity. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Or – we could say it in Greek: τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος. Or – we could go with Roman Catholic tradition and use Latin: in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Or we could use some of the alternative trinitarian formulae that have arisen in recent years: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, or Creator, Christ and Spirit or Love, Love Incarnate and Love’s Power, or God Above Us, God With Us and God Within Us. Or we could use some of St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies that Connall and Donnall tore apart for us: water, ice and steam or sun, heat and light, or a man who’s a father, a son and a husband all at the same time. You probably get the point. There are so many different ways in which we speak of the Trinity. The Trinity is important. I’d be the last to suggest otherwise. Some think it’s an arcane bit of theological history, but for Christians it’s central. Before I came to Pickering Village I was interviewed by another church, and one of their first questions to me was: do you believe in the Trinity? Belief in the Trinity in some form is what identifies us as Christians and makes us unique among the monotheistic faiths of the world. Years ago, in Port Colborne, my UCW arranged for a speaker from a local mosque to come to their monthly meeting. He arrived at the church early and I invited him into my office where we chatted. I said to him at one point, “you know, we actually have a lot in common in what we believe.” He looked at me and said “Maybe. But we would never accept the Trinity.” It defines us as Christians, and yet – as the video demonstrated – it’s a concept that really can’t be properly explained or fully understood. Ultimately it might be derived from Scripture, but it isn’t precisely “in” the Bible. The Bible never says that God is Three in One and One in Three. The Trinity is what I’d call a classic doctrine of the church. It’s something developed by the church to try to explain the mystery of God but as with all doctrine, the Trinity should introduce God to us and push us further along the path of trying to understand God, but for many Christians the Trinity becomes an end in itself. Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes for some the totality of God – and yet God can’t be contained in a human formula. And as is always the case with doctrine – doctrine understood as an end rather than as a start leads to accusations of heresy, and heresy divides the church. Now please understand – I am a trinitarian. The doctrine of the Trinity is vital to my understanding of God, but I believe that the Trinity does more than just speak of three persons in the godhead – whatever that means – and, if we’re being honest, we’ll admit that we don’t know what “three persons in the godhead “ means anyway. So I think I understood the point that Connall and Donnall were making. We can use all the analogies and all the fancy doctrinal language we want – but the Trinity remains a mystery, and the nature of God remains a mystery (“Holy Mystery” as A Song of Faith says.) I’m not so much concerned with understanding the Trinity as I am with where the Trinity directs me, and with what it tells me about God – because I think that’s the purpose of all doctrine.
I found myself thinking of these words from the great modern theologian N.T. Wright, who wrote “When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship.” That can be a problem, I’ve discovered, with how Christians treat the Trinity. It turns into an absolute for faith. It becomes a litmus test by which we judge the faith of other Christians. It becomes what God is to many Christians (even if they don’t really understand it) so that the image of God that we reflect becomes a hardened God – an idol, if you will, made not of wood or stone but of the words of church dogma. I choose instead to see the Trinity as a guide that helps me to explore the fullness of God without binding me to an inevitably incomplete picture of God.
Today, we read the 29th Psalm. It is not, obviously, a trinitarian piece of writing. But of all the lectionary readings for today I wanted to use it because I believe it’s doing something similar to what the doctrine of the Trinity does: it doesn’t so much explain God as it captures the essence of God, the mystery of God and the power of God. It speaks not just of the power of God over nature but of God being seen in the most powerful events of the natural world: thunder and mighty water; lightning and earthquakes and mighty winds all seem to make their appearance. People have always discerned the presence of God in natural events, or at least they've seen something otherworldly in the natural phenomenon of this world. When I was young, whenever there was a bad thunderstorm I'd be told - and my family were atheists - not to worry, because the thunder was just “God bowling.” And even looking at it from the other perspective, one can't look at pictures from Hawaii right now and have any doubt where the popular images of hell cake from, as we watch fire and red hot molten rock being belched up from the earth. The natural world becomes our window to the things of God and of the spiritual world. So “God chooses to be known” might be a way to paraphrase what the author of the Psalm is saying. God chooses to be known in ways that we can’t help but notice. What does that have to do with the Trinity? Directly? Nothing perhaps. And yet – the Trinity is also a way of speaking of God choosing to be known. If Psalm 29 speaks of God being known through the power of nature, then the Trinity speaks of God being known through the power of love – if I can quote Bishop Michael Curry from the Royal Wedding! (And, just as an aside, I may be the only person in the world who watched the Royal Wedding because I wanted to hear the sermon!)
The Trinity speaks of relationship. “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” - or whatever formula you choose – speaks of the fact that God is essentially self-sufficient; God needs no one or nothing; God needs no relationship with us because relationship itself is the very essence of God. On the surface, perhaps saying that God does not need us seems rather cold – but it’s really quite the opposite, because if God does not need us (and the very idea of God as Three in One and One in Three testifies to the fact that God does not need us) then there is only one reason that God created us: God wants us; God loves us. Henri Nouwen said that
we’re inclined to see our whole existence in terms of ‘quid pro quo’; you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. We begin by assuming that people will be nice to us if we are nice to them; that they will help us if we help them; that they will invite us if we invite them; that they will love us if we love them. ... Everything that Jesus has done, said, and undergone is meant to show us that the love we most long for is given to us by God, not because we deserved it, but because God is a God of love.
For me what matters about the doctrine of the Trinity is not that it establishes some unchanging formula that defines God once and for all time. What matters about it is that it reminds me that the God who didn’t need us nevertheless chose to create us, chose in Jesus to come among us and chooses in the Holy Spirit to remain with us. The Trinity reminds us that we are wanted by God and loved by God. Which is altogether more important than any point of church dogma could ever be.
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