Trinity Sunday + June 11, 2006 + St. Paul’s Church, Lake James
+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.
A favorite story on
mine (I hope you haven’t heard it already) is what I hope is a fictional account
of a parish in which there was a parishioner who had an odd custom. He only came
to church once a year! Each year it was on the same Sunday; not Easter as one
might guess, not Pentecost, or even at the Christmas season. It was
always on Trinity Sunday. Finally, the Senior Warden asked him why, if he only
came to church once a year, he chose that particular holy day. The answer was as
bizarre as the behavior! He said, “I love to be here to watch the preacher get
all tangled up trying to explain the Trinity!”
In the precise
terms of theology, the dogma of the Holy Trinity is that there is one God.
In the one God, there are three Persons: the Father,
who is God; the Son, who is God, and the Holy Spirit, who is God, yet there are
not three gods, but one God. The Father is neither more nor less
God than the Son, and the Son is neither more nor less God than the Holy Spirit.
The Athanasian Creed, which, if you get bored with this sermon, you can read on
page 864 in the Prayer Book, says, “Whosoever will be
saved, before all things it is necessary to hold the Catholic Faith…and the
Catholic Faith is this: that we worship One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,
neither confounding (that is, mixing up) the
Persons nor dividing the Substance…” and then, describing the Three
Persons of the Godhead, that creed says “The Father
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost
incomprehensible.” (To which a latter day commentator added the
humorous quip: “The whole dogma incomprehensible!”)
After many years in the priesthood, I have learned better than to
try to explain the Mysteries of the Faith, including, and especially the Holy
Trinity! I have no hesitation in teaching what that dogma is, and no problem in
commenting on the importance of that sacred truth. But since God is infinite,
and therefore far beyond any human ability to comprehend, this sermon will avoid
trying to do what is impossible – that is explaining the Trinity.
But I do intend to preach about the Blessed trinity, and I’ll leave it to you to
decide whether I get all tangled up or not.
Anglicans understand the Christian religion to be not a series of
doctrines which, if believed, will somehow turn ordinary people into saints, but
rather, we see in the Church a community of women and men whose experiences of
the Living God are made more understandable by the teachings of the Church,
especially as found in the Bible and the creeds. “Theology,” one scholar has
written, “is an attempt to name the nameless, something which always falls short
of complete reality” and yet, theology is not only important, but crucial.
While theology is only a human response to God’s revelation, it is a way of
communicating eternal truths through the vehicles we have available to us,
namely our reason and our experience.
With that as a background, isn’t it interesting, and instructive,
that on this great festival, this holy day dedicated to the Triune Nature of
God, the Bible readings placed before us by the Church approach the mystery of
God’s Reality only indirectly. Our Scripture lessons do not offer any
philosophical explanations as to how God can be One Being, yet Three Divine
Persons who are quite distinct from each other. Instead, the Bible readings show
us God’s identity in the context of the relationship of God to humanity.
The Hebrew Scriptures present us with the awesome holiness of God
in the episode of the burning bush. Both the Epistle and Gospel stress the love
of God in sending Jesus to be our Savior. Their message is that God
cares for us! God cares what we think! God cares what we feel!
God cares what we believe! We, the community called “the Church”
celebrate God as Holy Trinity, a Divine community
and we do so based not on abstract concepts or philosophical
speculation, but on God’s self-revelation in Christ. Part of the very essence of
the Church, the Body of Christ, part of the very essence of being human is our
need for community. As the Book of Genesis teaches us, we are created in
the Divine Image so today we focus on the fact that community is in the very
essence of God! No wonder we need community to be all that God intends us to be!
Consider this: we, as members of the Body of Christ have been
joined not to some great cosmic force, not to a vast power however great,
but to a Living God who is personal, caring, and loving.
Being joined to that God was made possible because, as St. John put
it so powerfully, God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son to
redeem it – to redeem us. Putting it as clearly and bluntly as
possible, we didn’t join Him, He reached out to us and, through Holy
Baptism, joined us to Himself and to all other Christians. Even
those who came to Baptism as adults did so by God’s prevenient grace rather than
simply on our own initiative. So, when it comes to God, we are all
responders, not initiators.
Along with most
other Christians, we Anglicans worship a God who, in the words of our
first hymn this morning, is not only “Lord God Almighty, perfect in power” and
adored by saints and angels, but a God who is also merciful. What a
contrast that is to so much of our world, a world bedeviled by wars, terrorism,
and crime. A world in which some die of starvation while others live in
super-abundance, a world in which terrible diseases such as cancer, heart
disease, and AIDS ravage and kill. Today we celebrate a holy day which reminds
us that it was, and is, that very same world which God chose to enter as
a helpless baby in a stable, taking on Him our mortal nature, living in the
midst of cruelty, pain and injustice, revealing to humanity the three-fold
Reality of God, teaching about the Father and the Holy Spirit and finally
triumphing through suffering, death, and resurrection. Consider, too, that we
have gathered this morning in this parish church, not on a golf course, beach,
or tennis court. We have come together, as have billions of other Christians, to
keep the Feast of the Blessed Trinity by offering the Holy Eucharist,
celebrating the love of each Person of the Godhead for the other two, while also
celebrating the love of the Triune God for all of creation, including us!
Christians are not people who simply believe in the existence of
a being called “God” the way you or I might believe in the existence of a place
called “Morganton” or an element called “oxygen.” We are people called to a
personal relationship with God, a relationship not just of belief but
also of love. This ancient and wonderful Feast of the Holy Trinity is not
merely a commemoration of a dogma. No, accepting the truth of Christ’s
revelation that our Creator is One God in Three Persons, today proclaims
that the Divine Love reaches out not only from each of the Three Persons to the
other Two, but also to all of creation! As beings created in the image of that
God, we are designed, and expected to do the same! As we have been, and
are, loved, so we are to love!
I once heard about
a Sunday School class in which the teacher was talking about God’s love. A
little boy listened carefully and then burst out “Isn’t it wonderful that God
is!” Today we celebrate that truth, the truth that God the Holy and
Undivided Trinity, is!
Which is wonderful,
isn’t it!
+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.
The Reverend Alfred T. K.
Zadig, Sr.
