Year C Trinity Sunday 2022 Sermon: Impossible

 Year C Trinity Sunday, 12 June 2022

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Sermon: Impossible”

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Romans 5:1-5

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

John 16:12-15

Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

Good morning! It is always daunting to preach on Trinity Sunday, because whatever tack one takes, it borders on heresy if you are lucky, or crosses the line entirely.

Less may not be more when it comes to speaking on the Trinity, but less is certainly safer.

This doctrine is the third rail of Christian theology, and has been since the formalization of our theology so long ago.

If you look at the differences between the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed, almost all the differences are in response to heresies that emerged and the Church felt the need to clarify. Every one of these is an example:

    …eternally begotten of the Father,

    God from God, Light from Light,

    true God from true God,

    begotten, not made,

    of one Being with the Father.

    Through him all things were made.

    For us and for our salvation

        he came down from heaven…

And that is just the Trinitarian issues over Jesus.

If you are really interested in all of this, I encourage you to look at the Athanasius Creed in your prayer book on pages 864 and 865.

If you have not seen the video “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies” that make the rounds every St. Patrick’s Day and Trinity Sunday, you are missing out. Just Google “St Patrick Trinity Video” and it pulls right up. Link

There it talks about how our analogies, which I have heard most of my life, are not only inadequate, but are considered heretical. The leaves of a three-leaf clover, separate but one. Nope. Water: ice, liquid, steam. Sorry, another bad one. It reduces the distinct nature of each of the persons.

One major controversy is in our phrase concerning the Holy Spirit:

    We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, 

    who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Does not sound like much, but that final bit. …and the Son. That was not in the original Nicene Creed. That was added later by the Roman Catholic Church. Our Orthodox sisters and brothers hold this, the Filioque [Greek for “And the Son”], is the major hang-up in Orthodox and Roman Catholic dialogue, and there is a movement to take out the Filioque in our next Book of Common Prayer. Expect heated debate. Does the Spirit proceed from the Father, or the Father AND the Son? Our Orthodox siblings feel it subordinates the Spirit if seen proceeding from the other two persons of the Trinity. I see where they are coming from. Wars have been fought over less.

As I said, the doctrine of the Trinity is the third rail of the Church. We will see. 

SO what can we say?

I like Richard Rohr’s analogy that the Trinity is the Divine Dance. Movement. Interrelated. Relationship. Always driving us toward God’s culminating dream for creation.

The Spirit of Truth will drive us to the Truth, as it says in our reading from John today. And that Truth will set us free, as Jesus promises in another place in John. [John 8:32]

For me, I appreciate a modern approach to the persons of the Trinity, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, which are strong images. While it is a good alternative, taking away the masculine imagery which is often troublesome to sensibilities, I do have a hard time taking away the anthropomorphism of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are more than our roles, all of us, even God.

From the Hebriac foundations, the masculine for the Godhead has been the case. Jesus, being masculine in his gender, is obviously the Son because he was a son. The Spirit, which is much better than Ghost in every possible way, is more ambiguous. 

Often we will see the Spirit referred to as She to give more balance than what is traditional. There is even a biblical precedent in the Apocrypha, in that “wisdom” is referred to as Sophia, a feminine name we still use, and is often seen as a stand-in for the Holy Spirit guiding us to right living.

But our metaphors and pronouns, none of them are adequate for what we call the Trinity. In a few moments, when we recite the Nicene Creed, please make sure that you pay attention to the words used to surround and name the persons of God. Those descriptions are clear enough to be understood, ambiguous enough to be open. Whatever box we try to fit God into, it is never big enough. God cannot be contained.

Suffice it to say, the Trinity is a mystery. Too big to comprehend. Too important to reduce. Too mysterious to be explained in any possible way. As the hymn suggests, maybe we just say it: “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”

As we look to the Trinity, however we see God, may we look to be surprised. God will always break through, often in a way we cannot fathom and when we least expect it.  Thanks be to God. Amen