Year A Trinity Sunday 2023 Mystery

 Year A Trinity Sunday, 4 June 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA
“Mystery”

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.

Matthew 28:16-20

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I remember back when I was in another denomination that a woman came to me and asked to be baptized. I, of course, said yes! We met and talked over the meaning of it, and I was encouraged. 

On the morning of her baptism, however, she made a request. She said, “I only want you to baptize me in the name of Jesus. Not God or the Holy Spirit.” 

That seemed really strange, and I asked her where this was coming from. She told me that her Bible Study leader (not from the church, by the way) had told her that we do things in the name of Jesus. I told her that was partly true, like when Jesus told us to pray in his name. But then  I went on to tell her of his last instructions to us, what is often called the Great Commission, and that a part of that was to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That divine Trinity is the Godhead, three persons, in unity undivided, blessed Trinity. 

She said she did not like it. I told her that I could not baptize her, or anyone else, any other way, because Jesus’ instructions pretty much trump anyone else’s opinion. She decided to go ahead and get baptized. 

It was such a strange thing that it really struck me. We are confused, or maybe even scared by the Trinity. I have joked that I often palm this sermon off on other folks because I do not want to speak heresy. While that is always true, please know that it is a joke.

But there is a kernel of truth in the joke, like the basis of most jokes, and so many of our heresies, especially in the early church, come from confusion and disparities in our view of the Trinity.

The word Trinity is nowhere in the Bible. The concept, most definitely, but the word we use to get a handle on the incomprehensible is not there. Trinity, the three in one, the one in three, is nowhere to be found.

Jesus mentions it in the Great Commission to baptize in the trinitarian formula, and it is repeatedly used and shown in the Gospels, Paul’s writings, and Peter’s. The idea and understanding was there.

Most explicitly was it shown in the Baptism of Jesus in Matthew. 

3: 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Often you will see the Trinity portrayed in this way in paintings, Jesus the man, the Spirit the descending dove (like on our red frontal last Sunday), and God the Father unknowable as clouds above. So clear and so confusing at the same time.

We can go into bad analogies, and you may have even heard me give some, like I am a father, a husband, and a child while all one person. Or ice, water, and steam. None of these work fully. No metaphor is complete and accurate, or it would not be a metaphor.

Those phrases around Jesus in the Nicene Creed all speak to the heresies that had sprung up in those days, the early 300s. 

God from God,

Light from Light,

True God from True God, 

Begotten, not Made,

Of one being with the Father.

All these had to do with Jesus being an equal part of the Trinity, and fully divine.

Know this, it is and will always remain a mystery. Some people are threatened by that. I am not. I tend to think of it this way. If my God were small enough for me to understand, then my God is too small.

If the commission Jesus gave us were doable by us in a lifetime, our commission was too small. The task set before us needed to be sufficiently huge that we knew that God was needed to accomplish it. It is God at work and God’s invitation to join in what is a seemingly impossible task. Thanks be to God.

If the Trinity and the Great Commission are not big enough, then let me add this. God’s Grace is so huge that there is nothing that you could do to make God love you any more and there is nothing you could do that could make God love you any less. God’s grace is sufficient, and more than that. God’s grace is extravagant, like having our feet bathed with an expensive perfume, or a dinner party for 5,000 plus with the stuff we just happen to have on hand. 

Our God is big enough, our task is big enough, God’s grace is big enough, and that is a mystery I can celebrate, teach, and preach, and be excited enough about to want to tell everyone I know. Blessings, this Trinity Sunday. Amen