Sermon for Trinity Sunday 2016
Year C – RCL
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."
Today is
Trinity Sunday. A Sunday where I would rather not preach! At least not try to explain to you all the
doctrine of the Trinity. When I took the
General Ordinations Examination – or God’s Own Exam as someone joked – we had
been promised that we should not worry about the theology question because “the
general board of examining chaplains would never ask us to explain the Trinity
in 1500 words." When much to my surprise
upon opening the theology question I read:
“Dorothy
Sayers famously observed that if people depended upon the Church to answer the
question, "What is the Trinity?" the vast majority of people would
respond:
"'The
Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing
incomprehensible.' Something put in by the theologians to make it more
difficult - nothing to do with daily life or ethics."
Drawing on the
allowed resources and your own understanding, write an essay of approximately
1,500 words explaining how the doctrine of the Trinity is relevant to
"daily life or ethics."”
At which point
I think I may have uttered a string of expletives. And then struggled with how – using limited
resources – I was to write the essay. I
will tell you it is the one essay that I almost did not complete in time – and
it was the one essay that they found problems with. Probably because I tried to find a rational
way to explain the God. I tried to come
up with metaphors using my science background that usually head into what the
church would label heresy.
It is so
tempting to start explaining the Trinity
by saying “The Holy Trinity is like…” and then get into trouble. It certainly is true that the doctrine of the
trinity is not one of those things that we sit around the table at coffee hour
and talk about. It is true that some
people hear Christians talk about “God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit” and think
we worship three separate God’s and not one.
The important
thing for me – right now – is that the doctrine of the Trinity was developed in
the early church to explain how they, and we, experience God. It is that experiential piece where I think –
today – that we can start. And we can
start by trying not too hard to figure this all out. We need to let some mystery be part of this
discussion too.
In the little
snippet from John’s Gospel we hear again the promise that once Jesus is gone
the spirit of truth will be with us and “will guide us into all truth.” I notice that there is not the promise that
we will have all truth handed down to us on a platter. That we will not
suddenly have perfect knowledge but that we will be led into truth. There is movement - it is a dance through
life that guides us unto truth. It is in
community that we find the truth. It is
in the poetry of life that we find truth.
It is the dance with God that is called theology that we find
truth. It is both the beauty and the
messiness of life that we find God.
I can’t do
theology without other people. I can’t
do theology without all of you. That
wonderful dance with God happens best when it is shared with others.
On Thursday we
had a funeral for one of the members of the community Ricky – who came here for
the food closet and for community dinners.
A number of the people who came to the funeral where not regular church
goers and did not necessarily know about the service.
But what they
did know is that they were here to say goodbye.
They knew that they were here to comfort each other and so during
communion there was some wonderful sharing.
Not the silence we are used to during communion. It was – in a word – messy and
un-Episcopalian! It was in a better word
Sprit-filled and wonderful. God the
Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – the singular God who comforts and
leads us into truth was present.
It was in
offering a place for sharing and saying goodbye that I saw God at work. Where I saw all three members of the Trinity
in evidence as God the Father comforted the bereaved, God the Son promised
eternal life and God the Holy Spirit breathed life into the community.
[pause]
I saw a
wonderful banner for the Trinity recently.
It has the three intertwined circled that is used as one of the symbols
for the Trinity. But instead of the
three circles being solid they had the impression that they were in constant
motion. They depict a complex dance between the three circles but each circle
is also its own dance. And it is a dance
with no beginning and no end. It is a
dance that we are invited to join in and enter into at any point on any of the
three circles.
And so I am
still left with the quote from Dorothy Sayers “"'The Father
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the whole thing
incomprehensible.' Something put in by the theologians to make it more
difficult - nothing to do with daily life or ethics." And I still am tempted to start out and explanation
of the Trinity by saying the “Trinity is like…” But really that is not the
point.
It is when we
approach God from a place of doctrine and dogma that we find no relevance to
our daily life and ethics. But instead
when we approach God from a place of love and enter into the dance with the
Holy Trinity we will find relevance to our daily life.
We find God
when we feed the hungry, cloth the naked and visit the prisoner. We find God when we allow the messiness of
grief to come into our lives. We find
God when we provide hospitality to those who society believes have no place at
the table.
It is in this
wonderful dance with all its messiness, all its mystery, and all its beauty
where we find God. A God who calls us into community and calls us to work to
bring the Dance of God’s love to all of creation.
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