Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 2018

It is quite appropriate for Trinity Sunday to occur right after Pentecost. Last week we
celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit and the first bold steps taken by the early Church.
Some people like to call Pentecost the “birthday” of the Church. I prefer to think of it as the
day when God took the training wheels off. At any rate, the whole doctrine of the Trinity
– of God as three Persons in one Nature – is something that emerges from that Church.
Although we can already find some nuggets of that idea in the New Testament (for example,
in Matthew 28:19 where we read "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 [...]"), the doctrine
of the Trinity took many years to take shape, and remained a highly contentious theological
concept for quite some time. In fact, to this day there are several large nontrinitarian
Christian denominations in existence.

If we think about it, the largest portion of the Nicene Creed that we recite together on
Sunday is nothing but a fairly detailed exposition of this doctrine. The reason why the
doctrine of the Trinity takes up so much space in the Nicene Creed and other creeds (and
one could argue, the reason why such creeds exist in the first place) is not just because of the
theological importance of this doctrine, but also because lots of people in the early Church
had disagreements on some or all of its main points. Hence, the need to clearly articulate
the doctrine in formulas that could be recited and could be used to demarcate "orthodox"
belief from what ended up being labeled as heresy.

Although studying the major disagreements in the early Church on the doctrine of the
Trinity can be a useful exercise, and I’m sure it has been a source of many instructive (but
perhaps a tad boring!) sermons, I will take a very different route this morning. The question
I want to explore is the following: "Is the doctrine of the Trinity helpful to us, and if so,
how?". Even more broadly, "Is theology helpful to us, and if so, how?" By us I mean people
trying to live faithfully today as disciples of Jesus. My personal answer to this question is
yes, theology (good theology, that is) can be very helpful to us, but how? In order to answer
this question, I need to explain what I have come to believe is a central point. My belief is
that no human being can ever fully experience the totality of God. All we get are glimpses
into this Mystery.

I find the following quote by the Episcopal priest William Countryman very helpful to
explain this point: "Since we are, by nature, finite beings, each of us limited by space and
time, none of us will ever experience directly more than one life's worth of God, of Truth, or
Reality. What each of us comes to know are fragments of something immeasurably larger
than we can grasp. My neighbor knows other fragments, which may well be the ones that
make sense of my own." This points to the fact that we need a language to articulate our
experiences of God, to communicate those experiences, and to learn from one another about
those experiences.

Theology gives us the language to try and articulate this Mystery, to learn from one
another, and from our fellow humans who came before us. Theology helps us expand our
awareness of God. Good theology should not be seen as a long list of things we believe in
our heads, or worse as a convenient test to determine who is in the "club" and who is out.
Rather, I believe that good theology can be a great gift, which gives us the language to speak
about God and more importantly enables us to encounter God more often and more fully,
to become aware of God's presence more often and more fully in our lives. I’ll repeat that
one more time: Good theology should enable us to become aware of God's presence more
often, more fully. How can the doctrine of the Trinity help us in that regard?

Let us think about the first person of the Trinity: God as Maker, Creator, Father (or
Mother!), the living force that brought everything into existence. Some of you know that
I love to camp (or glamp, as I have been accused of!) and to travel around the country . It
truly is America the Beautiful! The red rocks of the South West, the otherworldly landscape
of the Badlands, the snow-capped Rockies in midsummer. These are all opportunities to
become aware of the presence of the Creator. Creation is not something that happened once
in a mythical past, but it continues to happen every day. However, it's not only when we
are surrounded by sublime landscapes that we experience God as Creator. We can become
aware of the first person of the Trinity every time we marvel at how lush and bustling with
life our backyards become after a bleak winter. It seems truly miraculous to me, although
I have to confess I'd rather have slow growing grass that doesn't need to be mowed every
three days! It's not only in contemplation but in action too that we can become aware of
God the Creator. When we take care of this planet, we remind ourselves that we are called
to be faithful stewards of this earth, that we can never possess the land but we can only take
good care of it. Even small things like recycling can become a spiritual practice. In other
words, we can become aware of God the Creator in the Grand Canyon and in our backyards
too.

How about the second person of the Trinity? In today's reading we heard the story of
Nicodemus, coming to see Jesus at night. In the highly symbolic gospel of John, darkness
stands for the brokenness of the human condition. Nicodemus gets a chance to be made
whole by encountering Jesus. We don't know whether in the end he truly gets what Jesus
is talking about, but my guess is that the encounter completely transforms him into a new
being. So, the second person of the Trinity reminds me that even in our brokenness we can
become aware of God, sometimes especially because of our need to be made whole again.
We encounter Jesus in the great acts of generosity, of selflessness, but also in holding the
door to a stranger and in the farmer's greeting we exchange when driving on a dirt road. St.
Benedict reminds us to welcome the stranger as Christ.

How about the third person then, the Holy Spirit? It’s a little more tricky to put it into
words, but here it is. I like the definition of the Spirit given by the theologian Gittins as
a presence that disturbs. A presence that nudges us ever so gently (and sometimes not so
gently!) towards God. Again, we can feel that nudging wind in the great choices we make, in
the famous saints giving everything to the poor, but also in the small occurrences of everyday
life. Have you ever felt moved to come to Church on a cold or lazy morning, in spite of the
many excuses you could have come up with? It's happened to me before. As a Companion
of Mary the Apostle I commit to asking each day what God is doing with me. This simple practice – which I highly recommend, by the way – reminds me that when listening to the
Spirit the ordinary actions of our often ordinary lives can be holy.

To conclude: if you find that your head starts spinning when you hear about God having
three Persons but one Nature, of the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son (or
perhaps just the Father!), and so on, don’t worry. My head spins as well, and that’s a good
thing. It’s actually a very good thing. The moment we think we have God all figured out,
we risk getting further and further away from the experience of God, an experience that is
often better served by silence than by so many words. Theology (good theology, that is) can
help us better articulate our beliefs, but it can never replace the encounter with the mystery
of God.

So, here is my invitation for all of us today: instead of thinking about the Trinity and
trying to make sense of it, or worse, instead of using this doctrine to figure out who is in
the club and who is out, let us explore how it can help us get closer to God. In being good
stewards of God's creation we encounter God the Father (or Mother), in seeing the face of
Christ in all we meet and in being the face and hands of Christ in serving our neighbor
we encounter God the Son, in asking every day what God is up to with us and in listening
deeply we encounter God the Holy Spirit. May we all become more aware of God in our
lives, more deeply and more fully. Perhaps this is what Jesus was referring to when he was
telling Nicodemus about "being born from above". Amen.