Readings
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
As a preacher, today is probably my least favorite Sunday of the year. Why? Because it is the only Sunday specifically dedicated to a doctrine. And not just any doctrine but one of the most confusing and mentally difficult ones. It is the day where we celebrate the idea that God exists in three persons and yet, somehow, is still just one God.
One of my professors in seminary once said that more heresy is preached on Trinity Sunday than any other day of the year. And a Facebook meme I saw a few years ago had a picture of kittens on it and offered the sage advice “in order to avoid heresy on Trinity Sunday say nothing and show pictures of cats.”
Who among us who has taken time to think about the idea of God in heaven, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit hasn’t wondered at the idea of there being only one God. If they are all God, how can there possibly be only one?
If you’ve been coming to church for any length of time you likely have heard all the old tropes about how to understand the Trinity. There’s St. Patrick’s three leaf clover where you have three petals and yet only one clover. Then there’s the three states of matter description in which an element can exist as gas, liquid, or solid. And finally, there’s St. Augustine of Hippo who used love as a way of talking about the nature of the Trinity as being lover, beloved, and love itself.
The problem is that each of them only gets us part of the way there. When pushed to their logical extremes all of them fall apart and leave us wanting. None of them fully explain the reality of the Trinity.
The truth is that the reality of God as a trinity of persons and yet one God is a mystery. And by mystery I mean it is something that defies empirical description. It is something that can be experienced but not explained. And to name the Trinity as such is not a cop out or an intellectual dodge. Rather to acknowledge the presence of a mystery is a willingness to do something that is increasingly rare in our contemporary age. It is a willingness to make space for imagination married with experience. It is a willingness to not have certainty and make space for belief.
That, I believe, is what our scriptures point to. The stories in the Bible are the record of the experiences of people at different places and different times who, upon reflection mixed with imagination, recognized the living presence of God in their lives. That recognition grew and changed over time as the revelation deepened and the experiences became more rich and more challenging.
And in regards to this idea of a Trinity, which we hear explicitly referenced in both the epistle and the Gospel this morning, the early followers of Jesus and his way came to recognize that whether they were speaking of the God revealed in the witness of the Hebrew Scriptures, the God revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, or the God revealed in the wisdom and grace of the disciples themselves, it was the same God in every case. The mystery was that God could be experienced in such unique and distinct ways and yet still be the same God.
So, the task for us isn’t to figure out how to make sense out of an idea. The task for us on this day isn’t to come up with a neat intellectual definition or description that brings about a sense of certainty. No, the task for us is to think on our experience of God. And not just the experience we are having right now, but the range of experiences we have had throughout our lives.
The challenge for us is to avoid the desire for certainty, for certainty is the nest of heresy. We need to be about the mystery. We need to live in a place where there is always room to learn and to change. We need to recognize that at any given moment our sense of who and what God is is, at best, a snapshot and not the whole picture.
We live in an age when there are too many persons who claim the title Christian who live out of a sense of certainty. That certainty, like in ages past, has consistently led to the abuse of power, or worse, hate and violence. That stain of certainty is the stigma of the Church in the present age.
Mystery, however, affords us the opportunity to present God as an open question. It affords us the opportunity to share our authentic experiences with humility and compassion. It draws us out of the narrow confines of ourselves and into the broad and expansive reality of God and God’s creation. It acknowledges a world in which there can be one awesome and all-powerful source of all that there is, who is available in personal and intimate ways.
Imagine the possibilities if we approach the question of God and the nature of God with an open hand and an open mind. Imagine if we set aside the need for certainty and instead embrace the mystery. Imagine if, along with the witness of scripture, we allow our imagination and our experience to inform our understanding of God.
Perhaps we would discover God in faces and voices we did not expect. Perhaps we might come to recognize that ideas like the Trinity are attempts at getting at a mystery that is accessible to us all and not just brain candy for the select few. Perhaps, just perhaps, we would discover a living and loving God who is as radically present today as in ages past.
May we have the courage to set aside a strictly intellectual faith that lures us toward certainty. May we embrace instead a faith that welcomes mystery with open arms. May we unlock our imaginations as we reflect on our experiences of God. And as we do may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us always.