June 7, 2009
John 3.1-17
The other day I was talking to some fellow clergy and they were expressing their apprehension about thus Sunday we call Trinity Sunday. One friend of mine said she approaches the concept of the Trinity must as a place flying into a storm. One can fly around it. One can fly above it. Or one can fly right through it. She decided she was going to fly around it and preach today about Nicodemus.
As you have probably guessed by now, I am the kind of person who would rather fly right through it. And so, today, I am going to face the Trinity. But, I should be honest—for me this concept of God as Trinity isn’t a frightening concept, nor is it a so overwhelming. For me, I don’t see it as some kind of whirling storm to fly through. Instead, I see it rather as the ultimate mystery of mysteries. I see it, as the paramount belief we Christians have. The Trinity. God as Three-in-One—God as Father or Parent or Creator, God as Son or Redeemer and God as Spirit or Sanctifier.
It is difficult to wrap our minds around this concept of God. The questions we priests regularly get is: how can God be three and yet one? How can we, in all honesty, say that we believe in one God when we worship God as three? Aren’t we simply talking about three gods?
Whole Church councils have debated the issue of the Trinity throughout history. The Church actually has split at times over its interpretation of what exactly this Trinity is. Certainly, I struggled with this concept for years. It was only when I was studying for the priesthood, in a systematic theology class I took, that I came across a book that broke down all the barriers for me.
The book, by a nun of the Dominican Order, Mary Ann Fatula, was called The Triune God of Christian Faith. Now that title alone would turn most of us off. Certainly when I saw it on the syllabus, I rolled my eyes and thought to myself: Great, another dry, boring book on theology. But despite its title, this book was amazing. Fatula was wonderful in how she took this very difficult concept of the Trinity and made it accessible at least for me. Some of the points Fatula makes are downright beautiful and poetic in attempting to understand what the Trinity is: She begins with the belief that our very beings are “etched with the signs of Trinitarian origin.” In a sense, we have proof of the Trinity’s existence in our very bodies and minds.
Our psyche, for example, is Trinitarian, made up of three distinct aspects. It’s still one psyche, but it makes its self known in three different ways: memory, knowledge and love. It, in a sense, reflects the relationship the “persons” of the Trinity have with each other.
Another way she attempts to understand the Trinity is that of the relationship of the Lover, of the Beloved and of the Love that unites them. The Lover, our course, is God the Creator, the Parent. The Beloved is Christ. The love that unites them is the Spirit. She stresses that although they are the same, they are still distinct and different in what they do. The Son (Christ) and the Spirit, she explains, are exactly what the Father (Parent) is, without being who the Parent is.
I’ll repeat that: The Son (Christ) and the Spirit, she explains, are exactly what the Father (Parent) is, without being who the Parent is.
Are you still with me? Let’s look at it from another perspective: The Trinity starts with the Incarnation—our belief that Jesus is God made flesh—God made one of us—fully God, fully human.
“Because of Jesus,” Fatula says, “heaven will be joined to earth in our very bodies.”
In other words, because Jesus was both a part of heaven and a part of earth, in Jesus, we find a perfect balance. Heaven and earth have come together. The Holy Spirit, released at the death of Jesus on the cross, is now poured out upon us. Before this death, Fatula says, the Spirit was confined by the “opaque boundaries of Jesus’ human existence.” His pre-resurrection body could only “’contain’ rather than convey the spirit.” At his death, the dam broke, in a sense. The Spirit poured forth into our lives as a lasting presence of God among us. This is certainly what we celebrated last Sunday on Pentecost. Jesus, after he was resurrected, after he ascended bodily into heaven, has left us his presence—his spirit—to remain with us. It was poured out on those disciples in the upper room and it continues to be poured out upon all of us still to this day. This Spirit, according to Fatula, is the Father and the Son’s embrace of us, “their kiss, their joy and their delight lavished upon the earth.” By the Spirit, we come to know both God as our loving Parent and God as our redeemer—we are encircled and drawn close to God.
So, what are talking about here is not three gods, as some people seem to think. What we are talking about it one tri-personal God—a God who cannot be limited in any way, but a God who is able to come to us and be revealed to us in a variety of ways. So now we’re getting a real idea of what the Trinity is.
Now, all of this is, hopefully, very helpful. It helps us to make sense of this sometimes confusing and difficult belief. But ultimately what we have here are symbols and analogies of what the Trinity is. They are ways of taking something incomprehensible and making them, in some small way, tangible. We can go on and on about theology and philosophy and all manner of thoughts about God, but ultimately what matters is not how we think about God, but how we believe in God. Or more important than that, how do these views of God help deepen our relationship with God and with each other? How do they bring us closer to God? Because that is our primary responsibility: our relationship with God.
How can all this talk about God—how can this thinking about God—then deepen our relationship with God? Our goal is not to understand God: we will never understand God. Our goal is to know God. Our goal is to love God. Our goal is to try to experience God as God wishes to be experienced by us.
Recently I was looking at a sermon I preached several years ago on Trinity Sunday and I am amazed somewhat by how my understanding of the Trinity has changed, partly due to Fatula’s book and by my understanding of Orthodoxy from Ware’s books, but mostly due to my own relationship with God. I have, in these past years, experienced God in a variety of ways; certainly I have experiences God in that tri-personal way in countless times. I have known God as a loving and caring parent, especially when I think about those times when I have felt marginalized by people, when I have felt ostracized and turned away by people.
Once, for example, I was singled out by a person that I, against my better judgment, had to consider my direct superior. This particular person held a grudge against me for several months because I stood up for something I believed in and felt was wrong and manipulative and downright unchristian. As a result of my perceived disloyalty, he made a personal and purposeful attempt to ignore me—to shun me, in effect—and the hard work I did. Of course I felt angry. Of course I felt frustrated and, to be honest, downright hurt. In those moments of anger and frustration at being treated in such a way, I was able to turn to God as a loving parent, a parent who understood what was happening. But what I also saw was that God was also a parent to that other person. It helped somewhat to realize and recognize that God loved me as much as God loved this person. God was as much of a loving, caring and protective parent to him as God was to me.
It wouldn’t hurt any of us to look at each other in this same way—to realize that despite our differences, despite the things about us that drive each other crazy sometimes, we are all children of the same God and we are each loved as fully and as deeply by that God.
I have also known God as Christ—the God who has come to us as one of us—the God who took on the same flesh we wear—who suffered as we suffer and who died as we all will die. I was most aware of God as Christ when I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. It was the first time in my life that I suffered physically. I felt physically sick at times. I hurt physically. In those moments, I was able to take comfort in the fact that God was not some distant deity who could not comprehend what I was going through in my body. God, having taken on flesh like my flesh, knew uniquely what it was to be limited by our bodies. There is something wonderful and holy in that realization.
And I have known the healing and renewal of the Spirit of my life. Having suffered with cancer and knowing the effects it can wreak not only on one’s body, but in one’s spirit and soul as well, I have seen, in a keenly unique way, how the Spirit can come in the wake of something as devastating as cancer, to heal and renew.
So, no matter what the theologians argue about, no matter what those supposedly learned teachers proclaim, ultimately, our understanding of the Trinity needs to be based on our own experience to some extent. The Trinity does not have to be a frustrated aspect of our church and our faith. It should widen and expand our faith life and our understanding and experience of God and, in turn, of each other.
So, today, as you ponder God as Trinity—as you consider how God has worked in your life in a tri-personal way— and who God is in your life, remember how amazing God is in the ways God is revealed to us. God can not be limited or quantified or reduced. God can only be experienced and adored and pondered. And, of course, loved.
John 3.1-17
The other day I was talking to some fellow clergy and they were expressing their apprehension about thus Sunday we call Trinity Sunday. One friend of mine said she approaches the concept of the Trinity must as a place flying into a storm. One can fly around it. One can fly above it. Or one can fly right through it. She decided she was going to fly around it and preach today about Nicodemus.
As you have probably guessed by now, I am the kind of person who would rather fly right through it. And so, today, I am going to face the Trinity. But, I should be honest—for me this concept of God as Trinity isn’t a frightening concept, nor is it a so overwhelming. For me, I don’t see it as some kind of whirling storm to fly through. Instead, I see it rather as the ultimate mystery of mysteries. I see it, as the paramount belief we Christians have. The Trinity. God as Three-in-One—God as Father or Parent or Creator, God as Son or Redeemer and God as Spirit or Sanctifier.
It is difficult to wrap our minds around this concept of God. The questions we priests regularly get is: how can God be three and yet one? How can we, in all honesty, say that we believe in one God when we worship God as three? Aren’t we simply talking about three gods?
Whole Church councils have debated the issue of the Trinity throughout history. The Church actually has split at times over its interpretation of what exactly this Trinity is. Certainly, I struggled with this concept for years. It was only when I was studying for the priesthood, in a systematic theology class I took, that I came across a book that broke down all the barriers for me.
The book, by a nun of the Dominican Order, Mary Ann Fatula, was called The Triune God of Christian Faith. Now that title alone would turn most of us off. Certainly when I saw it on the syllabus, I rolled my eyes and thought to myself: Great, another dry, boring book on theology. But despite its title, this book was amazing. Fatula was wonderful in how she took this very difficult concept of the Trinity and made it accessible at least for me. Some of the points Fatula makes are downright beautiful and poetic in attempting to understand what the Trinity is: She begins with the belief that our very beings are “etched with the signs of Trinitarian origin.” In a sense, we have proof of the Trinity’s existence in our very bodies and minds.
Our psyche, for example, is Trinitarian, made up of three distinct aspects. It’s still one psyche, but it makes its self known in three different ways: memory, knowledge and love. It, in a sense, reflects the relationship the “persons” of the Trinity have with each other.
Another way she attempts to understand the Trinity is that of the relationship of the Lover, of the Beloved and of the Love that unites them. The Lover, our course, is God the Creator, the Parent. The Beloved is Christ. The love that unites them is the Spirit. She stresses that although they are the same, they are still distinct and different in what they do. The Son (Christ) and the Spirit, she explains, are exactly what the Father (Parent) is, without being who the Parent is.
I’ll repeat that: The Son (Christ) and the Spirit, she explains, are exactly what the Father (Parent) is, without being who the Parent is.
Are you still with me? Let’s look at it from another perspective: The Trinity starts with the Incarnation—our belief that Jesus is God made flesh—God made one of us—fully God, fully human.
“Because of Jesus,” Fatula says, “heaven will be joined to earth in our very bodies.”
In other words, because Jesus was both a part of heaven and a part of earth, in Jesus, we find a perfect balance. Heaven and earth have come together. The Holy Spirit, released at the death of Jesus on the cross, is now poured out upon us. Before this death, Fatula says, the Spirit was confined by the “opaque boundaries of Jesus’ human existence.” His pre-resurrection body could only “’contain’ rather than convey the spirit.” At his death, the dam broke, in a sense. The Spirit poured forth into our lives as a lasting presence of God among us. This is certainly what we celebrated last Sunday on Pentecost. Jesus, after he was resurrected, after he ascended bodily into heaven, has left us his presence—his spirit—to remain with us. It was poured out on those disciples in the upper room and it continues to be poured out upon all of us still to this day. This Spirit, according to Fatula, is the Father and the Son’s embrace of us, “their kiss, their joy and their delight lavished upon the earth.” By the Spirit, we come to know both God as our loving Parent and God as our redeemer—we are encircled and drawn close to God.
So, what are talking about here is not three gods, as some people seem to think. What we are talking about it one tri-personal God—a God who cannot be limited in any way, but a God who is able to come to us and be revealed to us in a variety of ways. So now we’re getting a real idea of what the Trinity is.
Now, all of this is, hopefully, very helpful. It helps us to make sense of this sometimes confusing and difficult belief. But ultimately what we have here are symbols and analogies of what the Trinity is. They are ways of taking something incomprehensible and making them, in some small way, tangible. We can go on and on about theology and philosophy and all manner of thoughts about God, but ultimately what matters is not how we think about God, but how we believe in God. Or more important than that, how do these views of God help deepen our relationship with God and with each other? How do they bring us closer to God? Because that is our primary responsibility: our relationship with God.
How can all this talk about God—how can this thinking about God—then deepen our relationship with God? Our goal is not to understand God: we will never understand God. Our goal is to know God. Our goal is to love God. Our goal is to try to experience God as God wishes to be experienced by us.
Recently I was looking at a sermon I preached several years ago on Trinity Sunday and I am amazed somewhat by how my understanding of the Trinity has changed, partly due to Fatula’s book and by my understanding of Orthodoxy from Ware’s books, but mostly due to my own relationship with God. I have, in these past years, experienced God in a variety of ways; certainly I have experiences God in that tri-personal way in countless times. I have known God as a loving and caring parent, especially when I think about those times when I have felt marginalized by people, when I have felt ostracized and turned away by people.
Once, for example, I was singled out by a person that I, against my better judgment, had to consider my direct superior. This particular person held a grudge against me for several months because I stood up for something I believed in and felt was wrong and manipulative and downright unchristian. As a result of my perceived disloyalty, he made a personal and purposeful attempt to ignore me—to shun me, in effect—and the hard work I did. Of course I felt angry. Of course I felt frustrated and, to be honest, downright hurt. In those moments of anger and frustration at being treated in such a way, I was able to turn to God as a loving parent, a parent who understood what was happening. But what I also saw was that God was also a parent to that other person. It helped somewhat to realize and recognize that God loved me as much as God loved this person. God was as much of a loving, caring and protective parent to him as God was to me.
It wouldn’t hurt any of us to look at each other in this same way—to realize that despite our differences, despite the things about us that drive each other crazy sometimes, we are all children of the same God and we are each loved as fully and as deeply by that God.
I have also known God as Christ—the God who has come to us as one of us—the God who took on the same flesh we wear—who suffered as we suffer and who died as we all will die. I was most aware of God as Christ when I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. It was the first time in my life that I suffered physically. I felt physically sick at times. I hurt physically. In those moments, I was able to take comfort in the fact that God was not some distant deity who could not comprehend what I was going through in my body. God, having taken on flesh like my flesh, knew uniquely what it was to be limited by our bodies. There is something wonderful and holy in that realization.
And I have known the healing and renewal of the Spirit of my life. Having suffered with cancer and knowing the effects it can wreak not only on one’s body, but in one’s spirit and soul as well, I have seen, in a keenly unique way, how the Spirit can come in the wake of something as devastating as cancer, to heal and renew.
So, no matter what the theologians argue about, no matter what those supposedly learned teachers proclaim, ultimately, our understanding of the Trinity needs to be based on our own experience to some extent. The Trinity does not have to be a frustrated aspect of our church and our faith. It should widen and expand our faith life and our understanding and experience of God and, in turn, of each other.
So, today, as you ponder God as Trinity—as you consider how God has worked in your life in a tri-personal way— and who God is in your life, remember how amazing God is in the ways God is revealed to us. God can not be limited or quantified or reduced. God can only be experienced and adored and pondered. And, of course, loved.
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