Trinity Sunday, 04/06/2023.
Isaiah 40:12-17, 27-end
[2 Corinthians 13:11-13]
Matthew 28:16-20
It’s Trinity Sunday. There’s a
joke. An old joke, a stale joke maybe. At least some of you will have heard it
before. It says that a priest, a lovely pastor but not intellectually
gifted, got into the pulpit on Trinity
Sunday, and said:
“In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Trinity!
The Trinity is a mystery!
In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Well, that was more laughter than I
was expecting. I flagged it up as something of a stale joke. In fact, while I
am all for comedy, I go further: it is a joke I hate.
I hate the idea - widespread though
it be – that the doctrine of the Trinity is something for intellectuals only.
I hate the idea – widespread though
it be – that the doctrine of the Trinity is something for the obsessives, the
keenies only.
I hate the idea – widespread though
it be – most of all I hate the idea that the doctrine of the Trinity is
abstract.
So yesterday morning I wrote a
sermon, setting out why I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is not abstract.
But! But it did not flow. (And it if doesn’t flow for me, it surely cannot flow
for you.) I pondered prayerfully why. It came to me it was because all the time
I was trying to make some kind of argument about how the doctrine is not
abstract, I was of course engaging with the idea that the doctrine is abstract.
So it did not work as a sermon. A sermon proclaims the gospel - the joy, the
simplicity, and the compassion of the Holy Gospel. And nothing else.
We need to take a step back. We need
to admit that, somehow, we find that for us in the West it has become natural
to think of the doctrine of the Trinity as an abstraction for intellectuals or
for keenies. We feel in our bones – we don’t need to articulate it, we feel it
in our bones – that it does not impact upon our lives.
So let us take ourselves away for a
moment from the West. Let us imagine ourselves in the East, in the world where
Eastern Orthodoxy is the air we breathe. You may think of Russia or Ukraine (though
of course you may think of those for not-good reasons). You may though also
think of Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Greece or Cyrpus. What do we find?
First, we find that the service is long.
There is no embarrassment about this. The idea is that worship is not something
you “fit in” to your schedule. Worship takes you into heaven. That is a journey
that cannot be rushed. Consider this prayer, as the gifts of bread and wine are
brought in:
We who in a mystery represent the Cherubim
and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the live-giving Trinity,
let us now lay aside all the cares of this world,
that we may receive the King of all,
who comes invisibly, escorted by the angelic hosts.
There is practical wisdom here.
Strange as it may seem, it takes time for us (for most of us) to be willing to lay
aside all the cares of this world.
Second, there is much repetition.
There is no embarrassment about this. There is no reason to think the journey
to heaven is a simple line from A and B. And surely we don’t just think of God
as holy, we experience God as holy, as we repeat:
Holy
God
Holy,
strong
Holy
and immortal,
have mercy upon us.
Holy God
Holy,
strong
Holy
and immortal,
have mercy upon us.
Holy God
Holy,
strong
Holy
and immortal,
have mercy upon us.
There is practical wisdom here. Our journey
through this life itself is not a straight line either. It is more like a spiral.
We revisit the same themes, over and over, only from a different perspective.
Third, we find that every word, or
almost every word, is not spoken but chanted. There is no embarrassment
about this. The idea here is that worship is not about propositions that we analyse
and discuss, and then agree or disagree with. Worship is more like making a
work of art. It involves imagination and memory, always. There is practical
wisdom here. Remember how much easier it is to remember a song than words
merely spoken.
Fourth, this is likely to apply to
the Creed itself. The Creed may be said,
but is likely to be chanted – this because the Creed too is not really
about propositions, that we might find in mathematics or logic. In the service
in Greek, the Creed is called To Symbolon tes Pisteos. “The
symbol of faith.”
Symbol. So you see it really isn’t:
“Here are the core sentences about
what we have worked out with our analyses of God”.
It is much more:
“Here we bring together our wisest
counsel about who it is we trust”.
And, in the Creed-Symbol, the Greek Pisteuo
eis (“I believe in”) means less:
“My belief-system deduces that”
and more:
“I place my trust in…”
I place my trust in the
Father, who…
I place my trust in the
Son, who…
I place my trust in the
Spirit, who…
This is our Creed-Symbol too (it’s
the same Creed).[1] We
use the word “Creed”, which comes from the Latin, credo, “I believe”. And
some say that credo comes from two words, cor, do. This means it
means: “I give my heart to”. And there is wisdom here. If you
come to church for purely cultural reasons, you are welcome and you always will
be. But if you come here for more, I suggest it is to learn to place your trust
where your trust truly belongs, to give your heart to whom you can trust
utterly.
And, fifth, in the service, the
Creed-Symbol has its own introduction. It is a dialogue between priest
or deacon and people. It goes like this.
[Priest:] Peace to all!
[People:] And to your Spirit!
[Deacon:] Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess:
[People:] Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinity consubstantial and
undivided.
And there is wisdom here. Placing our
trust in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, only makes sense if we already hope or
want to be committed to loving one another. And, indeed, the other way round is
as true: placing our trust in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is what enables us
to love one another - love being more than a feeling, love being an entire
disposition.
“Let us love one another, that
with one mind we may confess /
Father, Son and Holy Spirit…”
Eastern Orthodoxy is perhaps not for
everyone. I get that. So let us return to the West. I do want to say that I
believe this understanding is deeply biblical. If I were to choose one
Bible verse to show the doctrine of the Trinity within the Bible, in all
candour, it would not be any of our readings today. It would be the gloriously
simply monosyllabic: “God is love”. That’s from 1 John 4:8.
Remember that, for Christians, when
we meet with God, we really meet with God. We don’t meet with an idea of God.
We don’t meet with an idea from God. We do not meet God pretending to have such
and such a nature, because that is what God considers edifying for creatures. No.
It is authentically God whom we meet, and who calls us into intimacy with God.
And this means – this must mean - that God is love, even before creation, even
outside of creation. God is love, and therefore God is relationship, in
Godself.
And, I say again, this is not an
abstract idea. It is not a fact we might stumble on, which leaves us
unaffected. Rather, this is an invitation.
Here some more from 1 John [4:7f]:
“Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows
God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
Blessed Feast. Amen.
[1] I
am naturally aware of the Filioque exception, but thought it would deflect
from the main line to mention this.
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