Trinity Sunday
John 16
I feel like I have to come clean with you. We tried our best to cover it up and make it seem like nothing big was happening this morning. We got greeters to stand at the doors and smile at you as you came in, act like it was just another Sunday. We got ushers to greet you as you came to the sanctuary, hand you a bulletin and help you find a seat. We made sure the building was clean, the candles were lit, the paraments were clean and crisp. We did our best to get you in here today as if nothing big was happening, but now that you’re here, and they tell me that I have to stand up here and preach, I’m going to come clean with you.
Today is Trinity Sunday. Now that may not sound like a big deal to you, given that it was so easy to come in and find a place. But don’t be fooled by the accessibility of the building, the comfort of the pew, or the lack of a picket line outside keeping you from coming in. This is the most controversial Sunday of the year. Today is seen as an intentional slap in the face to the other faiths of the world, especially within the monotheistic world. Trinity Sunday is controversial because today we claim what we believe about God, knowing that it will enrage every other religion that is close to us. The doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine that you are now in the middle of celebrating, is the most appalling doctrine of the Christian faith—especially according to our Jewish and Muslim neighbors. Of the big three monotheistic religions in the world, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, the two others don’t recognize us as being truly monotheistic. Three in one? That’s absurd! According to others, we don’t even have a legitimate understanding of God. That’s why Osama Bin Laden, in many of his rants against Christians, calls us godless pagans. All because of the Trinity. Jewish scholars say that if we are going to split God up, why stop at three?! Why not worship God, the distant cousin, God the overbearing mother, God the stranger, as all are valid experiences of God. And the Qur’an, written centuries after Christ and the birth of the doctrine of the Trinity, bids its people, “Do not say ‘Three.’ Desist, it will be better for you. God is only one God.” The doctrine of the Trinity is no inconsequential thing.
Furthermore, our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters remind us that semitic wisdom teaches that ultimate reality must be ultimately simple. If it’s real, it is simple. If it’s not simple, it’s not real. And, in the face of that, we profess the Trinity, which is anything but simple. Ever heard anybody try to explain the Trinity? The most profound theologians and preachers stumble, balk and fumble their words in attempting to explain it. St. Augustine took 15 volumes to work it out, and even that work still lacks in its explanation. As the world around us stands with mouths hung open at our audacity at claiming a Triune God, we are here, celebrating the Trinity as though it’s no big deal, as if all of this controversy and confusion is just another Sunday.
That is probably because for us, it is just another Sunday. It is just another Sunday spent with the controversial and confusing Jesus. We’re Christians, after all, and we are Trinitarian because we are Christian. The confusing doctrine of the Trinity isn’t such a problem for us because we follow Jesus. We are used to being confused by God. While other religions hope to simplify God, to understand God, to sum God up, Christians are busy scratching our heads and following this controversial Jew who claims to be God, who claims that he and God are one. If you have ever tried to follow this guy, you know the confusion that immediately sets in. Love your enemies? Give away in order to have? Die in order to live? Life with this God is anything but simple.
Take, for example, our Gospel lesson today. The first followers of Christ are following Jesus when he starts muttering some more complicated clues pointing into the heart of God. “You will see me just a little longer, and then you will not see me, and then, in a little while, you will see me again, because I am going to the Father” Jesus says. Rightly so, the Disciples scratch their heads and ask each other, “did anybody get that?” Indeed, no one did. So Jesus explains it again, “Look, women who give birth are in pain, but then, when they have the child they forget how much of a pain it was. That’s how it will be with you.” Gee, thanks for the clarification, Jesus. Then, for the rest of the chapter, Jesus says things like, “I am going to the Father, so that the Holy Spirit may come.” The disciples never really did get what he was talking about.
In fact, it took the Church about 300 of living with these teaching before we were able to even begin trying to make sense out of it. At the council of Nicea in 325, the church was gathered around a table and someone brought this reading up and said, “Hey, did anybody get that?” And the best thing we could come up with was Trinity. That while God is one, God is also three. God has come to us in three distinct, yet homocentric ways…as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit. One, the council taught, yet three. Three, yet one. Looking at the person of Jesus, Christians know God as divinely complicated. In fact, perhaps that was what Jesus was really teaching us. When you are dealing with Jesus, you are dealing with God, and God is complicated. God is deep, God is obscure. That’s how we know God is real, because we claim that anything real is never really that simple. Reality, well, it’s complicated. Anyone who has had to study microbiology knows that. And anyone who seeks to know the One who created this complicated world must be ready to engage a complicated God.
Which makes me wary of the well marketed Christianity today. For some reason the loudest and most boisterous group of Christians are infatuated with making God simple…easy…accessible. Seeker sensitive services and Ten Simple Step Spirituality books are everywhere. They sell like hotcakes, which is understandable because they are so neat and easy to package. The problem is that I’m just not sure they have much to do with God. “Just read this book, you’ll find your purpose.” “Just show up and you’ll get it.” “Come be a part of this and your whole world will make sense.” Well, not with Trinity. It’s never that easy, it’s much more complicated, and never that accessible. The Triune God is always as close as the breath of life, and yet as inaccessible as God enthroned on high; as close as the Incarnation and as hard to catch as the wind that blows. Wrapping our minds around a God like that takes a lifetime, even an eternity. As CS Lewis said, “Any God who is completely understandable is no God at all.”
Take, for example, the indescribable glimpse the prophet Isaiah got in our Old Testament lesson for today. Isaiah is raptured into a glorious glimpse of God and in trying to describe it, it comes out fantastic, almost non-sensical. “There were chariots, and fire, and some creatures with wings. They covered themselves with wings, but they also flew, so they must have had lots of wings. At any rate, whatever I saw, they were singing to God in the highest. I don’t get it,” says the prophet “but it got me! All I could says was, here I am, send me.”
That sounds a lot like God. That sounds a lot like the same God who created the world, who sent his Son and redeemed us, who sends his Spirit and sustains us. That sounds a lot like the same God who is One and Three. Majestic, powerful, complicated. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thee persons, one God. One God, three persons.
Get it? No? Good.
