A Trinity Sunday

May 18, 2008

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Let the words of my mouth and the mediations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. In the name of the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

There is kind of a standing joke that priests say to each other about when a particular sermon topic is difficult. They say, "Let the deacon preach on that one. It will be good experience for them."

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday and the sermon topic is the Trinity. The sermon is supposed to explain once and for all what the Trinity is and how God can be three persons in one, all at the same time, while still being just one God. Essentially, we are talking about a Christian Doctrine that is such a paradox that it cannot be truly understood by the limitations of the earthly human mind. It is one of those things that we will not really understand until we are in heaven. So, Fr. Bill, using his prerogative as vicar, assigned me the task of explaining the unexplainable to you this morning. Of course, I’m joking. The fact that he isn’t feeling well has nothing to do with today being Trinity Sunday.

The first thing that I can say about the Doctrine of the Trinity is that, in a complicated way, it teaches that there is still only one God no matter how you slice it. Some times people talk about "my God." For instance, "My God would never do such and such." Well, let me just tell you, since there is only one God, the person that speaks of "my God" is speaking of the same God that everyone else is speaking of, the differences are in our limited perceptions rather than in God. I think that different religions are all just different perceptions of the same and only God. Some perceptions are more tainted than others. But I can certainly say that my perception of God is far from perfect. So I must be tolerant of other’s imperfect perceptions as well.

The next thing that I think about when I think of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. I don’t have much trouble with the Father and the Son. It is the aspect of God that we call the Holy Spirit that seems to be the stumbling point for me. What is the role of Holy Spirit? How does the Holy Spirit relate to the Father and the Son? How can the Holy Spirit be God when God is the Father?

I interpret that to mean that the Holy Spirit is what gives life to all of humanity. I think that if God were to remove His Holy Spirit from the earth, all of humanity would cease to exist. That means that I think that the Holy Spirit dwells within every person, perhaps as part of his or her soul (the eternal part of all of us). And I think that it is the Holy Spirit within us that draws us to God in a way not unlike the way magnets are drawn to each other. I also think that we can squish the Holy Spirit that is within us. I see it kind of like a smoldering ember that we can either fan into a flame or choke off. Fanning the ember into a flame refers to a wind—like the wind of God, the Ruach.

I’ve got this really cool trash burner thing at home. It is a big steel ball with doors on the front and a smoke stack on top. In the middle of the doors are holes with a sliding deal that varies how much air can get through the holes. I could light a fire in this trash burner, close the doors, close the vents, and the fire would mostly smolder and burn terribly. But, when I leave the doors wide open, the little flame that starts the fire quickly becomes an all-consuming inferno. Huge flames shoot out the top of the smoke stack, searing the leaves of the nearby apple tree. For the Holy Spirit to burn strongly within us we need to open up the doors and let God’s ruach blow into our lives.

Of course, I tell you all this because it matches with my own experience. I was baptized at an early age and grew up here at St. Timothy’s. And I think that the Holy Spirit has always been part of my life. If I had never been part of a church until adulthood, if I had always felt a void where the Holy Spirit resides in my soul, if that void were suddenly filled by the Holy Spirit, then my experience would be much different. In that case, I would not talk about the Holy Spirit as a smoldering ember that is always there, but as an agent of God that gives life to the spiritually dead.

A different set of experiences leads to a different expression of a persons Christianity. As obvious as it sounds, this is a new revelation for me. Not everyone needs to experience God that way I do and I don’t need to experience God that we they do. Even though I don’t see eye to eye with some of the other Christian groups, we are all praying in our own way to the same God because there is only one God. The Doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God can be perceived in at least three different ways: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I would say that God is, in reality, perceived in 6 billion different ways. Acting together as a church, it is our business here to work on our individual perceptions of God collectively in a way that encourages growth in faith and understanding.

Amen