John
16:12-15 Trinity
Sunday
A
great Catholic theologian named Karl Rahner once speculated, with sadness, that
if we ever dropped the whole doctrine of the Trinity, many Christians would be
entirely unaffected. It’s disheartening, to say the least, to think that one of
the core beliefs of the Christian Church may be largely irrelevant to many of
the Church’s members. I would never ask for a show of hands, but I wonder how
people in our own congregation feel about this. Does the Trinity have an impact
on our daily life and spirituality? Or are we, in effect, a bunch of
Unitarians? Certainly I have listened to people treat the Trinity as a problem
and a nuisance, something to be avoided or maybe just explained away. Instead
of all this talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, why can’t we just talk
about God and be done with it?
Well,
for one thing, the New Testament in general and Jesus in particular won’t let
us. Trinitarian language abounds: we see it in both our Epistle and our Gospel
today. Paul talks about experiencing the peace of God through Jesus Christ, and
affirms that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit. And Jesus continually talks about his Father, as he does today, while
also promising his followers that the Spirit will come and guide them. And our
Prayer Book liturgy, reflecting Scripture, is filled with Trinitarian language
as well: we baptize in the name of the Trinity; we pray to the Father through
Jesus in the power of the Spirit; we continually make reference to three
different Persons. Wouldn’t it be easier, wouldn’t be simpler, if we just
talked about God and left out all this Father, Son, Spirit talk?
Well,
it might be easier, I don’t know. But it would not be faithful, and it would
not be true. And when all is said and done, the Trinity is not a problem to
solve or a puzzle to figure out: it is a witness to the Truth. All human
language about God is limited and metaphorical, but the heart of the Christian
witness is that God is many and God is one. Ultimate Reality is diverse and it
is unified. And in a fractured and divided world, our affirmation of God as
Trinity is vital and relevant.
God’s
love of diversity is apparent to anyone who is even half awake. Creation
practically screams diversity, from the sands of the Sahara to the jungles of
Sumatra. Scientists estimate that there some 8.7 million different species of
life on earth, including 350,000 different kinds of beetles alone! And our own
species, homo sapiens, by itself
exhibits great diversity: different cultures, different practices, different
languages — about 6,500 languages spoken right now on Earth. And every
psychological tool from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to the Enneagram
reveals a rich variety of temperaments and personalities. Everywhere we look,
we cannot help but encounter diversity.
And
yet there is this deep underlying unity to everything. All life is
interdependent, forming one vast ecosystem which encompasses every form of life
on one planet. And for all our diversity as people, we are all human. Since
creation is the first revelation of God, and human beings are made in God’s
image, we can affirm with awe that everything reflects God as Trinity, many and
one, diverse and unified. This is the very nature of God reflected in the very
nature of reality.
The
Bible does not try to explain this, but simply affirms it and rejoices in it,
from the very first chapters of Genesis where the one God uses the plural
pronouns “us” and “our.” Jesus prays to his Father and breathes the Spirit,
different from them and yet one with them. In First Corinthians, Paul affirms
that people possess a wide variety of gifts, but all gifts come from the one
Spirit; we are all distinct members of one Body. And throughout the New
Testament, the great mystery resonates: we are not Christ, but it is Christ who
lives in us — our spirit is the Holy Spirit. We are not God, but we are one
with God.
And
for God’s sake, let’s stop trying to explain this away or make logical sense
out of it. Let’s instead embrace it and live it. Because, unfortunately,
tribalism rules the day. Too many people do not rejoice in diversity and too
many people do not see the essential unity of all things. We divide off into
our own camps and factions, too often preferring to be with people who look
like us, talk like us, vote like us, enjoy the same foods as us, root for the
same teams as us. Clearly, many people are bothered by or afraid of
differences. It is too easy to demonize the Other. And that is a perennial
human problem: we see it around the world, in every nation, in every religion.
Jesus encountered it in his earthly ministry: one of the reasons they killed
him is that he kept loving others who were different, who didn’t belong to the
right group. I’m not sure that he would fare much better today.
But
because of him, we are here today affirming that Ultimate Reality is
beautifully diverse and essentially one. Or as our collect puts it, we are
acknowledging the glory of the Trinity while worshiping the Unity. And since
all good theology should have a direct impact on our daily lives, our
affirmation of God as Trinity should set us free to perceive God in all the
rich diversity of God’s world. We should expect to encounter God not just in
church but in a summer breeze or a moonlit night or a crowded elevator. And we
should expect to see God not only in our closest friends, but even in our
fiercest opponents. A dear friend of mine, who has since died, used to keep a
terrible photo on his refrigerator. It was taken during a skirmish between
Israeli and Palestinian forces, but the photo is of a non-combatant, a father
wailing over the body of his little boy who had just been shot and killed in
the crossfire. The photo is seared into my memory, and in the agony of that
man’s face I did not see a Jew or a Palestinian: I saw a human.
We
are all created by a Triune God and we all belong to that God and to each
other. We are many and we are one. The Church of Jesus Christ is at its best
when we offer witness to that great truth. The goal is not to eliminate all
differences, but to embrace differences and encounter the unity that binds us
all together, a unity of love whose source is a perfect Community we call
Father, Son, and Spirit — Creator, Christ, and Sanctifier: three Persons, One
God. One Love.
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