John 3:16-18
Today the Christian world celebrates a
doctrine, not a particular saint or event in Christ's life. The
doctrine of the Trinity sets Christianity apart from all other
religions. But it's very hard to talk about, because our minds are
limited. I cannot help but think of the three persons as – yes –
three persons. In my case an old man with a white beard, a middle
eastern Jew with blond hair and blue eyes, kind of like Robert
Redford with a beard, and a bird. I know that those images have
nothing to do with the reality, but they come. And then the obvious
question is how are these three one? The Trinity is a maddening
doctrine, because I literally can't understand it, and neither can
you, and neither could Thoams Aquinas or Pope Francis. So why have
it? What good is it that we know by faith that there are three
persons in one God, that each peson is not the other, and yet each
person is God, and that God is one? Historically the Church defined
the doctrne of the Trinity because of heresies that popped up about
the relationship of Jesus to God. The doctrine is the answer to many
false ideas that circulated in the early church, that the Fathers of
the Church recognized were wrong. So it must be important. But
understanding how the Trinity can be is not the point. The point of
the doctrine is to remind us of many things.
First, God is not a thing, or as one
theologian said, God is nothing. God is not a being like you and I
are beings. We cannot say here God is and there God is not. And
because of this the arguments of atheists fall flat. You cannot
debate whether God exists or doesn't exist; that debate implies that
God is a being. God told Moses, “I am who am” – I am existence
itself, I am that which everything that exists owes it's existence to
– or as Saint Paul said, “in him we live and move and have our
being”.
The second thing about the Trinity is
that it tells us that God is fundamentally about relationship. The
God of Islam is aloof, and while there are many words in the Koran
that describe him, one that is not used is love. Were the God of
Islam capable of love, according to their theolgians, then in some
way he would share something with humanity, and not be totally other.
For Muslims, the goal of life is to completely submit to Allah's
will, and a certain mindlessness is needed. That's why its easy to
be a suicide bomber; after all, everything that happens is his will,
even you blowing yourself up. But Chrstianity, and indeed Judaism,
insist that God is open, God is love, and love reaches out, love
seeks to grow, to spread itself, to create new lovers, and lovers
have to be capable of free will, and to make such beings is to risk
being rejected. But the whole story in our scriptures is that when
we go astray, God always moves to bring us back – of our own free
will, not by compelling us. Because we are made to love, we are
already entering into this relationship.
A third thing about the Trinity is
that it tells us something about how we are to live. God is creator,
and if we look with loving eyes at the world around us, at the people
we know, we can see traces of God in everything, because he leaves
his signature in everything. Only recently in human history have we
come to understand that the fundamental nature of a proton or a
neutron is three quarks bound together for all time. But we see
God's signature in beauty – and beauty is touches us because we see
something of ourselves there – that's oneness; beauty appeals
because it is real – that's truth;; and beauty is almost by
definition, a good thing; that's goodness. Beauty is the essence of
God, and we are given minds and senses to appreciate this.
God is also Redeemer. We think about
Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, and rising from the dead so
that we can also rise. That's ok, we can think that. But redemption
is much larger than that. Redemption is a pattern, God the Redeemer
shows us how to live, shows us how we are to act in this world.
Jesus said many things but not much that was particularly new. The
thing that sets Jesus apart from other founders of religions is how
he lived. And so it makes sense for us to know Jesus through the
scriptures that were written by those who knew him when he walked the
earth.
And finally, God is Sanctifier.
That's a fancy latinized word, and like many things we talk about, we
probably don't stop to realize that we don't quite understand what it
means. But at the bottom, it means that God is faithful. Not only
does God love the world, and us, into being, not only does he give us
a pattern to follow, but he gets into his own creation to direct it
toward it's ultimate purpose – to become one with him. Saint Paul
tells us that the Holy Spirit prays in us for what we don't even know
we need.
If I truly love someone, I want the
best for them. I want them to have joy on this earth. I want them
to live forever in heaven. If I truly love someone, I will do
everytthing in my power to make that happen. And yet my love is weak
and partial, and my power to bring about what I want for the ones I
love is very limited.
Not so God. The protestant theologian
John Calvin held that because God is all powerful and all knowing, he
selects souls to be saved from the beginning of time, and the rest of
humankind will be damned. His logic is that all deserve damnation
because of sin, and God excepts some from this fate for reasons known
only to him. But the Trinity, the logical consequence of the God who
is love itself, says just the opposite. God does everything he can
do to enfold us all in his heart and enjoy his presence forever; and
only we can choose not to allow this to happen. God loves us so much
that he will never take away our freedom.
So don't think about how the Trinity
can be, one plus one plus one can be one. You can't figure that out.
Think instead about what the Trinity tells us about the nature of
God and how God acts in our own lives, and how we are to live. And
then it becomes clear that how this teaching is the heart of
Christianity.
