John 16:12-15
Today is Trinity Sunday. I was
planning to explain the Trinity to you, but I realized that whatever
I said, it would be heresy. If I said that the Trinity is like a
shamrock – three leaves in one plant, that's the heresy of
partialism. If I say that the Trinity is like water, which can be
ice or liquid or steam, that's trimodalism. If I say that it's like
me being a father, a son and a husband, that's functionalism. If I
say that it's like the Father is the Creator, the Son is the
Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier, I am getting
dangerously close to tritheism. The point is that there is nothing
in all of creation remotely like the Trinity. All we can say for
certain was said by Saint Augustine: The Father is God, the Son is
God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is not the Son or the Spirit,
the Son is not the Father or the Spirit; the Spirit is neither the
Father nor the Son. From the scriptures we can deduce that The
Father generates the Son, and the Father and the Son breathe forth
the Spirit.
But so what? Why do we Christians
have this mind-blowing doctrine about God, when everything would be
so much simpler if we were Muslims or Jews and fogot this three
persons in one God thing? I think most of us kind of think like that
anyway.
But today is also Father's day, so
maybe we can talk about the Trinity from the starting point that
Jesus used: God is always Father. Now you can't be a father without
someone to be a father to. If the very nature of God is Father, then
it follows that there has always been the Son. Now I'm a father, and
many of you are fathers or mothers. Because I'm a father I like to
give things to my children. If I were a perfect father, I'd give
everything to them. We are always trying to pass on the little bit
of wisdom we pick up; The perfect Father can give his Son everything
that he has, which is of course, everything. But since God is
infinite in every respect, giving the Son everything does not make
the Father less. The nature of the Father is to eternally give
everything to the Son, and Jesus said, “.Father, glorify me in your
presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
I can remember being a son. I think I
was a pretty good son in general. A good son or daughter wants to
please his or her parents, especially if they are good parents. In
my case I pleased them by staying out of trouble most of the time and
by getting good grades in school, by obeying them when they asked
something of me. In the course of being a son I gave something of
myself to them; I returned their investment in me, so to speak. Some
of you parents know what I mean; you are proud of your children,
especially when they reflect something of your own good qualities. A
perfect Son of a perfect Father will return himself to the Father; he
will be the image of the Father. Saint Paul tells us, “then
comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father,
when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.” And
Jesus, of course, told Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen
the Father.”
If
God is in His very nature Father, there must be a Son who is in every
respect the equal of the Father, who has existed from the beginning.
But what of the Holy Spirit? Father and Son are human terms, we
understand them. But we assert that the Holy Spirit is also a person,
co-equal to the Father and the Son, equally God. Jesus referred to
Him as “another advocate,” making him equal to Jesus; and Jesus
as we hear today, promises that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the
truth, and not speak on his own … and will take from what is mine
and declare it to you....” The Spirit is the reason you and I and
the universe are here. If there was only Perfect Father and perfect
Son, what else would be needed? But we assert that the relationship
between the Father and the Son is himself a Person, The Father in his
nature wants more children to love; the Son in his nature wants to
please the Father by bringing this about. Their love for each other
spills out, creating the universe and all that is in it. In the very
first book of the Bible, we meet the Spirit hovering over the waters;
and when God says, “let there be light,” the Spirit brings about
light. And in those wonderful lines of the first reading, we meet
the Spirit: “there I was beside him as his craftsman, and I was his
delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the
surface of his earth, and I found delight in the human race.” If
the love between the Father and the Son is infinite, and it is, it
spills out to create all that there is.
The
Father through the Son in the Spirit creates new sons and daughters
to enter into that loving relationship which is the Trinity. We are
made to love. Sin is when we love something we shouldn't, because
God is supposed to be the object of our love. The Father wants you
and I to be his sons and daughters, just as Jesus is. Jesus wants
you and I to be his brothers and sisters. The Spirit is the one who
makes things Holy, which basically means to be consecrated to God.
It is through the Spirit that we become sons and daughters of the
Father, brothers and sisters of the Son, who said, “you have loved
them even as you have loved me.”
The
Trinity is a mystery that we'll never understand at least on this
side of the grave. But we understand Father and we understand Son,
and we understand love, which is the reason for all that is, and is
the Spirit.
I've
put copies of a famous icon on the bulletin boards of the entrances.
The icon is a whole textbook of theology. Rublev in the fourteenth
century recalled the three visitors to Abraham, who promised that
Sarah would bear a son. All are wearing blue garments, the sign of
divinity. The Father, on the left, has an outer garment that seems
transparent; no one has seen the Father. The Son, in the middle, has
a brown garment, representing earth or humanity. The Spirit, on the
right wears green, representing life, representing his creative
power. All three have wings and halos, because they are spiritual;
all three have the same face because they are one. If they can fly,
why do they have walking staffs? Because they accompany us on our
journey. Beneath the bowel is a rectangle. In the original icon,
Rublev had fixed a mirror so that the person observing the icon would
be drawn into the scene, because the very nature of our Trinitarian
God is to invite us into that relationship.
Today
I invite you to experience the Trinity, the God who delights in us.
Perhaps you will experience beauty, or hear a wonderful melody, or
maybe your heart will be warmed by a family get together. The Father
is always trying to delight us, and the Son wants what the Father
wants; and the Spirit is there to bring us joy in obedience to the
Father and the Son. And you and I in those moments are enfolded into
the Trinity.
