Trinity Sunday 2018

Matthew 28:16 – 20

I have a cousin who says that she is spiritual but not religious. I don't know quite what that means. I do suspect that she, like many other people today, find that they cannot believe in the God they imagine religion proclaims, but nevertheless intuit that there is something more than the material world. The word “spiritual” means that I believe there is something beyond what I can touch, feel, hear, see, or smell. The word “religious” seems to imply that there is a set of doctrines and practices that characterize those who adhere to the religion.

And there are many people today who fall into this category: spiritual but not religious. But being this way is a dead end. If there is something beyond the material world, so what? Does it have anything to do with how I live? Does it pertain to life after death? Does it impact on how I treat other people? Does is give me a direction in which to shape my own life? People who are spiritual but not religious have to start from scratch. They are missing out on all the great thinkers of the past who have traveled the same road.

One of the things many “spiritual but not religious” people have problems with is the concept of God. And I don't blame them. All of us have a picture in our minds of God – usually an old man with a long white beard. He may be a loving father or a vindictive punishing sort. Some of us call him the “Old Testament” God and we imagine this is the God of the Jews. But that simply means that we don't know the Old Testament very well, because that's where Jesus got his ideas about God.

Or we may see Jesus as God, and that's fine. After all, that's kind of an essential part of Christianity. Very few people who claim to follow Christ would deny that He is God. After all, rising from the dead is a pretty convincing demonstration if the miracles don't do it for you. But if Jesus is God why does he keep referring to God as His Father? Are Jesus and the Father different?

And in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, especially those of Saint Paul, It's pretty obvious that the early Christians experienced the presence of a person who helped them pray, who gave them courage, who was there when they preached; and they identified this presence with God, because Jesus had made it clear that he would send another advocate, that he would give his disciples the Holy Spirit who would be his spirit, the spirit who would live in the heart of the Church. And in the Hebrew scriptures, God breathes his spirit into creation, into the prophets, into Moses and the leaders of the people during the Exodus. Somehow the Spirit is God.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity. We can't explain this concept. If we try to explain the Trinity, we soon come to the paradox, the Spaghetti Monster in the sky. Once we explain the Trinity, we lost sight of God and set up an idol.

The Trinity is to be contemplated, not explained. It is to be looked upon, not analyzed. Like a great work of art that is never exhausted, that's kind of like the Trinity.

If a Muslim says that God is One, we Christians agree. If a Hindu says that God is in some way many, we Christians agree. God is one and God is a community.

If our Pentecostal brothers and sisters tell us that God moves among His people working signs and wonders, we have no problem with that, that's after all the promise of the Holy Spirit. If our Orthodox friends point out the complete otherness of God, the holiness which is unapproachable, we agree. And if our brother Christians tell us that God became a human being, we have no problem; in fact, we tell them that God became bread and wine, so that we could actually feed on him, because he cares so much for us that he wants to give our bodies and our souls his own person. He wants us the be like him, in fact he wants us to become him.

Don't try to analyze the Trinity. Don't be taken in by that book, “The Shack” which describes the three persons. But don't be taken in by Thomas Aquinas, either, whose formulation of the Trinity can't help but put images in our minds that make us think of God as three beings. The thing to remember is that whatever you say about God is probably mostly wrong. We who are creatures limited by time and space cannot fathom the source of all that is, the one for whom there is no time or space. Our minds just aren't equipped. All we can do is stand in wonder.

And that's enough. It's enough for us to pick out little things from the Trinity to apply to our own lives. The Trinity runs on love, and so should we. To the extent that we love, we share in the most powerful force there is. The Trinity is endlessly fruitful; and so should we be. Love, after all, is just a word unless it bears fruit, unless it changes something for the better. The Trinity makes the Universe out of Love, we can at least help each other to draw closer to Love. The Trinity tells us that true power lies in emptying oneself out. The characteristic common to the three persons is complete self-giving. That is what Jesus showed us about God on the Cross. The Trinity tells us that when persons come together to accomplish something they desire, there is more power than when someone tries to do something alone. And each person of the Trinity desires exactly what the others desire; they are of one mind. And we see how powerful were the apostles when they began the church. The Acts of the Apostles talks about the early Christians being of one mind, sharing all things.

So my cousin, who is spiritual but not religious, probably does not believe in a personal God. But we don't either; we believe in a three-personal God, a God who to our poor human minds is a God of utter simplicity and at the same time a God of contradictions and complexity. In short, a God who cannot be described in words. And now and then when we are well rested and up to the task, we should stand in awe of the Trinity and ask our God to reveal a little bit more of himself to us, not to satisfy our curiosity, but to show us something to imitate – because we are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.