First Sunday After Pentecost: Trinity Sunday A; 05.31.26; G. Miles Smith+
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Canticle 13; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20
Trinity Sunday A; 05.31.26; G. Miles Smith+
As you’ve probably noticed by now from our service, today is Trinity Sunday…a Sunday when the Church is called to meditate upon “the glory of the eternal Trinity.” It always falls on the Sunday after the Day of Pentecost when the Church remembers and celebrates God’s gift of the Holy Spirit.
So, Trinity Sunday is timed to remind the Church to put some effort into putting together these sacred mysteries…of Jesus and the Holy Spirit…as did the early Church. And when the early Church put it together, they ended up with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
As you may be aware, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is very complex. It is something of a joke within clergy circles…that on Trinity Sunday…if a rector happens to be blessed with an assistant rector…deacon…or a seminary intern…that you would give them…the “opportunity”…to preach on the Holy Trinity. :) And I am sure that our seminary intern, Matteo, could provide insights that would be more difficult for me since he is already a scholar of Greek (and specific Greek words played a significant role in the early metaphysical thinking on the Trinity). But I did not ask Matteo to preach because he has just come back from an intensive week-long, in-person seminary class. But also because I have always welcomed the opportunity to talk about the Holy Trinity. Even from long ago…I had a sense that this teaching of the Church is… mysterious, wonderful, and essential…despite how difficult it is to understand and talk about.
There is of course a popular perception, especially in modern times, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not essential, but is—and some folks are nicer about it than others—unfathomable…or an unnecessary over-complication and distraction from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet when you read about the history of the early Church’s thinking and debate, it becomes clear that not just a few bishops, but pretty much the entirety of the early Church was invested in finding the best way to speak of the Trinity. It was not an “ivory tower” preoccupation of a few for obscure reasons but an urgent need of the people.
Because the basic language of the Trinity had existed from the very beginning and was already embedded in their scripture, their worship every Sunday, and their experience of God. So, when we look at the New Testament, the Gospel books and Epistles are already using trinitarian language about God even before there is a doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is explicit in the Gospel of Matthew’s text today where Jesus instructs the apostles to make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And the apostle Paul used trinitarian language, such as we heard in his words of blessing to the church in Corinth: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ[1], the love of God [2], and the communion of the Holy Spirit [3] be with all of you.”
In other words, Christians were already speaking of God as Three…and praying in the language of God as Three…from the very beginning…without even having a doctrine yet. That doctrine would eventually come some three hundred years later through the deliberations of the early church…as seen in The Nicene Creed…and many more writings afterwards.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity eventually came about, because the early Church wanted to use their capacity to reason…to try to more fully understand…just what they were saying and praying…as they were already using trinitarian language. And the time came when they discovered more than they had originally thought of in their language. And they believed that in doing so, it was a fulfillment of the promise which Jesus had made to them…that the Holy Spirit would lead them into understanding more of the truth of God (John 16:13).
When we talk about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we are in fact talking about One God…but it is crucial in Christian experience and tradition, that we never cease to talk about the Three. The metaphysics and theology of that are necessarily complex. But what I want to call to your attention today is the practical reality…that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity can give people different entry points…pathways…into a conscious…relationship with God.
Another version of this homily will also be posted online that goes into more detail about this. What I want to highlight is what I think is a crucial practical reality of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity that goes to the heart of everything else.
And it began when Jesus himself called God “Father”. He could have called God the “Creator” or the “Author of the Covenants” or the “God of the Prophets”…all of which he already knew and which were true. But to call God “Father” was a word of such intimacy, trust, and love that it was stunning. And then, just as stunning, was Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to share in his prayer to God: “Our Father…who art in heaven…”
The early Church, from the very beginning learned to speak Jesus’ language of the Father…who loved Jesus…and the Son who loved the Father. And they found themselves invited into the same relationship of the Father and the Son, made possible by the Holy Spirit. In other words, they found themselves invited into the “circle”, you might say, of the divine life of God!
This was totally unexpected, and yet there was the language itself embedded in the New Testament, and in their every Sunday worship, and increasingly in their own experience of God as they gave themselves to the language of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in their prayers. It was an incredible gift, tangibly present in their lives.
They were discovering just how good and trustworthy God really is. And that God the Holy Trinity invites us right into the center…of the divine life of God…where there is a circle of love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…where there is perfect goodness, truth, justice, and mercy. And we are provided a home there…from which we are called to mirror God’s perfect goodness. And we are still provided a home within the Holy Trinity of God when we fail…if we will but return.
This was wonderful. But I also want to acknowledge the hard side of this—and it is not even the metaphysics of Greek trinitarian language…but once we have had some experience within the circle of the divine life of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…then it becomes so painfully clearer that the world is very much…not…like the divine life of the Holy Trinity. Our experience of the world…of so much sin and death…can make us intensely vulnerable…to feeling the extremely baffling disjunction…between the goodness of God…and the deep shadow that falls across the goodness of God’s creation and us. The contrast, once realized, is so severe, that it can make us doubt the truth of the Gospel and our place within the Holy Trinity of God.
But if we take to heart…“the glory of the eternal Trinity”…then we will want to believe…despite so much else…that God is…so much better…so much greater…than we have ever imagined.
