"Love: The Essence of the Trinity"

 

Even though I had a seminarian assigned to us, and he is still serving at the altar with me on Sundays, I still went ahead and preached on Trinity Sunday.

The joke is that Trinity Sunday is one of those sermons that the senior most priest punts on and assigns to the younger associate. Nobody really wants to tackle the doctrine of the Trinity in a sermon. And I'm not sure how many in the congregation are that interested. 

However, it is billed as "Trinity" Sunday; so to say nothing would also seem a little strange. 

As I told one of our members, since I am part-time and therefore don't really have the time to do all the weekly classes and other activities normally done by the priest, I use my preaching time to drop in some teaching. That's what I did here with this sermon. 

And the direction in which I moved gave me a chance to say, once more, an important truism about God in this particular moment in the life of the less-than-United States of America. See if you catch it.

Texts: Gen. 1:1-2:4a, BCP

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If we crack open the Bible…and go looking for an entry titled “The Holy Trinity,” we won’t find anything.

Yes, we find words about God the Father.

We know Jesus as the Son of God.

And just last week, we were celebrating the God the Holy Spirit.

Even though our Gospel names these three…there’s nothing that calls them the “Holy Trinity.”

Open the Book of Common Prayer…and we find in the historical documents in the back of the book that Article One of the 39 Articles adopted by the General Convention of 18-01 tells us:

“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and the Preserver of all things both visible and invisible.  And in unity of this Godhead is three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

Or there’s the Creed of Athanasius…which goes to great lengths to outline the Trinity…as “one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost…but this Godhead is all one…the Glory equal…the Majesty co-eternal.”

I’ve heard sermons…and I’m sure you have too…where a preacher attempts to take all that language and put it into a visual or some concrete concept.

The Holy Trinity is like a three-leaf clover.

The Holy Trinity is like water…which can be liquid, or frozen, or vapor.

The Holy Trinity is like the sun…star…light…and heat.

All this to attempt to explain and defend a doctrine first articulated by the early church father Tertullian who minted the expression of the Trinity as God in Three Persons.

Tertullian was defending the Chrisitan understanding of God’s three-fold nature against those who insisted that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were all the same one person without distinction in their form.

Tertullian insisted that God was one with three distinctions…but what the three shared was the same one essence.

His writings on the Trinity would later become the basis for the Council at Nicaea developing the credal statement that we still say to this day.

That’s a very quick lesson on church history and where to find the Holy Trinity on paper.

Because we humans seem invested in certainty…and rationality.

But really… all of these are noble attempts to intellectualize…synthesize…and boxed-in something that ultimately can’t be “understood” in that way.

To understand the Holy Trinity comes down to how we experience and relate to God…as that one Essence:

And that one essence is Love.

Love…as the hymn writer Benjamin Webb says, “O love…how deep…how broad…how high.”

We can see that when we look at the Genesis reading from this morning with this first creation story.

And yes—we have two: this one and the one that follows with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

We hear in this version:

In the beginning…when things were all an indistinguishable mish-mash of stuff…God looked at this chaos and began… speaking.

Not with violent words…or angry commands…or even with force.

God speaks…God breathes out in quiet…gentle…tones “Let this happen.”

Let there be light and dark.

Let there be sky and sea.

Let there be sun and moon and stars.

Let there be fruits and plants.

With each breath…with each invitation…all fell into place…as one beautiful masterpiece.

C.S. Lewis in “The Magician’s Nephew” imagined this Genesis moment as a song that his God character…the lion Aslan…sings creation into existence.

Again…not with some loud clanging noises or even an especially melodious tune.

But a mostly wordless song of various tones…deep bass notes that seem to come from unknown depths…causing lush fields of grass that covered the ground and ran up the mountains…trees emerging from the earth and eventually animals and two-legged creatures appearing.

A different musical imagination of “the beginning.”

As the Genesis writer describes this work of creation…we can see God forming this world in an intentional and interdependent way.

First make the habitat…the seas…the sky…the land with vegetation.

Now bring about the life forms…sea creatures and birds…wild animals.

Finally…God makes human beings.

All of these dependent on each other…living in relationship to each other.

And it was the creation of humanity where our church father Tertullian said he could find the scriptural evidence of the Trinity.

The text…even in Hebrew…has God using a plural pronoun.

“Let us make humankind in our image…according to our likeness.”

God did not say “Let me do this and make them in my likeness.”

It’s us… and our…God the Three Persons…interdependent and in relationship.

They were there and they made humanity in the image of them.

And I don’t think that necessarily meant just bodies with faces…arms…and legs.

This creation of humankind…you and me…were made in the likeness of God…meaning we were created in God’s essence…from Love….out of Love…and for the purposes of Love…to Love.

To care for all these creatures.

Enjoy and nurture this planet with its lands and seas with the same love and support that brought us and all of creation into being in the first place.

Do this with Love for that Love that so loved the world that that same Love sent the Son into the world to live as one of us…give us a down-to-earth…incarnate…vision and understanding of Love…and to show us that no powers or principalities can defeat those who put their faith and trust in Love.

And this Love remains with us…as the breath in our bodies and that Spirit wind at our backs…so that we have the means to extend this Love to each other.

Not just the people who are sitting here in this room.

Treat everyone we encounter…with love…dignity…and respect.

Because this Love isn’t exclusionary.

No one nation or people are held as better than or more important to God.

This Love is universal…to those who believe and even those who don’t…and the ones who doubt.

It’s there for all…with no asterisk or black-out dates.

Love…this three-fold Love… is with us always…seeking relationship with us.

As we go out into the world…may we remember that this essence of Love which is in us…with us…and around us…is the way…the truth…and the life that we now share with others.

In the name of our Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

Wisdom and the Trinity

 

No Kings demonstration at the Florida Capitol June 14, 2025. Photo by Bob O'Lary

This was the sermon that finally came to me...knowing that I would be preaching the day after the country had...once again...been in a position of having to choose sides. Were we going to celebrate the birthday of our current Commander-in-Chief who decided to make a celebration of the Army's 250th year all about him...even though he has never served in any branch of the military and avoided Vietnam by getting a medical excuse (he said he had bone spurs).

Or were we going to see more people turn out in protest of this leader who has had the audacity to put out images of himself as King Donald?

All this while his regime has stepped up arrests and harassments of Latinas/os going to their jobs at Home Depot and such in Los Angeles. Against the wishes of the Governor of California and the mayor of LA, the president has federalized the CA National Guard and sent thousands of troops to this major metropolitan city to do what? They're not really sure except to stand guard outside a federal building. His Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, actually had the gall to say that they were there to "liberate" LA from "socialism." And when CA U.S. Senator Alex Padilla attempted to ask her a question at her press conference, ICE officers grabbed him, shoved him out the door into the hallway, forced him to his knees and handcuffed him. 

All for attempting to ask a question while not wearing a suit.

We're in horrifying times.

And we need Wisdom to come...and come quickly. 

Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Rom. 5:1-5

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I want us to hear these words again…

Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;

beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:

"To you, O people, I call,and my cry is to all that live.”—(Proverbs 8:1-4)

 

We call this day “Trinity Sunday”….a time to rejoice and celebrate those three ways in which we understand and experience the Holy One: God the Father…God the Son…God the Holy Spirit.

In the New Zealand Prayer Book…the Trinity is described as “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, and Life-giver.”

Our former presiding bishop…Michael Curry…often invoked the “loving, liberating, and life-giving God.”

All of these are accurate ways in which we find words to express our understanding of God that was put together by fourth-century theologians as they grappled with how to talk about the experience of God…and the way God shows up in our lives.

God as the nurturing Father.

God as the Son who lived and died as one of us.

God as the Holy Spirit that keeps us moving forward in that Love that comes from the Father and through the example of the Son.

But there is that special element that makes these three truly One.

It’s that common thread…knitting and weaving them all together.

And that is Sophia: Wisdom.

We heard in our passage today from Proverbs that this Wisdom has been with our Trinity from the very outset of all time…manner…and place.

She was at play…working alongside the Creator…rejoicing in all that was being formed out of the depths of the oceans and the rocks of the mountains.

She took great pleasure in being part of the breath of creation that brought forth the human race.

She is the drumbeat…the bass note…to everything we seek when we turn to God for blessing and assurance as we make our way through this world.

Wisdom…we often pray…will be the guide for anyone who takes on the mantle of leadership…whether its in the church…or in secular society.

Because Wisdom has a way of keeping us balanced without malice or a need for dominance…and cool under the pressures that always seem to come at us.

Our biblical ancestor Solomon…who is credited with many of the sayings in the Book of Proverbs…prayed for wisdom when he became the king upon the death of his father David.

Indeed…he needed Wisdom when he had to settle the dispute between two women warring over who was the true mother of a baby (1 Kings 3:16-28).

Wisdom was there with Jesus in every moment that he faced tests of his ministry…and attempts to trap him into betraying his mission of bringing people back into closer relationship with the God and Father of Love.

And Wisdom was with the apostles as they began their journeys to take the Gospel out…beyond Jerusalem…building this movement that would then become the fire in the belly of so many others throughout the centuries. She was that element…that Spirit of Truth… that Jesus says will guide his followers into all truth (John 16:13).

She is the very essence of God the Holy Spirit…our sustainer in the midst of the challenges we face.

Wisdom is still with us today….making herself a presence in our lives in subtle ways…from the heights…to the crossroads…and at the borders of our lives.

The professor and theologian Robert Alter looked at this passage about Wisdom and remarked…”this is a celebration of her powers: her gift of plain and accessible discourse, the preciousness of her words, her indispensability as a guide to all who govern and the material benefits she conveys to her followers.”

Thanks be to God for that Wisdom…that basic necessity…as one of the cornerstones of our faith!

We need her presence now as much as the early followers of Jesus needed her in their time of social upheaval and uncertainty.

That brings me to the reading we heard this morning from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

The reading we have as translated by the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible talks about us “boasting in our sufferings” and that through our “sufferings” we gain endurance.

The Common English Bible translates the Greek a little differently.

Instead of “boasting in our suffering”…the C-E-B talks of us taking “pride in our problems.”

And this isn’t “pride” in that sense of feeling “good” or even “joyful” about having problems.

Instead…what Paul is telling this new church in Rome…a church in the heart of the very Empire that is attempting to crush the Jesus movement…is to see their oppressor…and this resistance to love for the reality that it is.

Yes…the Empire is against you.

Yes…the Empire is denying you the dignity and respect that you deserve.

But Paul wanted the church to then dig deeper…and realize that for every attempt the Empire makes to disrupt and destroy this Jesus movement…they will rise.

The spirit of truth…which is the spirit of Love…poured into their hearts…beating with that Wisdom…will be with them…lighting their way through the fog that wants to frighten them into silence.

The trouble created by those who oppose the work of Love will not win.

It won’t win because Love does not give up or surrender.

No bullies or tyrants can defeat them as long as they remain fueled by the Wisdom of Love.

What a message for us to be hearing now in the 21^st century America!

These words of Paul are still true today.

The troubles we are facing in this country are real…fueled by those who desire to keep us divided when God’s call is for us to be united. 

But even as we see this reality…these efforts to make us afraid…we can tap into our faith because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:4-5).

That is the alternative reality and the promise made to us through God the Father…the Son…and the Holy Spirit.

That is the Wisdom that runs through all our being as we look for ways to continue serving our neighbors here in Lowndes County and throughout this region.

Carry that hope…that love…into this week.

Stay the course… and meet the challenges before us with wisdom and love.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Three-in-One Experience: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

 

I have never been lucky enough to pass off preaching on Trinity Sunday to someone else. And I really don't like the expectation that the sermon needs to "explain" the Trinity with some wonderful metaphor. Most metaphors I've heard often lead to arguments over their inherit heresy. And, despite what was taught in my systematic theology class in seminary, I firmly believe the only way to know anything about the nature of the Trinity is to have an experience of it...and to understand that God can manifest as God a Father/Creator...or God the Son/Redeemer.....or God the Holy Spirit/Sustainer. One God can and is all that. What's been your experience?

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8: 12-17, John 3: 1-17 

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Trinity Sunday: one of the most exasperating Sundays of the church lectionary calendar.

It’s not that I don’t like the Trinty. I do.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the Trinity. I do.

But the Trinity…this concept of “God in Three Persons”… is not actually in the Scriptures in so many words.

There’s no set passage assigned for this Sunday…an old standard that one can rely upon.

No.

So what the heck do we mean by this God…who is Father…Son…and Holy Spirit…(or God the Creator…Redeemer…and Sustainer…whichever way you prefer to look at it)?

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an understanding that came out of the minds of early church theologians…

Primarily a man named Tertullian.

He lived during the 2^nd Century at a time when Christianity was facing many pressures from what is called Gnosticism.

There were two schools of Gnosticism: those who believed Jesus was fully human but not really of God…and those who thought he was not ever human but more of some sort of ethereal Godly presence who only looked human.

It took Tertullian… a Latin theologian and Christian author from Carthage… to declare that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—were all co-equal persons of one substance…firmly stating that Jesus was both human and divine.

The Holy Spirit…which… when we look at the book of Genesis was the wind moving over the waters of chaos…was with God then…and has always been with God…and was also infused in the body of Jesus.

That doctrine was later accepted by the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

And that’s where we have the language that we now know as the Nicene Creed…and will be reciting as we do every Sunday.

So…there’s your two-minute history of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

That is not end of this sermon.

This is the Sunday in the church year where priests and deacons…and especially aspiring seminarians…have been called upon to preach a sermon to “explain” the Holy Trinity.

But honestly, I think that expectation is a clever ego trap.

I believe that “explaining” the Trinity will only lead to more confusion as we drive ourselves over the cliff of multiple half-baked metaphors…attempting to intellectualize it.

For me…the only way to truly understand this idea of One God being a unified threesome is through our experiences of God showing up in our lives in three co-equal persons.

God has a way of being a loving parent…and a big brother…a loyal friend and advocate…and that inner voice or that jolt of energy that helps us take a stand or hold ourselves together in a crisis.

How God’s multifaceted self is manifested for each of us may depend upon the time…place and need.

But God is there…has been there…and will keep being there into the future.

So what is an experience of this God like for us?

 

Everyone here probably has their own answer to that question.

Certainly one version can be found in the story we heard this morning from the prophet Isaiah.

The awesomeness of Isaiah’s encounter feels so overwhelming.

God has no face…none at least that we can see.

The hem of God’s robe is so great it fills the entire room.

Even the seraphs…winged snake-like creatures…are covering their eyes…in fear and amazement.

Isaiah…he’s so terrified…

God’s so huge.

He’s so small.

And…in the thinking of his days…humans can’t look at God and live.

He’s stumbling and bumbling about his unworthiness… when one of the seraphs…gaining enough composure…takes a hot coal to Isaiah’s lips.

A bit extreme? Yes.

But this is the image of preparing a prophet to quit trembling.

There’s no more time for nonsense about being unworthy.

God needs Isaiah to go speak some hard truths to his people…truths they won’t hear or see or understand.

God needs a human mouthpiece…one who can channel a message of salvation to a nation engaged in what seemed like an insurmountable war.

We hear God asking…” Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”

And Isaiah…who only moments earlier was a puddle of worry and doubt…pipes up:

“Here am I; send me.”

This story is talked about as the “Isaiah Call Story,” the moment when Isaiah is brought into God’s commission.

It’s one of many call stories we’re familiar with from the Bible: Moses is beckoned to take off his sandals and stand before a bush that is burning but is not consumed.

David is simply taking care of sheep and not looking to lead anything when he gets summoned inside and Samuel hears God say, “That’s the one! This is the new King of Israel”

My personal favorite is Jonah—the one who does everything…including getting swallowed by a giant fish…to avoid having to go speak hard truths to the people of Nineveh. I always enjoy that when the Ninevehites take his warnings seriously…Jonah’s response is to go off pouting and sulking because he had wanted God to smite his enemies.

Tough to know that God actually does love the ones we don’t like.

God seeking us out…calling to us to be the hands…feet…and voices needed in our world doesn’t always come in such amazing and vivid signs as what Isaiah experienced.

And our response may not even be as immediate and confident as to say, “Here I am; send me.”

Sometimes…life is giving us so many challenges that we cry out, “Abba, Father, help me!”

We turn to God…seeking that parent-like source of support.

We may find that our relationship with God feels like an impossible puzzle or a strange maze that we keep wandering and bumping into walls. A little bit like Nicodemus trying to understand what Jesus was revealing to him about the nature of God.

It takes some time…but by the end of John’s Gospel…Nicodemus joined Joseph of Arimathea…revealing himself to be one who had come to understand Jesus and was ready to take up his own cross and follow.

There’s no telling how the Trinity will show up to shake us up.

But when it does come into our lives…it does change us…and open us to see the work of God in the world more broadly.

Our task is to trust and be OK with those changes…giving ourselves permission to feel some trepidation while knowing that this Holy Trinity is ready to meet us in that fearful place with the love of a doting father…the loyalty of a brother-son…and the inner voice of a spirit telling us it’s going to be OK to say, “Here am I; send me.”

In the name of God…F/S/HS.