The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
A Priest asked one of the confirmands, “What is the Trinity?” A young lady said in a weak voice, “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” “I can’t understand you,” said the priest. The young lady replied, “You’re not supposed to; it is a mystery.” She learned her lessons well, didn’t she?
Today is Trinity Sunday, marking the beginning of the second half of the Church Year. Trinity Sunday puts things in perspective. During the first half of the year, Sunday after Sunday, we focused on the earthly life of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Now, all that we have experienced is wrapped up and put within the context of the Godhead, God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
A fully developed doctrine of the Trinity is not found in Holy Scripture. It took a few hundred years for the Church to develop its doctrine of the Trinity. Absolutely central to the faith of the Church, going back to Abraham, is that God is one. Our Lord and all of his disciples were accustomed to reciting daily the text from Deuteronomy 6:4, known as the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
Yet, Jesus taught and acted not just like any other rabbi, but as God himself. He claimed an authority that belongs only to God and he did things that only God could do. He also had a strong relationship with God the Father. Immediately after the resurrection, the followers of Jesus began thinking of him and relating to him as God. They still said the Shema, and they definitely still believed that God is one, yet they began to pray to God the Father through Jesus, the Son. A third distinct spiritual reality was also such a strong reality that he was seen as divine as well. He, of course, is the Holy Spirit.
So, in the early Church, starting with the Church of the New Testament, we have these Christian monotheists speaking of and praying to three distinct divine persons. How would the Church finally come to grips with this paradox? Have the Christians actually become tritheists instead of monotheists?
That question was dealt with decisively in 325 AD at Nicaea. The bishops of the Church gathered to deal with various questions of a theological nature, and this was one of them. Is there still only one God, or three? There still is only one God, and so the creed they devised begins: “I believe in one God….” Then it deals with the three persons of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
How can there be one God, yet three persons? The young confirmand was right. It is a mystery. It is rooted in the difference between God and humanity. We certainly can understand the concept of independence, though when you get right down to it, no one here today is completely independent. Did you raise your own food, and if you did, did you supply your own seed for planting? Did you build your own home with your own hands, and if you did, did you cut your own trees for the wood in your home and make your own lumber?
The point I’m making is that everyone of us is connected to so many others in such a way that while I can say I am one person, I can also say I am inseparably connected to a larger society that ultimately includes the whole human race. I am a person, but also a part of a unity called humanity. One humanity, 7 billion persons. “No man is an island, entire of itself,” says John Donne. “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Yet, humanity is not united, is it? Isis continues to move aggressively against anyone who isn’t one of them. Christians in Iraq, Syria, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, to name a few, are being killed for no other reason than not renouncing their faith. We are divided in this country as a people in many ways. There’s always someone in the office that few get along with, and families continue to be torn by strife of one form or another.
“E Pluribus Unum,” out of many one, is a nice motto, but no one takes it literally. People are too imperfect, too disunited, for us ever to be able to take such a sentiment literally. But why is it even an ideal? As disunited as the Church is, why does St. Paul insist on calling it a body, even giving it the high honor of calling it the body of Christ?
We can conceive of a greater unity because we have experienced it at some level and can therefore visualize the ideal. We may be fortunate enough to experience it at home with our spouse and children. We experience a sense of unity in our life together in this parish. We may recall times in this country when everyone really did pull together for the common good.
It feels so good when we experience true unity, in the sense of “out of many one,” because when we are at unity with one another we most reflect the nature of our Creator. God in his very being is the uniting of the Persons of God into such perfect harmony that they truly are one. The Trinity is only a mystery because of our fallen nature. As we immerse ourselves more and more in the love of God, we become more unified with others, and reflect more and more the very nature of God.
We know that God is love. We also know that God does not need anything to fulfill his nature. Thus, God must have within himself not only the ability to love, but also an object for his love. The Persons of the Trinity are the very source of love, the source and foundation of all unity. That source of love was revealed to us most fully in Jesus Christ, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The persons of the Trinity are so perfectly united through love that they are indeed of one substance. Out of this wellspring of love God has caused all things to be, and whenever and wherever love and unity exist, God is present and revealed.
Sermon preached by The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Trinity Sunday
31 May 2015