June 4, 2023 St. Andrew Church Trinity Sunday Rev. Anne McAnelly
First Lesson: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
11 Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. 13 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
Second Lesson: Matthew 28:16-20
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Do you spend much time thinking about the Trinity? You know that Christian teaching about God being three in One? Does it affect how you relate to God? How you pray? Or your understanding of who God is? The church has honed this teaching down to one essence and three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One essence defines what God is, while the three persons define who God is. But it still feels a bit confusing. How can something be three and one at the same time? I discovered a new way of thinking about the trinity while writing this sermon. Scientist Dr. Henry Morris notes that the entire universe is trinitarian by design. The universe consists of three things: matter, space, and time. Take away any one of those three and the universe would cease to exist. But each one of those is itself a trinity.
• Matter = mass + energy + motion
• Space = length+ height+ breadth
• Time = past+ present+ future (Christianity.com, God in Three Persons)
• Trinities inside a trinitarian universe!
Considering matter, space and time as trinitarian feels clean and clear and allows me to consider the Holy Trinity as having three dimensions while all being integrally related. Yet we tend to focus on one of these three things at a time while all are functioning. Right now I am in the middle of my remodel so I am very aware of space, the length, height and depth of cabinets and furniture. How do all the pieces fit together. Time is also very pressing because deadlines are always looming. I think that is like how when we are struggling with temptation, we might pray more to Jesus who was tempted than to God. Or when we are faced with a life-or-death situation, we seek the comfort and help from God the Creator of the universe.
I need to pause here and say that I believe God is beyond gender, includes both female and male. Yet our language does not accommodate the vastness of God so we refer to God as He by default. I do see the fullness of gender within the Trinity in that God is above gender, Jesus is male and the Spirit as female, for the words used for spirit Ruach and wisdom are female words. A balanced trinity.
You might be surprised to discover that the word “Trinity” does not appear in scripture. Never once. Yet the concept of the trinity is woven throughout its pages. Paul writes of the trinity as a benediction to the church in Corinth. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. Sounds very similar to the benediction you hear most Sundays from me. Three other examples come at key moments: Creation, Jesus’ baptism and the purpose of the church. Creation starts with “In the beginning God … ” The Hebrew word here for God is elohim, which is actually a plural form of the word el, which is God singular. Then God said, ”Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness … So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1 :26-27). We have both a plural reference to God, us and our, and a singular one, God and he. Three in one.
The trinity is clearly seen at Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry on earth. “When Jesus came up from the water … he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well please” (Mt. 3: 16-17). The three persons of the Trinity are present at this sacred moment. The Spirit confers God’s blessing upon Jesus in an identifiable form and then God defines the relationship between Father and Son. The father son relationship is intimate, personal and loving. It is not a remote deity, but a close familial relationship. For the last three weeks we have been talking about Jesus and the Spirit being God’s advocates in the world at different times, reminding us that God relates to us in different ways and yet God is always with us.
Then of course we see the trinity in the Great Commission. This is the only testament to the risen Lord Matthew gives, so he makes it a good one. Calling on God’s authority, Jesus commissions his followers to make disciples baptizing them in the trinity, in the name of the Father and of Son and of Holy Spirit. To this day we baptize in the same way calling on God three in one. Then Jesus promises God will always be with us until the end of the age. The trinity makes that possible. If you are still uncertain about the trinity, I want to remind you it will always remain a mystery. An aspect of faith that is beyond knowledge and a matter of trust. Martin Luther said, “To try to deny the Trinity endangers your salvation, to try to comprehend the Trinity endangers your sanity.” So we continue to seek examples of how the three in one works. Tertullian, one of the theologians of the early church, explained the Trinity in a metaphor. God the Father he described as “a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance” (Sermons.com).
The Trinity is woven through scripture even though the word is not in the Bible.
The Trinity shapes three vital moments in our tradition, the Creation, Jesus’ baptism and the Great Commission.
The Trinity is and always will be a mystery because it describes God who is beyond our comprehension.
Yet the most compelling reason for the Trinity is love. Love is relational. God three in one is relational. Love defines the very nature of God, the interconnected, coequal, coetemal elements of who God is. If love was not the very nature of God, then love didn’t exist until God created beings outside of God. But the trinity shows love exists from the beginning, because God three in one was there from the beginning.
God is love. 1 John says, “God is love” (4:8). It also says, “We love because God first loved us” (4:19). Since we are created in God’s image, we must have our ability to love from God. Yet if God were one lone Person, not three Persons in one being, in what sense could we say God is love? One commentator wrote, “Love is not God. But God is love. So what does it mean for God to be love?
It does not necessarily mean that God is simply loving. Judaism and Islam and Mormonism teach a God who loves. But when Christians teach that God is himself love, they are saying that real love itself has its origin and its essence in God. And this cannot be true unless God is a Trinity. Think about it: A solitary god cannot be love. He may learn to love. He may yearn for love. But he cannot in himself be love, because love requires an object. Real love requires relationship. In the doctrine of the Trinity we finally see how love is part of the fabric of creation; it is essential to the eternal, need-nothing Creator. From eternity past, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have been in community, in relationship. They have loved each other. That loving relationship is bound up in the very nature of God. If God were not a Trinity but merely a solitary divinity, (God) could neither be love nor be God!” (Jared Wilson, Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniqueness Makes It Compelling).
So when you hear, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” I hope you hear that God is love and that God’s love will be with you always until the end of the age. Amen.
