Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on May 18, 2008
(First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Genesis 1:1-2:3
Canticle 2 or 13
2 Corinthians 13:(5-10)11-14
Matthew 28:16-20

I think that Trinity Sunday was created in order to keep preachers humble because there just isn’t a good way to explain the complexity of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I have spent the latter part of the week re-reading textbooks and sermons from the early Church Fathers and apart from my head spinning similar to that of riding the tea cups for an hour at the county fair, I still can’t conjure up a simple, thorough way to express this divine reality.

And that just might be the point. The idea or definition of what the Holy Trinity is is so complex that no single human being or group of human beings could possibly have thought it up. Therefore, it has to be a revelation from God. As one theologian wrote, “The Doctrine of the Trinity…is…the most philosophical attempt to conceive of God as Personal. Not that it arose from any mere process of thinking… [Rather] it was…considered as a new revelation about God, and thought out upon the lines indicated in the New Testament. [The early Church] Fathers…felt they were in the presence of a fact which, so far from being the creation of any theory of the day was a mystery – a thing which could be apprehended when revealed, but which could neither be comprehended nor discovered.”

In other words, the concept of the Holy Trinity is so intricate that there is no way our little pea brains could ever have imagined it or created it. However, it is a divine reality, of which God in His infinite wisdom has given us a glimpse, and even though we can perceive it as a reality, in no way are we capable of fully understanding it.

And yet we must continue to try in some fashion because I am convinced that this is the fundamental Truth of which God is trying to convey throughout all of scripture, which is the Inspired (Holy Spirit)Word (the Son) of God (the Father). And I am coming to the conclusion that when we accept that Truth, and believe it through faith, not our limited cognitive understanding but through faith, then the rest of life will fall into place and make sense.

Once again we are presented with a divine paradox: the sooner we comprehend the fact that we can never fully comprehend the totality of God, the easier it becomes to heed that which God is speaking to us by, in, and through Holy Scripture, and the easier it becomes to apply it in our daily lives.

Another way to put it is that the doctrine of the Trinity can be observed as the result of an ongoing study and contemplation of the literary blueprint of divine activity as revealed in the Bible and as experienced in the lives of the saints. That doesn’t mean that we will find the complete doctrine of the Trinity within its pages because we won’t. However, through those same pages, we are exposed to Almighty God who requires to be known in a Trinitarian way.

Believe it or not, today’s Epistle and Gospel are the most explicit passages in the New Testament dealing with the triune nature of God. Beyond these, the closest we get are suggestions such as last week’s epistle when Paul described the Source of all gifts, services, and activities as coming from one Spirit, one Lord, and one God. As I said last week, whether Paul knew it or not, being inspired by the Holy Spirit, he wrote words that provide a clue to us about the true nature of God. Personally, I believe that Paul did know about the Trinity as a result of his encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, and this is one of the reasons he was so relentless in the proclamation of the Good News to the Gentile world. But that’s another sermon.

Now in the Old Testament, the Holy Trinity is even harder to recognize but nevertheless it’s present. Today’s lesson from Genesis tells of God creating the world. Scripture tells us that a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Remember from last week, that the Hebrew word for wind, spirit, and breath is the same word. So it was the Spirit of God who brought order to the chaos in the beginning. Then God began to speak in order to create individual parts of the universe. When God speaks, it is through His Word that things come into being. The Word is the second Person of the Trinity. Remember the Gospel of John; “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God; all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.” And through that Word the breath or Spirit of God is brought forth to make the spoken Word a reality, giving life to the world.

This passage is important to our understanding of the Trinity and is why it is so difficult to use human words to describe it. We discussed in Bible study last week the concept of perichoresis which is the Greek word for what holds the Trinity together. Perichoresis is more than just glue that binds things together, it is more than a weld that combines objects into one, it is more than just an integration of molecules to form one thing; regarding the Trinity, it is the ability to do all and more of these types of things and yet allows the individuality of each Person of the Trinity to be distinct. But even though they are distinct, they are always together.

Even though we see in today’s reading that all three Persons were present at the time of creation, it is appropriate to think of creation as the distinctive work of God the Father. The same is true of our salvation. God gave His only Son to die for the sins of the world, and by the power of His Spirit raised him from the dead. All three Persons of the Trinity are involved in our redemption but it is appropriate to speak of salvation as the distinctive work of the Son and of the Son as our Savior. Where one is, all three will be.

Now I apologize for making this sermon appear to be a lecture but even that proves the difficulty of teaching about the Trinity. It’s like Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut action figure from the movie, “Toy Story” whose motto is, “To infinity…and beyond!” There is always more to say but no acceptable end in sight. There are no personal stories that I can share with you from my life to fully explain the Trinitarian doctrine. Anything and everything I could say would fall short and become heresy which is a word that means an inadequate version of Christianity. Even the doctrine itself, which took over a hundred years to collect into its present form, becomes inadequate when explained using human examples because whenever we try to label God we restrict Him. And nothing is impossible for God! He has no limits! There is no way that we can restrict Him because He is both immanent and transcendent. He is both active in this world and at the same time outside of it. He is Alpha and Omega, before the beginning and after the end, He is eternal. He is Three in One.

Our freedom lies in believing that which we cannot fully comprehend. Our only chance to discover the meaning of our lives comes when we acknowledge, not understand, but recognize in faith that Almighty God, the Holy Trinity, is the source of all that we are, all that we need, and all that we do. He is our creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier. He is, was, and always shall be. Gloria Patri