Church of the Redeemer

Trinity Sunday

May 26, 2002

Over the last eight weeks, we have done a lot of celebrating, first with the actual celebration of Easter Day, and then in the seven weeks that have followed, we have observed with celebration and festivity six baptisms, the confirmation of seventeen members of our parish and the Feast of Pentecost.  This morning ends the cycle of what I have come to refer to as the Eastertide feasts and festivals with our observance of Trinity Sunday.   This morning’s observance is not actually part of the Easter season. The Easter season ended a week ago Saturday and our current season of Pentecost began with last week’s festal observance.  However, despite the placement of Trinity Sunday in the Church Calendar, this feast day truly completes a cycle of observances celebrating God’s relationship with creation.

If you think about it, the feasts of the past weeks have been observances celebrating different aspects of God; Easter is the celebration of Jesus’, God incarnate and the Redeemer of Creation.  Pentecost is a celebration of the active and continuous presence of the Holy Spirit in creation.  Today we celebrate the Godhead unified, the fullness of God’s relationship with Godself and to us.  With this complex and weighty topic before us, I wish to assure you, I do not intend to explain the workings of the Trinity or to even claim I fully comprehend the intricate concepts of the Trinity, because frankly, after three years of seminary, I have concluded there are certain areas of theology that are true holy mysteries, not to be fully comprehended by humankind. The Trinity is one of them.

 What I would like to focus on this morning is not so much the inner workings of this doctrine, but why the concept of the Trinity is as important to us today as it was to our early church fathers 1700 years ago. History tells us this doctrine took the Church over 400 years to construct.  It was an issue that was so deeply personal and spiritual that great leaders of the Early Church were willing to accept excommunication rather than let go of what they found to be spiritually true.  The reason for this passion among the early fathers becomes evident as one ponders the first chapter of Genesis. The opening line of the Bible is simply, “In the beginning when God”.  Right from the start of scripture it is made clear that all things begin with God.  So having a working understanding of God is paramount to having a working concept as to the nature of our own origin.  Then, towards the end of this creation story we hear God’s voice, and for a moment, humanity is allowed an intimate glance into the thought process of the Creator as God contemplates the creation of humanity.  “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”.  And so, not only is a working understanding of God paramount to understanding our origin, but also as to whom we are as individuals.  This simple statement from Genesis tells us that we are a very unique part of creation; that we were created differently from the rest of the created order because we were created in the image of God.  

How we understand God is synonymous with our understanding of ourselves and directly impacts our relationship with God and each other. For centuries we have translated our understanding of God in human terms.  The early Church Fathers borrowed from the language of the Gospels and described God by using father imagery.  “We believe in God the Father.”  Through the centuries artists have borrowed from Greek and Roman imagery depicting God in the likeness of Zeus or Jupiter, the most powerful gods of their mythology. Both were depicted as male figures of Olympic proportions with white hair and a full beard sitting on their thrones on Mount Olympus.  In the early days, this depiction of God was effective in explaining our understanding of God to the non-Jewish population of that time.  However, for today’s audience, this imagery has lost its effectiveness as it impedes our ability to contemplate the fuller nature of who God is.  

            The Doctrine of the Trinity, as outlined in the Nicene Creed tells us that God is more than that Greek figure that sits removed from his creation on Mount Olympus.  The Nicene Creed tells us that God is the creative, nurturing, and redeeming force of the entire universe, and continues to be an active creative presence within creation. The Doctrine of the Trinity therefore, is not about describing of the physical attributes of God, and we, because we are created in the image of God, are not the image of God because of our physical attributes.   Instead, the Doctrine of the Trinity defines God in terms of relationship.  As we know from the Nicene Creed, God is understood through three dominate modalities, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three distinct personae that work and relate to each as one in perfect unison.  God the Father, or as Hegel would later describe, THE ABSOLUTE BEING from whose emanations we each receive our being, is the creative entity through whose spoken Word, the Son, created and redeemed the universe, and from who proceeds the Holy Spirit, who continues to actively sustain the creation.  In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus states,” As the father has loved me, I have loved you.”  Here, Jesus acknowledges that the primary relationship that has formed him, defined who he is and how he relates to humanity is his relationship with the Father. 

            As God is defined and understood through the relationship of the Trinity, we too are defined and formed through our relationships with others. This appears to be an indisputable assumption.  Therapists make untold amounts of money helping many people work through the emotional damage created by imperfect parent/child relationships. Most seek counseling because their ability to experience contentment is somehow impeded due to this damage.  How many of us who are parents relate to our children in the same way our parents related to us?  It all goes to show how the essence of our personalities and our comprehension of the world is molded by our significant relationships with others.         

            Last year I attended a conference entitled the Imago Dei.  Over the course of the two days, theologians, ethicists and scientists presented papers and then debated what it is that makes us human and the image of God.  In today’s world of modern technology, where humanity can create machines that share our physical and in some cases emotional attributes, the question that was debated was, at what point does one become alive. Discussion explored several aspects of the complex human psyche.  Some hypothesized that it was our ability to be empathetic towards others, only to be countered by the fact that those who are severely autistic lack the ability to be empathetic, and are still considered human.  Others argued it was solely our ability to think and reason, but recently we have been able to create machines that have sophisticated abilities to think and reason.  

    What then separates us from the machines that we have created?  Finally, it was decided what makes us unique from machine and other animals was our ability to be formed and to form relationships on vertical and horizontal planes.  Not only are we able to relate to the many aspects of the created order of which we are apart, but we are also able to enter into and be in relationship with an abstract concept that is God.  Again, Christ told his disciples, “As the father has loved me, I have loved you.”  Like Christ, our ability to love and be in relationship with others is intimately influenced by our understanding and individual relationship with God, for as we can be loved by God, we are able to love each other. 

            Thus our yearly observance and celebration of the Trinity is truly a great and festive day in the life of the Church.  For it is on this day that we commemorate the vast, complex and divine entity that not only created us but endowed us with the greatest attribute of all creation, to be made in God’s own image so we can be created, formed and redeemed by our relationship with God.   Amen.

Craig R. Swan+

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