Sermon - May 18, 2008 - The Holy Trinity

Vicar Mark Niethammer

Trinity Sunday. I cannot count how many sermons I have heard that try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, but do so unsuccessfully. Even children’s sermons leave me bewildered as to what I just heard. 

I have heard analogies to try to explain it…things like, the trinity is like the Sun…s-u-n, not s-o-n. The Father is the Sun, the heat is the holy spirit, and the sunlight is the son. You really can’t have one without the other, if you take one away, the whole formula falls apart.

Another analogy…The trinity is like a three leaf clover. The three distinct leaves together make up the one clover. If you take away one leaf, it is not a three leaf clover, all parts are equal and have bearing on the whole.

Still, even reminding ourselves that all analogies fall short, these that try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity don’t make much sense. Trying to understand what the Trinity is will only leave more questions than it answers and really gets us nowhere in the faith, and isn’t that the goal? The Trinity is so embedded in the history of the church, in our creeds, in the doctrines that we hold, that it tends to become an abstract notion rather than an experience we share communally.

So what do we do with Trinity Sunday? A fault that we have is that we seek to know too much, to try to explain too much. We want to have a formula to explain the things around us, the things that impact our lives, we are given comfort knowing how things work, and even a sense of distrust when we don’t know what is going on or if things are out of our control. 

Explanations are what we demand, and with the Trinity, we don’t get explanations, we get something far more fruitful. Instead of getting explanations today, we get stories. We heard the creation account of Genesis 1 a little earlier. This text does not tell us what the Trinity is, so why do we have it this morning? 

Instead of explanations, we hear of a God who created all that is out of the formless void, out of chaos, out of the waters. God’s breath hovered over the darkness and said, “let there be light.” With God’s word, animals were created, plants were created, sun and moon were made and put in their places, and finally, humankind was made in God’s own image. 

It was not over though. Starting with verse 28, God gives the command to humankind to fill the earth, to subdue it, and to have dominion over it. By saying this, God is choosing to be in relationship with people. God gave us the task of subduing the land, which does not mean trampling on it, but bringing it into order, continuing the creative process of chaos into order. 

As people commanded to subdue the land, we are blessed to be working with God to the betterment of creation. With all of this, God chooses to be in relationship with us, God grants us the power to be co-creators with God. God calls on us to be stewards of the earth, not wasting what has been granted to us. The key to all this is relationship, God choose us to do this task and we are called to respond in relationship both with God as well as with the things around us that we are to subdue.

Ok, Genesis 1’s creation account doesn’t give us a good analogy or explanation of the Trinity and it didn’t tell us anything about the doctrine itself…maybe Second Corinthians will.

The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Familiar words indeed, we hear them every Sunday. All three members of the Trinity are accounted for…Father, Son, and Spirit, but all we see is attribution of roles…Love from God, grace from Jesus, and communion from the Spirit. That’s it.

I’m still not satisfied though, I don’t know what the mystery of the Trinity is, how it works, what it does as a whole, why we bother having the doctrine at all. These liturgical words that we hear at the opening of the liturgy are so familiar and move us to a point in our worship where we make peace. We turn to our neighbor having heard these words and reconcile ourselves to each other. That is, after all, what passing the peace is for. We make peace with our brothers and sisters, and, at that moment, we are called to forgive all animosities and we can be truly in community with our fellow members of the body of Christ, no longer divided, but united.

When Paul was writing this, that was what he was trying to do, build community. The Corinthians were always having issues in their community and Paul is admonishing them to make peace. So in our communities that have their own kinds of factions, we too can make peace, and be in relationship with each other. And all because of these words calling us to do so.

Matthew’s Gospel for today is known as the Great Commission. “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Jesus did not say go and make disciples of your friends or those who are already disciples, but go out, make disciples of ALL nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

These are wonderful, empowering words that send us on a mission, a mission with our fellow members of the body of Christ, and while it doesn’t tell us much about the doctrine of the Trinity, it does give us something else, something much like the other two readings for the day gave us. Jesus told his disciples to go and make community in all nations. They were told to go and teach of Jesus, go and tell of the grace and love of God to those who don’t know it. Go, preach, even talk if you have to, but show them what Jesus taught by doing what he taught. Then, all will know of Jesus and the promises we receive from him, namely the promise of everlasting life through Jesus.

The key is the community, the life we all share, knowing the expression of God’s grace, Jesus’ forgiveness, and the Spirit’s actions in those whom we encounter. So it seems that we don’t get a good explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity in any of our texts today, but we do get to know of what community is. 

The mystery of the Trinity is just that, mystery, but it is that mystery that brings us all together. It brings us together to help God with continued creation, it brings us together to make peace among ourselves, and it brings all nations together in the grace of our redeeming Lord. So maybe the Trinity is not found in abstract analogies or in complex discussions of doctrine and historic church practice, maybe the Trinity is found in relationship.

Professor Diane Jacobson, an Old Testament professor at Luther Seminary and the director of the ELCA’s Book of Faith Initiative, tells a story when she teaches the book of Job in which she says that a bunch of people die and they all go to heaven. When they get there, the pastors, theologians, and teachers are all shepherded into a lecture hall to learn ABOUT God. Everyone else is ushered into the eternal throne room. 

There they experience God, are in community not only with each other, but with God, enveloped by God’s embrace and experience fully the mystery of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

The point of all that is that learning about God really won’t bring us any closer to the God who reigns from the cross. Analogies don’t call us to mission, don’t preach forgiveness, but our Lord does. This story also tells us that if we take ourselves away from community to study the Trinity, we are taking ourselves away from the Trinity itself. The Trinity is not found in lecture halls or three leaf clovers, but in the experience of a loving God, in the grace that calls each of us into community and into mission. 

May we all experience such a community, a community that is not possible in the abstract analogies, a community that is not possible in over explaining something that we really can’t fathom anyway, but community both here on earth in our relationships and in the eternal throne room where God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell with us and bring us to them. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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