Trinity Sunday, sermon preached at Two Rock Valley Presbyterian and Tomales Presbyterian Churches on May 26, 2024
Today’s sermon title comes from a Dennis-the-Menace cartoon that
my Gram sent me years ago.
Unfortunately, the actual newspaper clipping has gone by the wayside.
I don’t remember the exact cartoon scenario, but I do remember that equation.
I’m no mathematician, but I don’t think it adds up, 1 + 1 + 1 = 1?!,
at least not in the traditional sense.
It is, however, a perfect ‘object lesson’ as we think about the Trinity.
Because the Trinity doesn’t add up in a logical sense either.
We all know that there are three members in the Christian Godhead
Creator God
Jesus Christ
Holy Spirit
Understanding how these three are actually One, however, is confounding.
To add insult to injury, the Bible never mentions the Trinity … not even once.
We are told often about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit,
(or Advocate as the Gospel of John called Her last week … and I am using Her intentionally, but as that could be a sermon in and of itself, I’m not even going to touch on that today).
Needless-to-say, the Trinity is a Holy Mystery that I suspect few of us want to explain.
The doctrine of the Trinity is arrived at by looking at the whole of Scripture,
not a single Chapter or Verse.
And so once a year, we embark on an interesting journey …
a quest to more fully know this Holy Mystery.
The Reverend Shannon Johnson Kershner,
Senior Pastor at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia
does an admirable job of summing up the complexity of the Trinity
with the following statement:
When we confess belief in the Triune God,
we are making the radical claim that somehow,
- the same God who created life out of chaos also walked the earth as Jesus.
- We are claiming that the one who experienced crucifixion, at the same time experienced the death of a beloved child.
- We are claiming that the one who ascended into heaven, is the same one who is always with us.
- We are claiming that the one who prays for us at the right hand of the Father, is the same one groaning deep within our souls for the redemption of creation.
- When we say we believe in a triune God, we are boldly claiming that the active God of the past, is an on-the-move God who is acting now and will act in the future, until all has been reconciled and made new.”
That is a lot to digest … I can barely wrap my head around it,
and yet I know deep down in my bones that Rev. Shannon is absolutely right!
Our academic-oriented Presbyterian denomination wants me to explain this.
As proud as I am to have weathered my four-year Master of Divinity program 20 years ago,
a program that insisted I learn two dead languages …
(‘dead’ because biblical Hebrew & Greek are different then current day Hebrew & Greek),
I don’t agree that staying in our heads and explaining it is particularly helpful.
Now to be fair, a good many of us humans do live in our heads,
but I’ve been around the block a few times and even the most cerebral of us
do not really understand life up in our heads.
Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar and author says that the
“Trinity leads you into the world of mystery and humility,
where you cannot understand, … you can only experience.”
I agree with him.
Head knowledge only goes so far … what really teaches is experience.
That’s when the rubber hits the road …
that’s when we really have a chance to ‘get it!’
Maybe this is why are invited to hear the call story of Isaiah this Sunday.
This call story, in which a six-winged seraph comes at a would-be prophet
holding tongs full of hot coals to purify his lips
is probably not something we’d be wise to attempt to understand,
at least not in the traditional sense.
It is, however, certainly a colorful description of a call from the Divine.
Isaiah’s response illuminates our text from Romans,
because Isaiah allows the Spirit of God to lead him, rather than be enslaved to the flesh.
… Now, I’m going to digress for a moment,
because I can’t let you all leave here thinking the flesh is bad …
it isn’t, not in the way this text often gets interpreted.
The Greek word for flesh (sax) is different than the word for body (soma).
The Apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Romans,
is not advocating fleeing life in the flesh in favor of existing purely on a spiritual plane,
as it is sometimes misinterpreted.
To be enslaved to the flesh as Paul is writing means to be enslaved to anything
that resists God and is probably more aptly referring to sin.
So, Isaiah is allowing God to work in him (including his human flesh),
rather than remain in sin and resist God’s spirit.
And Isaiah’s openness to God, his willingness to be unified with God’s will,
might give us a taste of the relationship within the Holy Trinity,
which enjoys perfect harmony within itself.
This is different mind you then the Greek gods for whom there has to be a Zeus
who can dominate the other lesser gods.
What does all of this mean for us?
What might the relational style of our Christian God mean for us as children of God?
If God, in God’s very essence, is a mutually interdependent relationship,
which is so seemless that three persons are actually one entity,
what does that mean for us, who have been created in God’s image?
Might this inform the kind of relationships God calls us to have?
Would it look like the divisions we see currently in our political landscape?
Would it look like the broken communities we see in the church,
whether between Christian denominations or individuals in the same church/family?
It appears that God, by example, which really is the best teaching tool around,
is showing us what true relationship really looks like.
The Trinity invites us to consider that we don’t just exist beside each other,
we aren’t supposed to just love each other,
rather we deeply need each other.
Did you hear me? Let me say that again:
We deeply need each other to be fully human!
In order to be Christ’s body (the Church) we cannot exist on our own, in isolation.
In order to really live out our identity as children of God,
in order to live as baptized people,
we are called to be in honest relationships with each other,
as brothers and sisters in Christ.
We must share one another’s burdens, i.e. weep when one of us weeps, …
and rejoice when one of us rejoices.
Does that mean we have to see the Word (Scripture) the same way,
respond to the world (planet Earth and its inhabitants) in like fashion,
and believe the same things?
No. No! No!!
Our Trinitarian God makes it clear that we all have different expressions in the world.
The key is that we recognize the gifts each one of us brings to the whole
and that we remember, without our various expressions,
we are not a complete body of Christ.
This sounds like a big task, and on some level it is.
But it doesn’t have to show up in a flashy way.
Baptist pastor and author Tony Campolo told a story of what it might look like
to let the spirit of God drive our actions.
He tells of a Church Deacon who took a youth group to a nursing home once a month.
The Deacon was apparently reluctant and coached heavily by his pastor ….
The Deacon liked to say he was only the driver for a bunch of kids who couldn’t drive yet.
But he went. Regularly.
On one occasion an old man in a wheelchair rolled over to the Deacon,
took his hand and held it during the whole youth-led worship service.
That small action was repeated the next month and the next month and the next month.
Then one Sunday afternoon the old man in the wheelchair
wasn’t in the fellowship hall when they arrived,
so of course, the Deacon asked about his friend.
“Where is that man?”
“Oh,” the nurse said, “He’s just down the hall in the third room.
He’s unconscious, near death, but I know he’d love it if you’d visit him.”
Of course, the Deacon went. While holding the man’s hand, the Deacon said a prayer,
and when the Deacon said Amen, the old man squeezed his hand.
This made the Deacon cry.
Embarrassed, he started to leave the room as the nurse entered the room.
“He’s been waiting for you,” she said.
“I told him that after death he would meet Jesus and talk to Jesus and hold Jesus’ hand.
But he said, No. Once a month Jesus comes here and holds my hand
and I don’t want to leave until I have the chance to hold Jesus’ hand once more.”
If we yield to the Spirit,
there are important things that God wants to do in us and through us.
They may be simple,
but that does not mean they aren’t earth-shatteringly important.
May we follow God’s call.
May we notice the gift this brings others and maybe even sometimes ourselves.
With our Creator God who continually molds us,
Christ who ever walks beside us,
and the Spirit who breathes life into us,
we are given the opportunity to be in union with our Trinitarian God.
1 + 1 + 1 really DOES = 1!
Amen.