The Personal Politics of the Trinity

Trinity Sunday A   June 7, 2020   
Gen. 1:1-2:3       Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14  Matt. 28:16-20


Lectionary Link

Today is Trinity Sunday on our liturgical calendar, and so the topic for the sermon seems to be dictated, even though I might rather talk about justice and health given what is happening to us in our public life today.  But if I got into talking about justice and health, I would be broaching one of the forbidden topics in the Episcopal Church, because we all disagree,  politics.  So, I will talk about the Trinity; surely there can be no politics when speaking about the Trinity?

Well, I'm wrong because one cannot avoid politics even when speaking about the Trinity.  The Trinity became front and center because of that little church convention in the city of Nicaea in 325.  An unbaptized Roman Emperor, Constantine had observed that his Empire was being rapidly populated by Christians.  This is instantiated by the fact that at the beginning of the fourth century Christian were not allowed in the Roman Army and by the end of the Fourth Century, only Christians were allowed in the Roman Army.  What kind of sea change was that!

Constantine observed that Christians weren't unified; they were divided over their beliefs about God and the nature of Jesus Christ.  Bishops with different beliefs had sponsoring and protecting local governors and this was a potential political problem for the overall unity of the Roman Empire.

Constantine, in effect said to the bishops, "get thee to Nicaea and standardize your faith because I don't want fighting among Christians to divide my Empire."  So the bishops gathered in Nicaea to develop a creed of belief and a canon of church laws to promulgate and enforce the official statements of the Council.  So the result of the council of Nicaea was immediate church unity?  Wrong.  The pronouncements of this Council resulted in the excommunication of more than half of the Christians in the Empire, even though the canonical effect was not immediate since Bishops who lost at the Council still had supporting governors and political authorities to protect them and their continued practice of post-Nicaean heresy.  They went to Nicaea thinking they were "orthodox" and good people of faith; and many bishops left being designated as heretics.

So how can we avoid politics when speaking about the Trinity?  At Nicaea most of the vocabulary for speaking about the nature of God came from Greek Philosophy.  This too was quite a change since the biblical writings came from grounding in Hebraic and Semitic words and thoughts and thinking.  The Nicaean Council is proof about how Gentile the Christian faith had become since the scholarly bishops used their background in the language of hellenistic philosophies to speak about the notions which arose from the more Hebraic context of Jesus of Nazareth.

Most Christians in the world have tacitly accepted the results of the Council of Nicaea and it is almost for the Christian world, a "ho hum;" it goes without saying that God is One God in Trinity of Equal Persons.

How can you and I be embraced by a Trinitarian understanding of God in a way that has a direct message for us today, in a divided country today?

The most obvious reason that we are Trinitarian is because of the way that we understand the life of Jesus presented to us in the Gospel and particularly the Gospel of John.

How is Jesus presented?  He is presented as the very ground of knowing anything at all.  In his pre-existence he is called the Word who was with God and who was God.  To know anything at all, we first assume that we live on the ground of Word and having language.  Knowing existence is mediated through us having language.

Having language means that we live in a personal universe.  Naming everything means that we live in a personal language.  Language is the essence of relationship and relationship is personal.

In the biblical traditional, what happened because we have language?  Everything  and everyone gets named.  And so did God.  God came to have many names.  There are over one hundred names for God in the Bible and these names seek to cover the vast ways in which people believed God to be involved and related to their lives.  All of the names of God indicate the belief in personal relationship.

In the life of Jesus, we came to find all of the names of God for human and personal relationship with God arrive at very specific Persons of God.  We cannot avoid that we live in a personal universe because we have words and language.  And Jesus really simplified an understanding of God.  In Jesus, we found one so superlative that we came to know and confess Jesus as one who was completely bilingual in God-language and human language.  And Jesus made God known in the most accessible human way to reveal that God has accepted human experience as a valid way to know God and to be in relationship with God.  In the understanding of God, God went from such general Personality with many names of the divine attributes, to the unveiling of God in distinctly three Persons, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not because any human language can control or limit the greatness of God, but because we need to know particular personal relationship with God.  We need to know that we have permission to assume a relationship with God.  And that is what Jesus Christ did for us in such a poignant way.  He gave us permission to accept ourselves a sons and daughters of God, with him as the sibling to lead to our membership in God's family.

We know the difficulty in living within the one human family.  We're one human family but prone to let our many differences keep us from expressing our unity.

And this is where we arrive at the pure politics of the Holy Trinity for us today.  God as One God and in three distinct different Persons is the perfect model for us today.  Unity in Difference.  E pluribus unum is not unique to our Country.  Knowing God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we can know three Persons who are One in unity.

And how we need to resort to this perfect model of the three in One today in our country, more than ever as we face the constant challenge of a dignified unity honoring the differences of each one.

Today, let us not try to over-intellectualize the Holy Trinity, let us accept that we live in a personal universe because we live in the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning.  And living in a personal world means that relationship is unavoidable.  And if relationship is unavoidable, let relationship be known as the the unity of Peace, as is best expressed in the practice of love and justice.

We accept the Holy Trinity as the impossible and unattainable Unity in Diversity Model for us in actual practice, but we accept it as defining the direction which we want to be headed towards in good human living.

In our baptismal association with the Holy Trinity, we believe God is associated with us, in spite of ourselves, and we are always challenged to live up to being associated with the Trinitarian family of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Let us set the direction of our lives toward the Unity and Diversity of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.