From time to time, I would ask this question of kids. And sometimes they’d shrug, and sometimes they’d shout back “Big!”
Hmm, I’d say. “This big?” (holding my fingers and thumbs apart)
“Bigger!”
“Ok, this big?” (holding hands apart)
“No! Bigger!” they’d all shout.
“Okay, then. How about this big?” (hold arms wide apart)
“Bigger!”
…. you get the idea!
This exercise reminds of that last scene in the 1997 film Cosmos, where astrophysicist Dr. Eleanor Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, meets a group of school kids in front of the deep space array of radio telescopes in New Mexico, talking about how big space is and about the possibilities for intelligent life "out there." A lot of Christians, especially Episcopal ones, love that film because it asks all the Big Questions and shows pretty well how scientists go about answering it with a sense of awe and mystery and respect, which we Episcopalians deeply share. To paraphrase (in a way that the original author, the late Dr. Carl Sagan, might object): for me, God is there, and God is real, because if God weren’t, “it’d be an awful waste of space.”
So how big is God? And how would you go about describing
God? I have nearly a truckload—literally! -- of books on that subject, but in
the end not even all those books even scratch the surface!
In ancient times, cultures dealt with this in a variety of ways. Some divided up God into bite-sized chucks. Some cultures had a particular god for a particular
locale or tribe. Others, like the Greeks or Romans, divvied up their gods by
function: a god of love, a god of evil, a god of thunder (with or without the
hammer!) and so on.
Some limit God solely to the luminous or transcendent, who is so far away that if the divine is knowable at all… it is only through certain specific skills or disciplines, or perhaps for the very few with some kind of "special" knowledge.
As Seinfeld once said “Not that there’s anything wrong with
that…” but, these only scratch the surface.
The Hebrews had the triply scandalous notion that there is only One God; that the One God is both holy and at the same time immanent (a fancy word for "not far away") living in a covenant relationship between God and God's people; and that it is the job of God’s people is to make God known to the world by following God’s ways. In some Jewish circles, it's understood that the observance of the law and the prophets is really for and on behalf of us all!
Of course, Christianity holds this concept too, but with a
different emphasis on the syllahble.
Christians believe that the One God came to earth and joined
with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ and his incarnation, and that the
One God is made present to us in the person of the Holy Spirit, and that the One
God creates and reigns over all creation God, in the Christian context, is at
once accessible, complex... and busy! It is by the grace of God combined with our God-given curiosity and imagination that brings it all together.
I know a lot of folks who just can’t wrap their minds around the
Trinity: it’s either too big, too esoteric, or because—no matter how much you
reassure them that it’s not—it sounds to them like Tri-Theism. But here it is:
there is One God, undivided. And we see all of the fullness of the
One God and all of the fullness of all of humanity in the person of Jesus
Christ; we see all the Fullness of the One God in the Father; and we see all the fullness
of the One God in the Holy Spirit.
But wait! There’s more!
The One God has a moral and ethical core which is at the heart of our own moral and ethical longings, our own sense of meaning, but is at the heart of creation itself, which is once free and subject to the laws of physics and nature, but also endless its minutiae and its expansiveness.
We see the One God expressed in a Trinity—a Unity of persons—and
where each person of the Trinity each witnesses to the One God in the integrity
of their persons. Where God is at once transcendent and knowable by us who are created
and living in God’s own image.
I know: Ka-boom! Mind blown.
Wasn’t that fun?
Once, many years ago, a friend of mine, who is a Unitarian
Universalist minister, invited me into his church in Southeast Ohio on Trinity Sunday to talk about, or debate with him, the Trinity before
his congregation, remember, of Unitarians in all their variety. My point was that
in the early church, when these things were being debated, it was the
Trinitarians who were the true Unitarians by emphasizing this dynamic unity!
I don’t think I changed any minds, but it was a whole a lot
of fun!
So how do you get at it… how do we make sense of the Trinity? Well, the theology helps even if it is a little, uhm, complex. And we have a wonderful Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer that can walk us through that.
Some
people choose to ignore the whole subject… by glossing over the complexity. Others dodge the
intellectual bullet by making the debate about something else, misrepresenting
the Trinity and then, presto!, refuting the very silly idea that they just made
up.
Other try to defend it by just going
to the Creeds; but in a bland kind of “The Creeds say it, I believe it, that
settles it!” way. To me, this is kind of the theological equivalent of plugging your
ears and saying “la la la!”
I mean, look, it's hard. If I only heard some of things people have been told about the Trinity from various pulpits and Sunday school classrooms over the years, I wouldn't believe it either!
Okay. So how do we get at it?
In participation. We get at the Trinity by living faithfully
every day with an inquiring and discerning heart.
I have discovered in prayer, holy silence, and meditation,
that an open mind and heart helps. And yes, meditating on the Apostles and
Nicene creeds line by line, is a good thing to do. I’ve done it in retreat and as
a prayer and journaling exercise.
I have found in art, literature, dance, theater, cinema, music,
and science that imagination also helps.
Imagination invites us and allows us to experience the
fullness of God… and imagination opens us to hear and be challenged by God’s
call. To open our minds, our hearts, our wills, and our imagination to fullness
of God, is to hear God’s voice just as God called out to the young Samuel while
he was trying to sleep.
I think that we need to let the artistic and poetic side of
the brain in on the conversation when we contemplate the Trinity: this is a
place for poets, musicians, and artists as much as it for systematic
theologians, scientists, and apologists.
The Holy Trinity, through the sacramental life, scripture, life in community, prayer and contemplation, invites to a life steeped in holy imagination. Not making things up... but resting in God, listening to the traditions of the Church and paying attention to world around us.
Allow me to demonstrate.
Think of your favorite hymn.
Got it? Terrific!
Now think about the text of that hymn… how does it speak to
you? What aspect of God does that text activate in you?
One hymn that stands out for me is an American hymn called “Wondrous
Love” which begins:
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O
my soul?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?
The third verse goes:
To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will
sing,
to God and to the Lamb I will sing,
to God and to the Lamb who is the great I Am,
while millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
while millions join the theme, I will sing.
I think that meditating
on your favorite hymns is one way for you to know how God best makes Godself
known to you… and to know how you might most easily approach God! It isn’t foolproof—but
when it come to meeting the God of all Creation, what is?
It’s still a very
good place to start.
So let’s try
it. Turn in your hymnals to Hymn 409 (in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982). This is another one of my favorites.
First of all… the tune. What can top this magisterial score by none other than
Franz Joseph Haydn? This hymn paints a picture of in music and text of the wonder of creation, evoking “the
spacious firmament with all the blue ethereal sky….” Let’s sing the third verse,
which is the punchline:
What though in solemn silence all
move round the dark terrestrial ball;
what though nor real voice nor sound
amid their radiant orbs be found;
in reason's ear they all rejoice,
and utter forth a glorious voice,
for ever singing as they shine,
'The hand that made us is divine.'
Oh, yeah! It’s oh
so very 18th Century, isn't it? But then so were the folks who wrote our constitution! When you sang it, did you see a picture, painted in your minds eye, of God revealed in… and
the source of… everything? Or, as we might say, God the Father!
Turn to Hymn
435. King’s Weston is a marvelous tune by the great Ralph Vaughn
Williams, describing and extolling the Lordship of Christ. In six verses, the
hymn sums up how we understand who Jesus is and what God is doing in and
through him. The hymn invites us to come to him in love, wonder, and joy.
Let’s sing
verses 2 and 5:
Humbled for a season to receive a name
from the lips of sinners unto whom he came,
faithfully he bore it spotless to the last,
brought it back victorious, when from death he passed.
In your hearts enthrone him; there let him
subdue
all that is not holy, all that is not true;
crown him as your Captain in temptation's hour:
let his will enfold you in its light and pow'r.
A lovely
little hymn about the Holy Spirit is hymn 513, written by Father Carl P. Daw, Jr., an
Episcopal priest, it appeared for the first time in the Hymnal 1982. It beautifully
evokes both the power and the intimacy of God the Holy Spirit. Let’s sing verse
1:
Like the murmur of the dove’s song,
like the challenge of her flight,
like the vigor of the wind’s rush,
like the new flame’s eager might:
come, Holy Spirit, come.
Finally, let’s
contemplate the fullness of the One God in Trinity of Persons through this well
known and magnificent Reformation hymn Nun danket alle Gott, “Now Thank
We All Our God,” Hymn 396, singing verse 3 together:
All praise and thanks to God
the Father now be given,
the Son and Spirit blest,
who reign in highest heaven
the one eternal God,
whom heaven and earth adore;
for thus it was, is now,
and shall be evermore.
Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday of what some call “ordinary time” or the Sundays after Pentecost. But there is nothing ordinary about our Creating, Redeeming, and Empowering God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
We have now entered a season of contemplation and action. We will spend the summer and next fall learning to follow the teachings of Jesus.
We listen for the Spirit to move us to do them! Day by day we stand in awe and humility before
the presence of God, as we learn to know and walk with God. We do that in lots
of ways: Baptism and Eucharist, Scripture and prayer, Holy Service and Holy Companionship.
We do this in concert with the Church Catholic in all time and places. God has
given us imagination, intellect, art, music, science, and more to bounce off
the witness of Scripture and the life of the whole Church and see God working
and alive… and then we only catch the merest glimpse of God’s love, God’s power,
God’s majesty….
Blessed with holy imagination, we find that in all that we do, in all whom we love, in all our creativity
and inquiry, and in all our care for each other and creation, that our loving,
living, Triune God is active in all of us and in our world.
In the Trinity,
we see that the fullness, the love, the intimacy of God is bigger than the universe,
and as near as our hearts.
+++ +++ +++
A sermon for Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021 at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater, Florida
Here is a video of the Liturgy for Trinity Sunday (Facebook)
Here is a video of the Sermon only. (Vimeo)
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