Living the Trinity

Catechism Sermon Two: Holy Community
Preached at St. John's on All Hallows Eve, 2010

Imagine a time from your past when you felt completely alone. It may have been a genuine time of separation from human companionship, or it may have been a time when you were surrounded by people, but in your heart, you believed that no one cared, no one noticed, and no one knew your name. For a few moments early in the experience, you may have enjoyed the solitude and the quiet, but before long, a devastating sense of loneliness began to oppress your spirit, and your heart ached as it had never ached before. All of us need to be in community. God made us that way. In fact, it is an important part of His image in which we are marvelously and wonderfully made. If we are to experience the fullness of God in our lives, we must learn to live together, in spite of our differences, in spite of our annoying habits, and bad choices and yes, even in spite of our shortsightedness, selfishness, and even our occasional stupidity. God has made us to live together with each other, and a large part of being Christian is learning to live with others who share the name.
As the fathers of our Holy Mother the Church prayed, studied, and worked together in the first three centuries after Jesus, they were led by the Holy Spirit to condense the essential message of the Scriptures into what we know as the creeds of the Church. The three creeds, namely the Apostles’ (which we recite at Holy baptism and in the Daily Office), the Nicene (which we recite at Holy Communion), and the Athanasian (which ought to be rehearsed by all Priests at Morning Prayer on the high holy days of the church, but so seldom is anymore); these three creeds all posit two great and immutable truths about our faith. The First is the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The second is the Incarnation: or a firm belief in the unique, historic, and efficacious person and work of Jesus Christ in this world. Next week, we will talk about the Incarnation , and what it means for our relationships to each other and to God the Father, through (in the words of the funeral liturgy) the blood of the everlasting covenant, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. But this week, we will discuss the Holy Trinity, and what it means for us, for who we are, and how we live together.
Although the word “Trinity” was not used for two or three hundred years after the earthly life of our Lord, the gospels and the other books of the New Testament make it abundantly clear that the definition of the concept has been with us from the beginning of the Church. The Bible is clear that there is only one God, and yet there are clearly three distinct individuals, or persons, who proceed to and from each other, who communicate with each other, and who all receive divine honours on numerous occasions. I must admit, it is beyond my understanding, and honestly, it is beyond all human understanding. Many have tried to explain it, and many explanations are helpful in illustrating some aspect of the concept, but they all fall short. They either combine or confound the persons and make God out to be either a king, far away and unapproachable, or make him into our buddy, thereby denying his power and holiness. In short, God’s nature is trinity in unity. After a sense, three is one and one is three. Smarter people than me have tried to explain it, and have had no more luck than I have had. But the fact remains that the Bible clearly teaches it, the Church has always affirmed it, and Christians are bound to believe it, even if we do not understand it.
But even if we cannot understand it, it makes a wonderful difference in our lives, and models for us how we ought to live together. Stay with me now, for we are at the heart of the matter. I cannot imagine the Father without the Son and the Spirit. I cannot imagine the Son without the Father and the Spirit. I cannot imagine the Spirit without the Father and the Son. They are inseparable and go together like peanut butter and jelly, like salt and pepper, like carrots and peas. Now imagine a church, a local parish or a broader body of believers, where if any one of us were not there, it simply wouldn’t be the same. Imagine a place where if you were absent for a few weeks, you would get calls and cards, not because of some program organized by the staff, but because the people who sit by you each week, the people who kneel with you at the altar, really do miss you and care enough to be concerned. We are not there yet, none of us are, and none of us ever have been. But that is our ideal, because we are those who bear the imagio Dei, the image of God in our lives and in our institutions. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful place to go to Church? Wouldn’t it be a great family to be a part of? Wouldn’t it make you feel truly loved, and give you a sense of belonging beyond anything you could ever imagine? To never be lonely again. That is the real beauty of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is one of the two essential doctrines of our Faith, and it is eminently practical every day of our lives.
And so what does it mean for us today? I would submit that we are bound to apply the doctrine of the Trinity in at least two ways, first in our Ecclesiology, that is what we believe about the Church, and secondly in our parish, where we live every day and interact with each other. For the first thousand years, there was a basic agreement that a Christian was a Christian, was a Christian. A Priest from Britannia or what was later called the English Heptarchy was recognized as a Priest in valid orders in Rome, or Constantinople, in Baghdad, in Constantinople, or in Addis Ababba. Holy Communion was shared and was the common currency of the Christian Experience. There were times when Christians fought like only siblings can fight, and the Church was racked with distressing regularity by sin, bad manners, and selfish personalities. But the Faith was one, characterized by one Scripture, two Testaments, Three creeds, Four Councils, and Five Centuries of shared experience under a common Lord and Saviour. And then we began to value our own druthers over the unity offered us in Christ and modeled in the character of God himself. The Church split in the 11th century, and again in the 16th, and we have been at it on a regular basis ever since. History has made it abundantly clear that heresies come and go, as does bad behaviour. False doctrines that were on everyone’s lips in 1700 are barely known by anyone save specialty historians today. But there is almost never a reunion after a split occurs in the body of Christ. We live in a world where many would coerce and control those who disagree with them in the Name of God. We also live in a world where many would demand their own way at any cost, even if it means rending the robe of Christ, also in the Name of God. And so we are faced with an unpleasant choice between those who would bludgeon us with catholicity and say that we must all be the same, or those who would define the faith in terms of their own experience and break communion with everyone else. I would submit that Trinitarian faith offers a third way, whereby we maintain our principles by living them faithfully, and allowing others to do the same. The faith is defined as the creeds define it, on other issues, we argue rationally and live faithfully. In such a faith, I cannot imagine a world where other Creedal Christians, be they Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or something else, were not my neighbors and friends. Some of them might annoy me to no end, and I might find their worship to be other than I would choose, but I acknowledge the validity of their faith and welcome them to the Communion table, even if they don’t acknowledge the validity of my faith or welcome me to their Communion table. How dare I take it upon myself to split the body of Christ again, however egregious the belief or behaviour of someone else might be. I shall live the faith as I have received it, imperfectly for sure, but as faithfully as I can with God’s help.
And that brings us to our local parish, St. John’s. Take a moment to look at the folks sitting around you…… Some of them you may like, and there are probably one or two that well, let’s just say you are not soul mates. But God has put us all here together. And he has called us to love each other even as he has loved us all. There is a place here for all of us, those who are close to God, and those who wander a bit more than they ought. God in his mercy has brought us together, and he calls us in the midst of our differences to learn to live together, and to care about each other to such a degree that we can’t imagine what it would be like if any one of us were missing. You see, God has chosen us to model for the world what he models for us in his own nature, and in his own being. We are all of the Holy and Blessed Trinity that most people will ever see. Do we live together in such a way that in spite of our differences and faults, people look at our parish and see a place where everyone belongs, and is loved, and finds a place? Do you feel that you really belong here? Are you doing all you can to make others feel that way as well. Have you made a commitment not to coerce or bully anyone here, even if they are wrong, and even if they try to do those things to you? Imagine a place where you were so loved that if you missed a few weeks, people, even people who disagreed with you politically, and behaviorally, and in many of their druthers, cared so much for you that they called to see how you were doing, not because there was a program that induced them to do so, but because they really did care. Let us all commit today to ask God to help us to build such a church, a Trinitarian Church, and might we do our very best to love those around us. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.