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Trinity Sunday
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A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
✛
The Strong Name of the Trinity
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I have just invoked Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the Name into which each one of us has been baptized, the Three Persons Whose Names come to us from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
The Church has a symbolic diagram of the Trinity, stemming from the Middle Ages, which perhaps you have seen. It has the Three Names of the Persons in triangular relation with bands from each to each. The Father, it indicates, is not the Son or the Holy Spirit; and neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit is the Other. Then, at the center is the Name, God, with bands to each of the Three Persons, indicating that Each by Himself is entirely and perfectly God, just as God is entirely and perfectly the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Some theologians have used the analogy of water as one substance in three forms, as liquid, vapor and ice. Saint Patrick used the three-leafed clover, the shamrock, when he first evangelized the Irish. Saint Augustine used the analogy of the human soul: Memory, Reason, and Will for the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Each year in my Rector’s Christian Doctrine Class I have a good time teaching the Athanasian Creed on the Triune God and the Incarnation of Christ.
We do not have time for that today, although I invite you to join me for the class next year whether or not you seek Confirmation or Reception in the Episcopal Church. What I want you to know this morning is that the Holy and Undivided Trinity is not an invention of theologians or a construct of the Church. The Trinity is the mystery of the God in whom we live, given to the Church by Jesus.
The Trinity is quite simply the God of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus manifests the full doctrine in his words and works, all of which served to bring him to his trial, condemnation, and crucifixion. Let us consider one point, and then three points; in other words, first the Oneness and then the Threeness of our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.
First the Oneness. Jesus taught us that the first and great commandment is this. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord He is One; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength and with all thy mind. Thou shalt have no other gods before Him whose Name is I AM. Here Moses speaks through Jesus.
And now the Threeness: the Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the truth revealed by the Gospel of Christ.
The Father. The distinguishing mark of the teaching of Jesus about God is that he called God Abba, Father, directly and personally. You can count on your fingers the number of times, in the enormous Old Testament, God is referred or likened to a Father. But in the small New Testament, especially in the Gospels on the lips of Jesus, there are 132 direct references to the Father. This is the unique contribution of Jesus of Nazareth to the teaching about God. It is more than a teaching; it is a direct, personal relationship offered to us by Jesus, through adoption and grace, to enjoy with and in him, so that we may say, Our Father.
The Son. Just so, Jesus spoke and acted as the divine Son of God as well as the Son of man, which he used as a term of personal yet oblique reference to himself. He forgave sins. He worked signs and miracles; including signs which revealed him to be the master of nature herself. He drove out evil spirits, who frequently identified and howled against his divine nature. He healed sickness and infirmity; including crossing taboos and entering deeply into the heart of sin, uncleanness, and social quarantine to bestow forgiveness and new life. He said the law was made for man (not man for the law) and said the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath. When his religious and moral enemies, driven to a frenzy of opposition, said, Who does he think he is? – He responded, I and the Father are one. When he was asked, when on trial for his life, if he was the Son of man, he responded, I AM. I AM: Before Abraham was I AM.
The Holy Spirit. Thirdly, Jesus, when he was departing out of this world, told his disciples he would pray his Father to send to them “another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father.” On Easter Day, risen from the dead, he breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit; whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven; whoever’s sins you retain they are retained.” On Pentecost, having ascended to the Father, Jesus prepared the Church to receive that same Spirit, the “power from on high,” which empowered and endowed the Church as the living Body of Christ to the ends of the earth and the end of the ages. The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, will “testify of me, for He will take what is mine and give it to you…He will lead you into all truth.”
This is the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the living and true God of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. What then is Church Doctrine? Orthodoxy is the “grammar of the Gospel.” We need grammar to speak clearly. Without it, language descends into confusion and even nonsense. The Doctrine of the Trinity, from the creeds to that old Triune diagram, constitutes the grammar of our faith. Grammar itself is not so moving and exciting as the language and literature it parses. But its rules are still important, and we are unwise to make light of them. The Gospel of Jesus is a faith of the mind and intellect as well as the heart and the emotions, a faith that is defined by love.
This is a good place to end. For the Holy Trinity shows that God is love: a Trinity and Communion of Love pouring out infinitely to creation, filling the world with his glory, redeeming, sanctifying it. Jesus shows that the first and great commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and soul, leads necessarily to our love of neighbor. Even more than that, Jesus said: A New Commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you, and this I command you, that you love one another. When we love like this, we have a part in the Trinity.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
