Trinity Sunday – A

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

Not so long ago, perhaps 25 years, various branches of the Christian faith had little to say to each other.  Pentecostals wouldn’t dream of going into a church where people were not regularly slain in the spirit or speaking in tongues; evangelicals decried liturgical churches and liturgical churches rarely conducted Bible studies, focusing primarily on spirituality and the sacraments.  Everybody disliked the Roman Catholics except, of course, the Catholics themselves.  The Roman Catholics didn’t dislike anyone because they didn’t know anything about other denominations. After all, according to their theology, they were the one true church.  Anglicans and Lutherans scrapped over silly things until they realized that most of the differences were mere fabrications.  They have now kissed and made up and are the best of friends. 

The divisions among denominations are  breaking down; we are beginning to see that we actually might have something to offer one another and that by cutting ourselves off from the other we are missing an essential piece of the Christian experience.  Even some non-denominational churches are talking to Episcopal Churches.  Of course that is not true across the board, but it is happening in some parts of the country. It is all quite amazing.

The one thing everyone has in common is the doctrine of the Trinity.  Certain denominations may place a stronger emphasis on one person of the trinity: Pentecostals have a definite preference for the Holy Spirit; evangelicals talk about Jesus much more than they do about God or the Holy Spirit and Episcopalians talk more about the mystery of God than the other persons of the Trinity but when hard pressed, everyone would claim the Trinity as a core doctrine of the Christian faith. By its very nature this doctrine proclaims parallel truths: God is three but God is also one. Concrete black and white thinkers have a lot of trouble with this doctrine because by its very nature it is grounded in mystery. John Wesley, an Anglican who began a reform movement that eventually became the Methodist church, had these thoughts about the Trinity: “Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of divine existence.”  Barbara Brown Taylor, one of the foremost preachers in the Episcopal Church poses this question with regard to the trinity:  “What is the sound of three hands clapping?”  Such thoughts delight us rather than answer any questions and that is the role of the trinity, to move us into the mystery of our faith because there is no real way to explain the trinity; we can only experience it. 

We can talk about the Trinity in terms of our spiritual needs.  There are times when we need the total mystery of God who theologian Karl Rahner describes as the ground of our being and the horizon of our being.  At times we need to bask in the dim light of a room full of candles lost in the omniscience of God.  There are other times when we need the very human touch of Jesus, to feel his presence near us, to imagine walking with our Lord, being carried by him or dancing with him.  Imaginative prayer can take us right into the physical presence of Jesus.  There are other times when we need to be transported in the emotion of the Holy Spirit. The feast of Pentecost often does that to me.  For me it is a feast day of pure emotion; my children were all baptized on Pentecost – it is a day that quite simply touches my spirit in such a way that a floodgate of tears is not uncommon. 

David Cunningham, a masterful interpreter of the Trinity explains the doctrine this way: “(1) God remained all powerful and transcendent and yet (2) Jesus, who died and was raised by God, was somehow also God; moreover, (3) The spirit, poured out on the church is also God and yet (4) there is only one God.”  Augustine, one of the early church fathers wrote that God is the lover, the beloved, and the love.  God is the speaker, the argument and the audience. 

Trinitarian thought is highly relational.  Whenever the people of God are together, God is also present.  Preaching is an experience of the trinity!  There is the preacher, the congregation and God.  I once had to preach a sermon for a search process.  On the day at church when I was supposed to be recording this, there were problems with the tape deck.  I then tried to preach the sermon without a congregation; I couldn’t do it!   When I preach, I am very dependent on knowing that at least a good portion of you are actually listening.  There will always be those who zone out or even read the announcement pages during the sermon. One of these days I might even single such folks out:  “Hey you, over there, pay attention!”  So far, I figure those who need to hear are on board and those who already have it all figured out and don’t need to listen can share their fount of wisdom with me sometime down the road.   It is this relationship between preacher and congregation that can make black churches so exciting.  Jim Wallis, a Christian writer and preacher tells the story of his first experience preaching at Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, the historic home congregation of Martin Luther King, Jr. He wrote of this experience:

 “I was excited, but very nervous.  When I stepped into that historic pulpit, I froze.  Dr. King had preached here, so had his father, ‘Daddy’ King, and so had countless leaders of the civil rights movement and the leading black pastors of our time.  What was a young white kid from Detroit doing in this pulpit?  I was, you might say, a little tentative as I began. “Well, Martin Luther King Jr. was for justice and …p-p-peace,” I stammered, “…and probably we should be too.”  It was something short of powerful.

But then, from the lower left side of the church, a voice boomed back at me. “O, help him, Lord, help him! C’mon young man, you’re supposed to preach.” So I started to – a little. “Aw, you’re not there yet!,” the voice bellowed.   (The Great Awakening by Jim Wallis)

Wallis goes on with the story talking about how this man just pulled the sermon out of him.  This is Trinitarian preaching at its best: the preacher, the congregation and God.  Now I don’t tend to get a lot of “Amens” from you, the people of St. John’s but I do get laughter, smiles and facial expressions that let me know you are with me.   And that is enough of an experience of the Trinitarian pulpit for me, at least for now.

The Trinitarian claim that three are one can be understood in the world of music.  When we hear music that has a multiplicity of parts we know that each part is important but what delights the ear is the sound the parts make together.  We rejoice in the interesting relationships and contrasts that each part contributes to the whole. 

Our understanding of scripture is also multi-voiced.  That is the richness of doing Bible study as a group.  Often when we read scripture on our own, we only see it one way but when we read it as a group we receive the gift of other people’s insights. 

At the end of the day, the Trinity offers us a rich multi-layered understanding of the divine and it also offers us a way of interacting in the world.  Three in one and one in three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.