Trinity Sunday

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20

The Holy Trinity is serious business,
so you don’t hear a lot of jokes about the Trinity,
but, maybe because I’m in the business,
I have actually heard one.
A bishop is at a parish for Confirmation
and decides that in his homily
he will quiz the teenagers
he is supposed to be confirming.
So he asks them,
“who can tell me what the Trinity is?”
They all look at their shoes,
in that way that teenagers do.
So he calls on one young man
who mumbles a reply,
in that way that teenagers do.
The bishop says,
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.”
The boy sighs,
in that way that teenagers do,
and replies, only slightly louder,
“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The bishop, wanting the boy to speak up
so everyone can hear him,
says, “I’m sorry, I still didn’t understand.”
And the boy, rolling his eyes,
in that way that teenagers do,
says loudly and clearly,
“You’re not supposed to understand it.
It’s a mystery.”

Maybe not the best joke,
but it makes a point
about how many Christians approach the Trinity.
It is a doctrine that we are taught to repeat
but cannot possibly be expected to understand.
And this is true, in a sense,
because the doctrine of the Trinity says something about God,
and God is the ultimate mystery of existence,
which our finite minds cannot comprehend.
At the same time,
our Scripture readings for this feast of the Holy Trinity
do give us some insight
into why the Church came to profess belief
in a God who, while one,
is also three distinct persons who are equally God.

In our first reading, from Deuteronomy,
we hear rehearsed the fundamental tenant
of the faith of ancient Israel:
“that the LORD is God in the heavens above
and on earth below,
and that there is no other.”
God is one, utterly unique;
God has no competitor gods,
no rival deities;
God possesses the fullness of divine power
and God commands unwavering loyalty from God’s people.
But then, in our Gospel,
the risen Jesus tells his disciples,
“All power in heaven and on earth
has been given to me.”
The power that the book of Deuteronomy tells us
belongs to God alone,
Jesus says has been given to him
by the God he calls “Father”;
what the tradition of Israel says
can only be true of God,
Jesus claims as true of himself.
And finally, in the letter to the Romans,
Paul speaks of the “Spirit of God”
who has the power to make us co-heir with Christ,
so that we too cry out to God as our “Abba,” our father.

So the Scriptures,
while teaching that God is one,
also claim for Jesus and the Spirit
things that can only be true of God.
Not three gods, but one God
eternally existing in three persons,
who are united in a perfect and eternal dance of love,
each fully sharing in what it means to be God.
This is what that rather strange word “consubstantial,”
which we find in the Creed,
is trying to get at.
Jesus and the Holy Spirit are just as much God
as the Father is:
they are not demigods or messenger boys;
to say that the Son and Spirit
are “consubstantial” with the Father
is to say something
about the incredible intimacy of God with us:
the coming of Christ into our world
is the promised coming of God,
not the arrival of some emissary
dispatched by God from above;
the presence of the Spirit in our lives
is the presence of God,
not the presence of some go-between
linking us to a distant deity.
The mystery of the Trinity
is the mystery of eternal love,
eternal joy,
into which we have been invited
through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart wrote:
“Do you want to know what goes on
in the heart of the Trinity?
I will tell you.
In the heart of the Trinity
the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit.
The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.”
Leaving aside some finer points of theology,
Eckhart presents us
with a picture of the Trinity, of God,
as an eternal act of shared joy,
shared love,
shared hilarity,
ecstatically overflowing into the world
in our creation and redemption.

This is who our God is:
truly a mystery,
but not a mysterious force operating at a distance
nor an inscrutably stern heavenly lawmaker,
but something like the mystery of happiness
that arises from mutual love,
the mystery of an infectious act of eternal laughter
that draws us in and makes us laugh along
until cleansing tears of joy run down our faces.
So perhaps we should tell more—and funnier—
jokes about the Trinity.
Or maybe we should live our faith
in the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit
with such joy,
with such passion,
with such infectious hilarity
that those around us
cannot help but join in that laughter
and feel a bit more faith,
a bit more hope,
a bit more love.

Trinity Sunday

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20

When we think about salvation – 

what it is that we mean when we say 

that we are saved through Christ – 

most people probably think in terms of the death of Jesus

and our sins being forgiven.

This is of course true – 

our sins have been forgiven through the death of Jesus – 

but the language of the Bible concerning salvation and

the images used to depict our rescue from the human condition

are much richer than that.

In our second reading, 

from the letter to the Romans, 

Paul uses adoption as an image for salvation.

He says that those who are led by the Spirit of God

are sons and daughters of God:

the Spirit of God he calls a “Spirit of adoption.”

In the ancient world the concept of family 

was wider than our modern notion of the nuclear family.

There were a number of ways 

one could be a part of a family:

families included not only parent and children, 

but also the servants or slaves 

who worked in the household.

In fact, in the Roman world, 

abandoned infants were more likely 

to be taken into families as slaves

than to be adopted as heirs.

So Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, 

wants to assure them 

that they have been brought into God’s family 

not to be slaves, but to be children and inheritors 

of eternal life in God’s kingdom.

We are not to serve God out of fear, as a slave would,

but out of a love that is a reflection 

of the loving generosity

that God has shown to us in our adoption.

Paul says that this Spirit of adoption makes us

“heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”

The Spirit of God, Paul says,  

makes us cry out to God 

using the same name that the Gospels tell us

Jesus himself used: “Abba, Father.”

What Jesus was by his very nature – 

the only begotten child of God 

and heir to God’s kingdom –

we have become 

through the grace of the Holy Spirit,

the Spirit of adoption.

This is what it means to be saved:

to be inheritors with Jesus of eternal life

through our adoption in the Holy Spirit.

I know that a number of people in our parish

know very directly what this says about God’s love.

Whether adoptive parents or adopted children,

they know how deep that bond of love can be,

how gracious and grace-filled this act of generosity is,

how expansive of the bounds of family,

reaching out beyond the bonds of nature

to create new bonds of grace.

Adoptive parents and adopted children

and even those parents who,

entrusting their children to someone else’s care, 

have surrendered their children for adoption,

know in a particular way 

how great is the power of God’s love. 

But why talk about this on Trinity Sunday?

Shouldn’t a Trinity Sunday homily be an attempt

to explain puzzling words in the Creed 

like “consubstantial”

or to find some lame analogy 

for the three persons and one nature of God,

or at least to talk about St. Patrick and shamrocks?

Why talk about adoption?

The doctrine of the Trinity 

is not advanced mathematics for Christians

in which we somehow make one and one and one 

add up to one.

The doctrine of the Trinity 

is the mystery of our gracious adoption 

by the Holy Spirit 

by which we become coheirs with Christ

of eternal life with the one 

whom we can now call “Abba, Father.”

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that, 

just as children are adopted into the love 

that binds together the members of their adoptive family,

we have been adopted 

into the mystery of interpersonal love

by which the Father, Son and Spirit are one God.

This is why in our Gospel today 

Christ commands his disciples 

to “make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

To become a disciple of Jesus 

is to be adopted into God’s love

and our baptism in the name of the Trinity 

is our ritual of adoption.

So let us on this Trinity Sunday give thanks to God

for the Spirit of adoption that has been given to us,

the mystery of eternal love of which we are heirs.