Back in June of 2003, I flew with a friend of mine to Germany where we met another friend of mine who was working for a year in Berlin. Now, we were only there for a week and we had to really plan how to travel around so we could see as much as we could in so short a time. Of course, in Europe, you have to travel by train. So we would take a train real early in the morning, and then head back to Berlin in the evening. On one of the trips back to Berlin, I was sitting and talking to my friend when we heard this commotion behind us. This guy, dressed as an attendant, came hurriedly through the train asking if there was a Catholic priest on board. Apparently, there wasn’t. A few minutes later, he came back through, this time asking for a lutheran pastor or even an anglican priest. Again, there didn’t appear to be. A few moments, later he came back through asking for a Jewish Rabbi. This time an elderly man towards the back of the car stood up and said, “Can I help you, friend. I am a Methodist minister.” At this the attendant sighed and said, of course not, you’re not going to be any help, I need a corkscrew.”
Today is the day that we celebrate the Holy Trinity. You know, that logically impossible, mathematically complicated thing that tells us that God is three distinct entities, each with its own purpose and yet, these three distinct entities are, in fact one and the same. 1+1+1=1. Plain as day. Or maybe not so much.
I preached on this topic, I think two years ago, and I looked over that sermon and came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something different, but I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what to say this morning. You see, while I don’t read a lot of mystery novels, I do enjoy them. Last week, Dan Brown came out with a new novel. I know his books are controversial, like the Da Vinci Code, and I can understand why, but at the end of the day, for me at least, it is a fictional novel and he is a good writer so I enjoy reading him. Now he only comes out with a book every few years or so and it had been awhile since his last one. When I new there was another one coming, I was counting off the days to when I could get it. I finished it this week, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it. The surprising thing is that as I got closer to the end of the book, I found myself getting upset, because I was enjoying the mystery so much, that I didn’t want to get to the end. Even though my mind was trained to sift through possibilities and find the facts, the reality is that I enjoy the mystery.
As I looked over the text I preached two years ago on this subject, I noticed that I spent a good deal of time trying to give a definition to the trinity that would give it some meaning. Because, in my mind a mystery lacks definition, by design. We can’t learn anything through a mystery. This morning, though, I realize that I may have been trying to explain a mystery thinking that clarity brings power in understanding. Yet, what if that isn’t the case. What if mystery has a power of its own that can even surpass the power that clarity can bring.
Let’s look at an example. The book of Genesis. Let me tell you two different accounts of creation and see if you can tell me which one is actually from the Bible. Option 1: man and woman are made on the same day at roughly the same time and at the end of the rest of creation. Option 2: man is made first, then God makes the rest of creation and towards the end, then finally makes woman as a companion to man.
Which one then, of these two different accounts of creation is actually the version that Genesis tells? The first version does indeed come from Genesis, specifically it comes from the very first chapter. The second version comes from the second chapter of Genesis. That is right, they both are from Genesis. They both tell of creation, and they both tell contradictory stories about how the earth was created. How can that be?
Throughout history, many people have weighed in on the issue. Some say there is no contradiction, that they are simply the same account but from a different point of view. Others say that one of them was a later addition. Still others say that it is simply a metaphorical attempt to put in words the actions God took on our behalf during creation. Even others point to this as proof that the Bible can’t be authoritative because of its contradictions. Any of these explanations could be true, but I personally don’t subscribe to any of them. And here is why.
Sometimes a mystery is ok. Sometimes accepting what we don’t know can help us to see the larger picture in a better way. There is an old story about Saint Augustine. One day Augustine was walking along the beach by the ocean and pondering the deep mystery of God the Holy Trinity. He met a boy there on the beach who had dug a hole in the sand and kept busy running back and forth from the hole to the ocean; collecting water and pouring it into the hole. Augustine was curious about this, so he asked the boy: “What are you doing?” The boy replied: “I am going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” Augustine then said: “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit into your hole.” And the boy answered Augustine: “Neither can the infinite God the Holy Trinity fit into your finite mind.”
The Bible is full of many mysteries. From the contradictory accounts of creation, to the differences in the four Gospels, to the true meaning of the Book of Revelation, and of course to the concept of the Holy Trinity that we deal with today. Scripture, with all its answers and with all of the advice it gives us on how to live our lives, with all of that, it is still filled with mystery. And that is ok, because in mystery, we find ourselves opening our mind to possibilities that we may not have imagined if we simply were presented with facts. Maybe the mystery of the trinity is simply that, a mystery that was never meant to truly be understood but rather to simply be believed and lived in.
This mystery, in its complexity and in its simplicity, can help us understand God in a better way and it can also help us to grasp better what our own calling may be. Because in this three is one and one is three illogical structure we find that our lives are filled with small trinities. We find them all over. Our relationships. Our gardening. Our communities. Augustine, for example, explained the trinity as a diagram of relationship. He used the model, believe it or not, of a romantic relationship. The lover, the beloved and the love that they share. Each representing either the father, the son or the holy spirit. Others have compared it to a plant, with the seed, the roots, and the visible flower. And even in our communities we can see its presence. the church, the community and the mission work we do, for example.
All of this is what makes the doctrine of the Trinity a celebration of the triumph of the infinite hues of complexity over a monochromatic simplicity. It reminds us that the central metaphor for God for us Christians is a diversity, and within that diversity a unity. We see that biological diversity is nature’s way of preserving and propagating life. But when it comes to race or class or even sexual orientation, it can feel like a threat to our own values and lifestyles.
Sociologists tell us that in early American towns the richest person and the poorest person never lived more than 200 yards apart. They would have to walk by the other’s dwelling during the course of a typical day. They were part of the same community and they were connected in a way we can now only try to imagine.
How different is that from where we are now when we wall ourselves off from the community or gate ourselves inside. How different is it when we don’t share the same schools or even the same churches?
When we don’t experience diversity in our day to day, we begin to lost touch with one another and the social fabric that binds us together begins to slowly unravel.
Theological diversity works the same way, and maybe that is even more difficult because we are dealing with what we believe to be eternal and sacred, and when it comes to that we are not open to alternative approaches. We want our religious truths to be pure, immutable. We want to believe our particular corner on God has not other inhabitants.
Rev. Richard Bowers writes, “The fear and insecurity that draws people into rigid, propositional statements about god and creation blinds them to the reality that all theological reflection flows from particular histories and contexts that shape how we understand God and the divine work among us.
For Christians, the Trinity is the primary symbol of community that holds together by containing diversity within itself. The trinity is an attempt to express an ineffable truth using a symbol, a metaphor for the different aspects and activities of God’s personhood.
It might make for strange math. Yet, actually the Cappodocian Theologians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, all from the 4th and 5th centuries) viewed the number 1 as no number at all because it had no diversity. It possessed no discernable strength. Isn’t that interesting?
The number 2 was weak as well in that it was only a dualism. At best, it could only be two sides of the same coin.
The number 3 was considered the first real number because it had innate stability, a complexity; a diversity, which made it durable and strong.
And the Trinity is not the only symbol of diversity for Christians. All of the Bible with its two accounts of the creation, and its four gospels, is enriched by its strikingly different approach to telling the story of Jesus and his ministry. It symbolizes a unity that is anything but uniform. These multiple viewpoints of truth help us to begin to comprehend the complexity of Jesus and the Mystery of the Incarnate Christ. the Son of the living God can’t be verified by one, lone witness. It requires a diversity of witnesses, a host of people who see that story, who witness that truth through their own individual lenses.
No matter how we choose to explain the trinity, the reality is that its mystery gives us an opportunity to venture into a deeper understanding of what it is and what it means. In some ways, then the Trinity is the first community, the model for how we are called to connect with one another, without prejudice, without inequality, without competition, and always with perfect love.
It is not that a Trinitarian God is too complicated to understand, but rather that a Trinitarian God is too complex to be managed or manipulated by all of us who think we know better than God.
We see all kinds of issues in black and white, but we live our lives in color. the complexity of the trinity means that Spirit and Flesh live inextricably bound to one another. It means that the human and the divine are connected in an eternal dance.
In fact, the early theologians used the Greek work perichorasis which means around the circle. As we dance together and with God, we all dance to the center of life where God resides and we all move closer to one another.
Today we also celebrate those who have served our country, many making the ultimate sacrifice. While we do that, we must remember one thing in particular. Despite the army’s motto of “an army of one”, few if any veterans that I know would say that battles are lost or one by a single person, they know that it is by working together that evil can be overcome. That speaks to our lives and our faith and our mission as well, so as we celebrate those who serve, let their example and the example of the trinity itself to remind us that it is together we are strong, it is in our unity that our mission is better accomplished.
Returning back to Augustine, as he wrote to students as he was writing “On The Trinity,” his famous treatise on this topic, he wrote the following. “Lest you become discouraged, know that when you love, you know more about who God is than you ever could know with your intellect.”
It is in loving that we find love. It is in giving that we receive. It is in serving that we are ultimately served.
The Holy Trinity, it is indeed a holy mystery. It is not an entity that mathematics or physics or calculus can explain. It is not a philosophical position that can be achieved by the use of logic or reason. It is a mystery. It is one that we may never really solve, but in that we find its strength. It is not something we must see in order to believe. Rather, it is something that truly needs to believed and lived in order to see the effects it has on our lives, on our community and on our mission and calling in this world, in God’s world, in God’s creation.
Maybe we haven’t answered any questions today, yet, even more important, maybe we have learned that we can find beauty and strength without finding answers and proof. That is the mystery of the trinity. That is the mystery of God. And it is in that mystery, that, when we accept it, we come to find the loving embrace of that God, That Father, that Son, and that Holy Spirit. Amen.
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