[I dug into the archives for this sermon I delivered on Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2019 at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix AZ]
✠In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Words are important. They heal, they destroy, they define, they obscure. They change, they seize up, they die. What a word meant a thousand years ago often is not what it means today unless care is taken to groom it and maintain it. Words represent different concepts in different languages and quite frequently they have no precise analogues when they try to represent another word in another language.
Words are very important to today’s message. Christians have squabbled over words because of their very defining nature. Christians have shown distinct lack of humility, love, and personal integrity with each other while trying to prove a concept that is all about these very things.
Today’s message is the celebration of the mystery of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Three Persons, yet one God, indivisible, yet unconfounded, and the very model of humility, integrity, and love.
I was raised, like many of you, in a Trinitarian Christian tradition, but as a child I didn’t think much of that outside of the classic diagram of the triangle with the persons at each apex and God in the middle with lines denoting who is versus who isn’t. While effective in introducing the message, it is only a launching point that only touches on the great mystery, and here is where again I will touch on the Trinity as humility, love, and integrity.
I’m going to start off by saying that the Holy Trinity is our model for HUMILITY. Humility is an utter loving selflessness, where the will is united, where every part, everyone, everything works together toward the whole. Case in point: each person of the Trinity loves the other two persons, for what being can be truly whole if there is not love for the whole? Each person of the Trinity is selfless, acting in perfectly united will. Even when the Incarnation introduced human will into the equation, the mutual humility of the persons of the Trinity manifested itself in a will undivided; rather than destroy that human will the Trinity reconciled it, Jesus bringing it into accord with the will of the Father in perfect humility.
The Holy Trinity is our model for LOVE. I must warn you, here follows some Greek. You can’t discuss the Trinity without absorbing some Greek…it’s a Christian occupational hazard. It is love which drives God. It is a characteristic of the Being that is God.
Theologians and philosophers struggle with this concept, but God is not a being, but God is ὁ ὤν,[1] or for our purposes, THE BEING. And one of the characteristics of this BEING versus non-being (also known as nothingness) is unconditional loving generation. God is so full of love that within that BEING is the Source, what in Greek philosophy is called ἀρχή,[2] or what we call the Father. Because the Father is God, and because the Father is the Source of all, in that BEING and in that love is begotten the Son. The Son is the eternal expression of God, what in Greek philosophy is called Λόγος,[3] or what we call the Word. Famously in the prologue of St. John’s Gospel we hear, Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος.[4] While we translate it as “in the beginning was the Word,” we also may read, “Within the Source was the Word.” There is no before, there is no after, there is no one without the other. That Love processes from the Source as the exhalation of God, the Creative Force the philosophers called πνεῦμα,[5] or what we call the Spirit. An even greater mystery is that because of this Love, each person is contained wholly within the other. Jesus Himself said that He was in the Father and that the Father was in Him. We read that within Jesus is the Spirit, but the Spirit brings Christ among us, and in the Spirit we encounter the Father. In theological circles we call that περιχώρησις,[6] the mutual indwelling of each person of the Trinity within the context of BEING. It is the great dance of Love between the Persons of the Trinity, wholly united in Love and sharing that same BEING.
The Holy Trinity is also our model for personal INTEGRITY, or another turn of phrase to which I owe to reading Fr. John MacQuarrie, is FAITHFULNESS. God is faithful, that is, God has integrity in how the Persons of the Trinity interact within the BEING. God is consistent with God’s principles, with the characteristics of God’s BEING. Personal integrity also means that the omnipotent BEING, the BEING that can do or create anything, does nothing to compromise that BEING. There are things that are not God’s will because to do so would violate the integrity of that BEING, and that would be NOT BEING, or nothingness. God cannot do anything that violates that integrity. The Father does not break character, neither does the Son, nor does the Spirit. While effecting change and being the dynamic force, the Trinity also exhibits changelessness within that dynamism, a wholeness, holiness, if you will.[7]
So what importance does this have for us?
We are told we are created in God’s image. To be in God’s image we must show in ourselves humility, love, and integrity. Love is manifested in humility and integrity, in realizing that in selflessly reaching out we participate in the BEING of God, in loving each other we love Him, that in practicing integrity we embrace life.
Let’s take an aside to discuss wrath…uncomfortable as that may seem. Contrary to popular opinion, wrath is not an emotion but a condition. It is a breakdown in love and integrity between parties. We see it between humans, let alone human and divine. How does this work? It is the product of death and sin, the opposite of God’s image in us. First, as one rejects humility, love, and integrity, this process is a rejection of the author of humility, love, and integrity, and this is called SIN. In embracing SIN, one enters a state of separation from BEING, and this is called DEATH. Because God’s integrity prevents God from engaging in and tolerating SIN and DEATH, God rejects SIN and DEATH, this rejection is called WRATH.[8]
So as part of God’s integrity in the persons of the Trinity, the Love that is the Trinity cannot idly stand by and see the creation that He loves fall under wrath. It is not in God’s nature to let that happen nor let it persist. It is not God’s will that any should come to death or be a slave to sin. To turn from sin is REPENTANCE and to be repentant is to embrace BEING, and that is LIFE. Because of Adam’s sin we are all subject to death, and subject to death we engage in sin. So to free us from death, God had to destroy death, and with the destruction of death comes the elimination of sin.
So God the Father begot the plan that God the Son enacted, filled with God the Holy Spirit. Taking on human form, being born of a woman and binding created human nature to uncreated divine nature in the Person of God the Son, the Holy Trinity came among us as one of us so that the Son, as Jesus the Christ, would take our sin upon himself, would suffer, would die, and break the power of DEATH. When nothing is filled with something, nothing is no longer possible. When LIFE was swallowed by DEATH, DEATH took as a mortal blow, for the integrity of God could not permit eternal BEING to wink out. When we turn to the author of Life we escape that death and are no longer lost in nothingness. “O Death where is your victory, O grave where is your sting?”[9]
Words are important. With the right words we know the lengths God will go for us. With them we begin to see why God may do some things and not others. With them we learn of the Love of God and maybe, just maybe, embark on that journey to reunion with God, with the Lord, the giver of Life. So let us adore the most Holy and Glorious Life-Giving Trinity, undivided yet unconfounded, three persons yet still one God.
✠Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Saviour save us. Amen.
The Trinity (Троица), Moscow, 15th Century A.D., written by the hand of Andrei Rublyev. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(Andrei_Rublev)
[1] Pronounced ho ON. Pronunciations given reflect Ecclesiastical, not Classical Greek. Vowels are simple, really. A as in father, e as in let, i as in meet, o as in no, and u as in hoop. No gliding or working other vowel noises (as English is very prone to do) is permitted, which makes Anglos stick out all over the world as they try to pronounce the local language. [2] Pronounced ar-KHEE. The letter that looks like x is a k that is dragged out over gravel: almost make a k but breathe through where the tongue almost touches where the k would be. I’d say practice in a mirror, but there’s only so much you can see. [3] Pronounced LO-ghoss The gamma (G) is like the x…it’s a drawn out hard G almost made but breathed out. [4] Pronounced En ar-KHEE EEN ho LO-ghoss [5] Pronounced PNEV-ma. Yes, the P and N are both pronounced. Awkward, isn’t it? [6] Pronounced pe-ree-KHO-O-ree-sis. Long O’s don’t become OH or oooo (that’s a U). [7] In classical Thomistic theology, beings are combinations of act (actuality) and potency (the ability to become an actuality…maybe). The higher the being, the more actuality the being has. God is pure actuality, for every potential is already actualized. [8] Which came first is the subject of studies in Atonement. Some schools attribute Sin to everyone from birth with death the result afterward, whereas others attribute Sin to our progenitors (“Adam and Eve”) who incurred death, and passed on death to their offspring which then makes them liable to commit more sin and therefore gather death on top of death. [9] 1 Cor. 15.55