Transcript
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Please be seated.
Happy Trinity Sunday. I love preaching on Trinity Sunday. It’s one of my favorite Sundays to preach. Now that I get to set the preaching schedule, I purposely made today one of my preaching days. Why do I love Trinity Sunday? Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday of the year that in almost every other church across the country, the sermon is by the assistant or associate or deacon or curate. Because today, on Trinity Sunday, we get to enter into such deep theology that scholars and theologians have argued about it for centuries and still continue to argue. After all, you can’t really preach on or talk about the Trinity without immediately committing a heresy, and that’s just part of the fun. It was theology about the Trinity that led to splitting the Eastern Church and the Western Church back in the fourth century, and it was theology about the Trinity that contributed to the split of the Roman Church and the Protestant church in the 16th Century.
And today, I would say we simply just try not to explain the Trinity at all. In an attempt to avoid any major global splits in the church again. So instead, we sit in this level of unknowing and unknown, almost like a fear of trying to figure it all keeps us paralyzed and also keeps us in what may be a false sense of safety. But today. Today, I get to invite you into a mind-bending exercise of trying to figure it all out, trying to come up with perhaps some way of understanding the Trinity as three persons, one being, co-eternal, consubstantial, individual, and yet as one. You ready?
First, it’s worth saying the Trinity is not in the Bible. Well okay, that’s not completely true. There is no doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible. In other words, there is no stated explanation of the Trinity in Scripture. There are two times in the New Testament when they are named as the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit though, one in Matthew, when Jesus commissions the apostles to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And one in the second letter to the Corinthians, when Paul is closing the letter with a final benediction, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. But these don’t really tell us what or how the Trinity is. These patches- passages really just name the Trinity. And so we are stuck with trying to figure out this crazy riddle on our own.
Certainly we can look at other theologians from the past, but be careful. As I’ve already said, as soon as you find a theology of the Trinity that you like, you’ll probably end up getting named a heretic. So this is why I like to turn to science. And not just like ninth grade biology science. I like quantum mechanics. I know you all were expecting that from the pulpit today. I have a weird fascination with quantum science, and find that so much of God in the universe can overlap with the science of mystical thought. Science of the absolute minute that the experiments can only be done in thought or through mathematical equations, experiments that often sit at the edge of human comprehension, and yet are still considered hard facts and acceptable in polite company, as if science gives us support. And yet, when we try to use the same vocabulary about God, then we get shunned as crazy church people. So here is my mini quantum lecture for you.
Wave particle duality. It is a theory about the smallest of the smalls, specifically light and electrons. We all know that light moves in waves. Or if you didn’t, it does. Like when a boat cuts through the water and leaves waves behind in a wake. Those waves slowly spread out and can be felt for quite a while. However, when light as a wave is targeted at one point, think of a projector for a movie screen. The light does not quite wave out, so to speak, in the same way as a boat’s wake does. Instead, it hits the target like a single particle. Almost like when you’re teeing up to hit a golf ball and it goes exactly to that one place, or ideally it goes to that one place you think it’s going to go to. But what if instead, when you hit the golf ball, it suddenly went in all directions like a wave? That’s how throwing an electron works. While it is one object, it functions as a wave as it moves through space until it hits a target and takes on the single form again. Does it make sense?
Basically, at the smallest level of the universe, sometimes something looks like a wave, but acts like a particle, and sometimes something looks like a particle, but acts like a wave. As Albert Einstein said, it seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other. While at times we may use either. He continues, while working on this wave particle duality theory, we are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality. Separately, neither of them fully explain the phenomena of light, but together they do two contradictory pictures. Separately, neither of them fully explain, but together they do.
What if Einstein was talking about God? About the Trinity? What if, instead of talking about light, Einstein’s quote read this way we have two contradictory pictures of God. Separately, neither of them fully explain the phenomena of God, but together they do. Kind of sounds like the Trinity, or at least maybe two parts of the three God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three contradictory pictures of God. Separately, none of them fully explains the phenomena of God, but together they do.
But why would God need to do that? Why must God function in three persons, three forms, when existing as one God? Because God loves us. Because God created us and knows us even in the deepest and darkest, even in the barest. And Christ even in the most basic element of who we are and who are we? We are humans, limited, incomplete, imperfect, created by such an incomprehensible, unbelievable God. A God who would willingly take on specific form so that our minuscule minds of limited comprehension can relate to such a vast and all encompassing God. All done out of love. Love for us, God’s creation, with whom God longs for relationship. And yet we must choose to accept the invitation. The invitation to believe in God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, one God, three persons.
Who do you pray to when you pray? Do you pray to God the Father to Jesus Christ, to the Holy Spirit? And what about whom you relate to most? The creator, the created. Creating. Are you comforted by the grandfather clock? The first actor, the placer of the stars in the sky? Or do you company- do you keep company with God made man? A friend who walks with you and holds your hand? Or is it the peace and calmness of something like a warm blanket or a gentle breeze that suits your aching soul?
Maybe you’ve never really thought about it, but I’m sure there’s one you like best, one that you relate to the most. One quote God that gets most of your devotion and shakes your faith and consequentially shapes your life. Maybe it has changed over time and where you are in your own life journey, but I’m sure you have the specific person of the Trinity that you speak to and seek out the most. I know I do.
And that, I imagine, is one of the main reasons why the Trinity exists. For God so loved the world not just enough to make us happy, or to give us promise of eternity, but to invite us into relationship with God and whatever form or person or entity we need in order to calm our souls and soothe our minds and comfort our hearts. For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son, as well as God’s self, as well as God’s breath.
I have seen the Holy Spirit soothe my soul. I have known God the Father to call me forward. I have felt the hand of Jesus comforting my broken heart. I’m sure you have too. I’m sure you have seen the evidence of God’s forever unending, unconditional love. Be it in one or 2 or 3 persons of the Trinity, God takes on whatever form we need out of love for us, so that we will accept the invitation to love God in all that we are and all that we do. The Trinity just makes it a little easier for us to understand exactly what God does and who God is. Or at least I think that’s God’s goal with the Trinity to be who we need God to be. When we need God to be that, be it the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, and to comfort us when we feel overwhelmed or unable to know God in God’s fullest, all encompassing everything.
So I invite you, rather than feeling overwhelmed by the greatest, the vastness, the unknowable ness of God. Feel comfort in the fact that God gives God’s self to each of us in a way that allows us to know God in the most comfortable way for us. And may in that we can then acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity and the power of God’s divine majesty. Amen.