Together on the Journey: A Weekly Blog from Fr. Andrew Sheldon
It has been my pattern over many years to find someone else to preach on Trinity Sunday. (Alas not this year!) My hang-up was that I found the Doctrine of the Trinity to be neither scriptural nor intelligible so I preferred not to display my ignorance or antipathy.
I found that sermons on the Trinity set out from the assumption that the congregation – and perhaps the preacher – need to be reminded that the historically distinctive Christian doctrine of God as three persons in one nature is not some arbitrary speculative exercise in celestial metaphysics intelligible only to the better class of seminary professors, but something of indispensable and vital relevance to the believer.
Fair enough, but such an assumption is often generally followed by simplistic metaphorical gyrations that have the congregation reflecting on shamrocks or H2O in its various forms – I, for instance, will never forget the time I did a Trinity Sunday children’s talk with a pear, a pear seed and a pear tree branch and tried to convince the kids they were actually the same thing. I mean, do the math. No matter how new the math is, three does not equal one. Or, we choose a favourite member of the Trinity. Like my sister and I on whether Paul or John was the best member of the Beatles. I like Jesus best; he’s really nice. Oh no, I’m all for God; you have to like his handiwork. Or, that Spirit is fun to be around, never know what’s going to happen. Taking this approach to the Trinity has formed whole movements and denominations.
Nonetheless, buried in The Book of Common Prayer – p. 695 – is the Creed of St Athanasius and, as incomprehensible as it appears, it does give me a new appreciation for the Doctrine of the Trinity. My learning was that we do these contortions around explaining the Trinity because we are at pains to make the three one. But Athanasius wrote “both the Trinity is to be worshipped in Unity and the Unity in Trinity”. After all, the Christian distinctive is that there is three. In other words, we spend too much time in showing how the three can be one at the expense of how the one is three.
It is the diversity of God that must be stressed, precisely because it is in diversity that we experience God. The doctrine of the Trinity is not about God in isolation from everything other than God. The doctrine of the Trinity is the result of reflecting on what it means to participate in the life of God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. First, we experienced God, then we tried to articulate it. Before there was a three-fold explanation there was a three-fold experience. And the experience is at the center and at the fore.
At times, the marvellous work of the Creator God may fill us with a profound sense of a Divinity who causes all things.
At times, Jesus may be a friend who walks beside us, who has suffered with us, who gets it and fills us with the sense that somewhere at the heart of the cosmos – at the right hand of God, as it were – is a partner in the human condition.
At times, the Spirit who fills us with new life may excite us with an idea, an inspiration, an answer, a possibility for service.
God the Father is always that non-material dimension of reality that is the ground of our being. God the Son always an impeccable model, example, mentor on how to live our lives. God the Spirit always a bringer of peace, nurture and comfort.
From a walk in the woods to ‘I wonder what Jesus would do’ to the shiver down the spine and the accompanying ‘aha’ . . . all God.
And so, my simplistic conclusion on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: quit trying to explain it and instead just experience, just enjoy, the one who is three . . . and maybe even four or more!
Andrew+