Trinity Sunday, 2014
15/06/14 05:11
Most of the holidays in the church center around events in the life of Jesus. Last week we celebrated Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Today, however, we have a holiday that is dedicated to a theological concept. The trinity is not directly mentioned in the Bible, though the three aspects of God - Creator, Christ and Spirit are all explored in biblical texts. The idea of talking about God as trinity grew up with the church and was forged in some of the great historic councils in which creeds and testimonies of faith were drafted. As the church made its transition from a new and somewhat countercultural religion to the religion of the mainstream of Roman culture, there was a drive to have some standardization of belief. The theology of the trinity emerged as a way to think and talk about God.
It has been tripping up Christians ever since it was introduced. For some, outside of the faith, it seems as if Christians believe in more than one God. Christians, of course, are quick to point out that there is only one God and that the different aspects are not expressions of multiple Gods, but of the same God. Jesus is God. God is Spirit. The Spirit is Jesus. Even a very dedicated and faithful believer and understand how the trinity can be a bit of an intellectual challenge.
During the course of my life as a Christian I have endured a number of very boring discussions about the trinity. Although I enjoy the challenge of the intellectual side of our faith and find that thinking about God is a wonderful way to spend my time, there are some arguments that seem to me to lack much passion. I find it difficult to get much excitement in a perfectly balanced discussion. I’ve encountered lots of faithful Christians whose theology of the trinity doesn’t shine with textbook accuracy. You can get me excited about mission and ministry. You can get me excited about sacraments. But I don’t remember ever being very excited about the perfect trinitarian formula.
Maybe that is why Trinity Sunday doesn’t rank up there among the most memorable of Christian festivals and holidays. It is a date on the calendar - the Sunday after Pentecost - when we read some familiar texts and then get on with the longest season of the church year.
The texts for Trinity Sunday, however, are all wonderful and beloved readings. I can get passionate about explaining the first creation story of the gook of Genesis. I took a course in the Genesis creation narratives when I was in seminary that was a delight in its careful analysis of each detail of translation from the Hebrew into English. The history of that particular narrative and its role in the story of our people is a wonderful story. Even the many ways in which contemporary Christians have abused the text by reading it as a science text book, applying our very human sense of time, and distorting the role of the text in the story of our people are worthy of a bit of explanation and are often opportunities for additional teaching about the text.
Psalm 8 is wonderful and poetic and expresses a feeling that I have known as I look out into the vastness of the universe. The farewell of the first letter to the Corinthians reminds us to greet one another warmly and to remember that we are loved by Gods faithful people who have gone before. And the great commission from Matthew calls to all Christians and reminds us that we have been sent forth to make disciples of others.
One of the realities of much of our teaching about the Trinity is that we have often made the concept too difficult. We have come up with many long and wordy explanations of the idea. It is, on the one hand, a very complex idea. The concept of the trinity didn’t emerge in a single generation. The church has been wrestling with the concept for many generations. The nuances of interpretation have been honed by many formal presentations and late-night theological arguments.
But there is also a side to the concept that is very simple. God is so invested in relationship that God is relationship at the very core of God’s being.
God exists to be in relationship.
Even before anything else exists, God is already an expression of love.
The practical implication of the theology of the trinity is that we do not exist alone. Nothing exists without God. Everything that we think, do or say has an effect on something other than ourselves. We are all connected to all of the other parts of this marvelous creation.
In recognition and celebration of our place in the church year, I brought up both Pentecost and Trinity texts as part of the seminar I taught in Hastings over the past couple of days. Yesterday I invited the students to participate in a round-robin telling of the beginning of the book of Genesis. They mdd faces and said that they didn’t know the text well enough to tell the story, but they were remarkably accurate as we went around the room and shared the story that our people have been telling for millennia. After the seventh day and the telling of God resting from the work of creation, the next speaker started by saint that he needed to add some details that had been left out. He then began to offer some of the details from the 2nd story of Creation - the one that uses the names Adam and Eve - that follows the first one in the book. Others began to remind him that he was telling a different story. It was an amazing moment as I simply pointed out to them that this way of talking about creation was as old as the biblical texts themselves. Our people have been telling multiple stories about creation for as long as we have been taling about the topic.
There is one God.
There are lots of ways to think and talk about God.
A couple of notes to regular readers of this blog:
First of all, just in case you missed it, Costa Rica pulled off a major upset with their 3 - 1 victory over Uruguay in World Cup competition. It sure would have been fun to have been in downtown San Jose with the crowd watching on the big screens.
Secondly, we will be traveling for the next two weeks. Although I plan to write the blog every day I know we will be in some places where I won’t have Internet access. If you miss the blog one day, check back on another. I’ll finally get them all posted. But don’t worry if the blog doesn’t appear on schedule.
It has been tripping up Christians ever since it was introduced. For some, outside of the faith, it seems as if Christians believe in more than one God. Christians, of course, are quick to point out that there is only one God and that the different aspects are not expressions of multiple Gods, but of the same God. Jesus is God. God is Spirit. The Spirit is Jesus. Even a very dedicated and faithful believer and understand how the trinity can be a bit of an intellectual challenge.
During the course of my life as a Christian I have endured a number of very boring discussions about the trinity. Although I enjoy the challenge of the intellectual side of our faith and find that thinking about God is a wonderful way to spend my time, there are some arguments that seem to me to lack much passion. I find it difficult to get much excitement in a perfectly balanced discussion. I’ve encountered lots of faithful Christians whose theology of the trinity doesn’t shine with textbook accuracy. You can get me excited about mission and ministry. You can get me excited about sacraments. But I don’t remember ever being very excited about the perfect trinitarian formula.
Maybe that is why Trinity Sunday doesn’t rank up there among the most memorable of Christian festivals and holidays. It is a date on the calendar - the Sunday after Pentecost - when we read some familiar texts and then get on with the longest season of the church year.
The texts for Trinity Sunday, however, are all wonderful and beloved readings. I can get passionate about explaining the first creation story of the gook of Genesis. I took a course in the Genesis creation narratives when I was in seminary that was a delight in its careful analysis of each detail of translation from the Hebrew into English. The history of that particular narrative and its role in the story of our people is a wonderful story. Even the many ways in which contemporary Christians have abused the text by reading it as a science text book, applying our very human sense of time, and distorting the role of the text in the story of our people are worthy of a bit of explanation and are often opportunities for additional teaching about the text.
Psalm 8 is wonderful and poetic and expresses a feeling that I have known as I look out into the vastness of the universe. The farewell of the first letter to the Corinthians reminds us to greet one another warmly and to remember that we are loved by Gods faithful people who have gone before. And the great commission from Matthew calls to all Christians and reminds us that we have been sent forth to make disciples of others.
One of the realities of much of our teaching about the Trinity is that we have often made the concept too difficult. We have come up with many long and wordy explanations of the idea. It is, on the one hand, a very complex idea. The concept of the trinity didn’t emerge in a single generation. The church has been wrestling with the concept for many generations. The nuances of interpretation have been honed by many formal presentations and late-night theological arguments.
But there is also a side to the concept that is very simple. God is so invested in relationship that God is relationship at the very core of God’s being.
God exists to be in relationship.
Even before anything else exists, God is already an expression of love.
The practical implication of the theology of the trinity is that we do not exist alone. Nothing exists without God. Everything that we think, do or say has an effect on something other than ourselves. We are all connected to all of the other parts of this marvelous creation.
In recognition and celebration of our place in the church year, I brought up both Pentecost and Trinity texts as part of the seminar I taught in Hastings over the past couple of days. Yesterday I invited the students to participate in a round-robin telling of the beginning of the book of Genesis. They mdd faces and said that they didn’t know the text well enough to tell the story, but they were remarkably accurate as we went around the room and shared the story that our people have been telling for millennia. After the seventh day and the telling of God resting from the work of creation, the next speaker started by saint that he needed to add some details that had been left out. He then began to offer some of the details from the 2nd story of Creation - the one that uses the names Adam and Eve - that follows the first one in the book. Others began to remind him that he was telling a different story. It was an amazing moment as I simply pointed out to them that this way of talking about creation was as old as the biblical texts themselves. Our people have been telling multiple stories about creation for as long as we have been taling about the topic.
There is one God.
There are lots of ways to think and talk about God.
A couple of notes to regular readers of this blog:
First of all, just in case you missed it, Costa Rica pulled off a major upset with their 3 - 1 victory over Uruguay in World Cup competition. It sure would have been fun to have been in downtown San Jose with the crowd watching on the big screens.
Secondly, we will be traveling for the next two weeks. Although I plan to write the blog every day I know we will be in some places where I won’t have Internet access. If you miss the blog one day, check back on another. I’ll finally get them all posted. But don’t worry if the blog doesn’t appear on schedule.