TrinitySundayC, Sullivan Park Care
Center, May 26, 2013 by Annette Fricke
Today is one
of the most dreaded Sundays of the entire year on which to preach. I know this.
My Facebook newsfeed has a joke about it which is this: A picture of the
group of people who ordain—represented, of course by one of the three in a
miter—that would be the bishop and the caption reads, “Prepare her as a deacon
in your church to be asked each year to preach on Trinity Sunday.” The truth is, I have seen some bad sermons on
this day, including the one children’s sermon given by an ordained pastor of
the Lutheran Church in which the Trinity was explained as one person with
differing relationships to other people in his life. I no longer try to explain it in my own
words. There is a hymn that I believe
captures it much better. It is
attributed to St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, who lived around 385-461,
and goes like this in the first verse, “I bind unto myself today the strong
name of the Trinity by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in
Three.” And since we know God most
profoundly by way of Jesus, the fourth verse is, “Christ be with me, Christ
within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win
me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ
in the mouth of friend and stranger.” The words seem to echo the gospel
according to John and to speak to all that God is. And to underscore and
reinforce the meaning and main point of this hymn, the fifth verse is the last,
“I bind unto myself the name, the strong name of the Trinity by invocation of
the same, the Three in One and One in Three, of whom all nature has creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word. Praise to
the Lord of my salvation; salvation is of Christ the Lord!” And not to mention,
for those of you who know music, the tune is written in ¾ time. Waltzes are also written in ¾ time, not as
easy to sing or conduct as 4/4 time. There is something about three that makes it
difficult to comprehend. It is not
natural. However, we are not alone. The early Christians debated the whole
concept of the Trinity for the first several years of Christianity and thus the
Orthodox Christians began labeling those who believed otherwise as
heretics. Even though the concept of the
Trinity is really difficult to describe or comprehend without being heretical,
this is the Orthodox Christian teaching. The Orthodox Christians’ hierarchical
teaching authority did a great job of enforcing that teaching and snuffing out
other teachings to the contrary, except when discoveries were made recently that
there was plenty evidence in print of other teachings, tucked away in jars in
caves.
Why do I
mention and quote that which is attributed to St Patrick? Because he lived during the time that the
Nicene Creed was freshly debated, written, and revised to elucidate our
understanding of the Trinity. The
Eastern Church leaves out one of the phrases of this well known creed and adds
other phrases. The truth is that the
Eastern Church does not believe or confess the same concept of the Trinity as
the Western Church. The Church remains
divided on this, what appears to be a crucial doctrine.
We find
another description of God in The Book of Concord which was written by the
reformers of the 1500s. It reads like
this, “We unanimously hold and teach, in accordance with the decree of the
Council of Nicea, that there is one divine essence, which is called and which
is truly God, and that there are three persons in this one divine essence,
eternal, without division, without end, of infinite power, wisdom, and
goodness, one creator and preserver of all things visible and invisible. The word “person” is to be understood as the
[Church] Fathers employed the term in this connection, not as a part or
property of another but as that which exists of itself. Therefore all the heresies which are contrary
to this article are rejected.
Between 710
and 714, The Apostle’s Creed as we now know it was formed and solidified. It is much shorter than the Nicene Creed and
has found a wider audience that subscribe to the belief that it puts
forth. Here is one modern version, “I
believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son,
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he
descended to the dead. On the third day
he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the
Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy
Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the
resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting. Amen.” In this version, the descent into hell and
the resurrection of the body are rejected as doctrine. In times past, Christians did not cremate
bodies for burial because they believed in the resurrection of the body. Later
scholarship revealed that the concept of hell was borrowed from neighboring
religions.
Although on
the surface, it may look like a lot of bickering and fighting amongst
Christians, this is for sure: we no longer use the words of anathema, heretic, or
excommunication as often or as with much vehemence as in our history. We no longer burn people at the stake because
they do not believe as we do or burn their books. Christianity has learned that belief comes
from the heart and to what the heart consents.
Nobody can force anyone else to believe anything. You are free to pick apart anything that I
say or anyone else says. What you believe
is what you believe and nobody can take the right away. During the terror of Hitler, those who were
not thrown into the gas chamber and actually survived the duration of
captivity, were those who recited in their minds the scriptures and hymns, both
Jews and Christians, but mostly Jews.
Our minds are free and will always be free.
Barbara
Taylor Brown, a celebrated Episcopal priest puts it this way in her book
titled, The Preaching Life, “While it
may seem more respectable to approach faith as an intellectual exercise or more
satisfying to approach it as an emotional one, our relationship to God is not
simply a matter of what we think or how we feel. It is more comprehensive than
that, and more profound. It is a full-bodied relationship in which mind and
heart, spirit and flesh, are converted to a new way of experiencing and
responding to the world. It is a matter of learning to see the world, each
other, and ourselves as God sees us, and to live as if God's reality were the
only one that mattered."
However, as
one old wise priest said, because of the creeds about such things as the
mystery of the Trinity, the church has survived all these years. It has been both bane and blessing as we
still strain to figure out who God is and who we are in God’s world. This much we know for sure, and it is not
dependent on any doctrinal statements or beliefs of any kind: God loves us and
constantly seeks to have a relationship with us and seeks that we have a
relationship with each other. God will
always be there to create and re-create newer understandings and insights for
us and we will grow in them if we continue to be open to them and love from our
hearts. The Trinity remains a mystery
and is probably best seen that way and not explained.
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