June 11, 2006
(First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday)

Grace and Holy Trinity

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Exodus 3:1-6  •  Psalm 93 or Canticle 2 or 13  •  Romans 8:12-17  •  John 3:1-16
(From The Lectionary Page)

All of my life I've known that Trinity Sunday follows right after Pentecost (or Whitsunday as we used to call it). Never really thought much about the timing until this year. On Pentecost, we celebrate the untrammeled Holy Spirit running amok among the disciples. Last Sunday our gospel was proclaimed in a cacophony of languages, and our hymns contained complex rhythms and meter. Today, one short week later, on Trinity Sunday we sing Holy, Holy, Holy in strict 4/4 time, observing a feast in which we calmly and intellectually systematize God into three distinct yet unified persons: Father, Son & Holy Spirit. The timing, if not the intent, seems to suggest that this chaotic Holy Spirit is fine and lovely and a great complement to Father and Son, but could we please quiet down now and get organized.

At a historical level, at least, this observation works. Pentecost occurred, according to Luke's account in the book of Acts, 50 days after the Resurrection. The Holy Spirit lighted upon the disciples, empowering them to speak of God's mighty deeds in languages they should not, by all rights, have been able to speak. It was the beginning of the Church. For a couple of hundred years, the Church moved along – first as a band of renegade Jews, then as a largely Gentile movement in the Roman Empire. It wasn’t that Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire. You could worship any god you wanted to so long as you paid your taxes, didn’t make trouble, and participated in the required festivals dedicated to the Roman gods. Therein lay the problem for devout Christians, which is why the early years of Christianity were marked so by heroic martyrdom.

That all changed when Constantine the Emperor was baptized in the 4th century. Ironically, it was this warrior-philosopher who called together a council of the bishops of the church. He wanted clarity – something that was in short supply in the Church at that time. Something that we take for granted – the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – was not at all self-evident to the bishops who attended the Council of Nicea. If you, for example, favored the Gospel of John, you would believe that Christ existed from before all time. The prologue to the fourth gospel makes that pretty plain. If you favored Matthew, Mark or Luke, on the other hand, you could just as faithfully believe that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. So how ‘bout it? Was Jesus of the same substance as the Father or of like substance with the Father? The difference in Greek – the language in which all this conversation was conducted – boiled down to one little letter – iota. [Homo Ousias means same substance; Homoi Ousias means similar or like substance.] And what about the Holy Spirit? Did it get sent by God the Father, as John said, or did it get sent by the Son, also as John said. How could there be three persons in one God and not have it be polytheistic? And if you could figure that out, how could there be three persons without one of those three being the one in charge?

Since Scripture was not at all clear on any of this, it was left to fallible humankind to try to make sense of it all. It took over one hundred years. One hundred years filled with controversy, excommunication, and bitter conflict. What eventually came out, two more councils later, is the elegant formulation we say blithely every Sunday – the Nicene Creed. Near as I can tell, it was the first and the last time that the Church agreed on anything, and perhaps that alone is cause for celebration. The Trinity became foundational to Christian doctrine, but it was not honored in a feast day until around the middle of the fourteenth century.

Well, as I said, I'm struck by the juxtaposition of the ancient feast of Pentecost with the newer feast of Trinity. In short order, we celebrate both the freely flowing Holy Spirit that blows where it will, and an orderly, if complex, doctrine. And it occurs to me, as our Bishop, our Dean and seven other deputies depart today for General Convention, that the hard work of being the Church has always been in holding these two aspects of our faith, faithfully, in tension. God is always in the business of doing something new AND we need to be able to talk about it coherently from a common vocabulary, if not common ground.

We, after all, are a Church that proclaims credo ut intelligam – I believe that I may understand. Credo, from which we get our word creed, has a cognate in Greek which is kardia: heart. We set our heart on God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit -- God experienced in three distinct and yet unified ways. We have to do it with our hearts because our heads can only take us just so far. Despite the gallons of ink that have been spilled over the centuries trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, we still don’t begin to grasp the fullness of this mystery. That’s okay. The church is at its best when, together in faith, we seek to understand through prayer, worship, study, and ministry, and thereby live most fully into God who calls us into relationship, even as Godself is fundamentally relational. The Church is at its best when it finds the means to hold Spirit and Order, newness and tradition, faithfully in tension – come what may, cost what will.

As our Church gathers at General Convention in Columbus, let us pray that the wind and flame of the Holy Spirit may indeed enliven the hearts of our bishops and deputies, and that our common faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the God upon whom we set our hearts – may ground us in wise decisions and right actions.