Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Most of you know that within our Education For Ministry, or EFM, group I am referred to as the resident heretic.  Now you all know that I am also  certifiably insane as I volunteered to speak today--on Trinity Sunday.

I volunteered in part because it is our EFM graduation today, so it seemed appropriate.  In addition some strange impulse seemed to cause the words to leap from my mouth, and it made Mary very happy.  Besides, when better for a heretic to speak than the one Sunday of the liturgical year that focuses on a particular doctrine of the church.  What I say will not be a coherent exposition on the theology of the Trinity, but more likely some incoherent rambling.

The early church began with people who knew Jesus and saw him after his resurrection.  They were present to experience the power of Pentecost.  They knew they were experiencing God in new ways.  They spoke and wrote very early in the church about these manifestations of God as we see in our lessons this morning from the closing of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, probably written 20-25 years after Jesus’ resurrection, and the final verses of the Gospel attributed to Matthew.  Matthew’s gospel was probably written in the last quarter of the first century.  So by that time it would appear that the church was using the trinitarian language of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. 

We really don’t have language that can adequately talk about God.  Translations and nuance can lead to very different understandings.  As time passed and the church became separated from its Jewish roots and spread throughout the Roman Empire, there gradually developed a need to define the doctrines of the emerging church since some of these differences in understanding were becoming unacceptable.  In the early centuries of the church the people at the eastern end of the Mediterranean spoke primarily Greek while the official language of government, and subsequently of the church in the west--primarily Rome and North Africa--was Latin.   Much of the discussion in the early church councils centered on subtle differences in meanings of words between these languages--and the philosophical differences that they expressed.  Although much of that discussion seems needlessly complex and unimportant to us now, these were important formative events--especially the struggle to settle on the words in the creeds which we now take for granted.  How can we put into words what those very early followers of Jesus knew through their personal experience?  And how can we choose words that will be acceptable within very different cultures--let alone last through the ages?  After attempting in EFM to settle on even a few statements of belief, I give the early church fathers a lot of credit.  It is why I am willing to say all the words of the creed even when I don’t always think they express precisely what I believe.

Whenever I think about trying to speak or write about who or what God is, I think of the old story--which you probably all know-- about three blind men discovering a new animal.  One man grabs a leg and says, “It is like a tree, but can move”.  Another grabs the tail and says, “It is like a big snake”, and the third, feeling a large flapping ear says, “It is like a big fan”.  They are all, or course, trying to describe an elephant.  This seems to me very analogous to our attempts to describe God.  We each try to describe what we encounter, and that may vary tremendously.  One of my problems with the Trinity is that it limits God to three persons.  It seems to me that beyond the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there may be other persons of God with whom we haven’t come in contact--or who we haven’t recognized as God--just as there are many more parts to an elephant than the leg, the tail and the ear.

Several years ago some of us read a book titled “Mysteries of the Faith”, part of the Church Teaching Series.  Much of the reading seemed to focus on the Trinity and much of it was extremely confusing and circular to me.  But I did derive from that reading an image of the Trinity that was different--less triangular.  The author seemed to talk more of the Father and Son with Holy Spirit flowing between them.  I came up with two images in my musing.  One image has the Father and Son like two magnets with the lines on energy flowing between them.  In that image I imagine us as the iron filings we used to sprinkle between the magnets--pulled into alignment by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The other image I have is two solid trees--the Father and the Son--with a hammock of the Holy Spirit hung between them.  In the best of times, I lie in the hammock of the Holy Spirit suspended between the Father and the Son.  In these images--the magnets & force field or the trees and suspended hammock--the combination is God, made up of the components, as in all of our trinitarian statements.

The names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names derived in an earlier era.  In more modern language, people have come up with a number of other words to use for the persons of the Trinity--especially in an attempt to move our thinking about God away from the “old man in the sky” image.  Probably the most familiar combination for most of us is “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer”, which speaks more of functions of God than personhood--and removes the gender issue.  The choice I would probably make, if it were up to me, is “Lover, Beloved, and Love” (which I learned last year at a retreat) since love is really what I think all of God is about.  Recently in EFM I discovered what to me is another new look at the Trinity.  That revelation is part of what prompted me to be here today.  Someone in EFM made reference to the familiar passage in chapter 14 of John’s gospel, “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life’.”  It suddenly struck me that this can be seen as a statement of the Trinity.  First, “I am” is the name of God given to Moses by the voice from the burning bush.  Jesus, the Son, is clearly “the way”.  The early Christian movement was even called The Way.  Jesus shows and teaches us the way God wants us to be.  “The truth”  can certainly refer to the Father/creator aspect of God--the ultimate truth--from which all else flows.  And “the life” is the breath, or spirit, that enlivens us, the Holy Spirit.  I don’t know whether Jesus actually said these words, or whether they were written into the gospel as part of a liturgical statement in use in the early church, but to me it suddenly became another interesting way to think about the Trinity.

One particular appeal of recognizing a Trinitarian God as opposed to a Unitarian God is the focus on community.  If God is already community, then as human beings, made in God’s image, we are intended for community.  I think we all experience this--even the most introverted people need some time and place where they share their lives with others.  And gathering to worship and work together in community is an important part of our faith--we are not intended to be self-made people who “go it alone”.

At one point in our EFM study I actually thought I had identified my heresy (maybe I should say one of my heresies).  The name of the heresy is Modalism and it was first raised in those early councils trying to express an understanding of God.  Modalists said that rather than separate persons within one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were different modes or forms of God revealed at different times.  This language seems more appealing to me than “persons” but it turns out I’m not truly a Modalist because apparently they went on to say that these modes did not exist at the same time but were sequential--first the Father (throughout the Old Testament), then the Son (during Jesus lifetime), and since then the Holy Spirit.  That impresses me as saying that at one time the elephant was a leg, then it went on to be a tail, and eventually ended up an ear.  It turns out not really to be my heresy after all.  It is just a different way of defining God with different limitations.

So I’m stuck with creating my own heresy which says--sure Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--and probably many other “persons” of God which we either know nothing about or have failed to recognize.  I prefer that we not artificially put limits on God because of the limitations of our language and understanding.  Maybe I would say God is “at least” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Most of all--I say--God is Love.  We experience that love in all of creation, in the life and teachings of Jesus, and in our relations in community with others.  We experience love in ways that are not always tangible--rather like the air we breath--in Spirit, through Spirit.  We need to open our hearts to receive all of the love that we can, from wherever it comes, so that it can overflow us and be shared with all others with whom we come in contact.  So I end with my favorite Trinity words--Lover, Beloved, and Love--most of all Love.