Sermons for the Month
The Hand, the Lamb and the Dove
DATE: June 10, 2001
SERVICE: Holy Trinity
TEXT: John 16:12-15“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
The liturgical calendar calls this Sunday "Trinity Sunday" -- a day set aside to "celebrate" the unique triune character of our God: as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. "Celebrate" or stumble over? The complex theological doctrine of the Trinity has always managed to leave scholars somewhat frustrated and the faithful somewhat confused. Trying adequately to express the mystery of a God who is Three-in-One tends to leave us tongue-tied. Symbols for the Trinity include a circle inscribed within an equilateral triangle. Actually, during the first eight centuries of Christian art, the image of the triangle for the Trinity was not widespread -- although on one of the gravestones in the catacombs there is a triangle in which the monogram of the name of Christ was placed. The three persons were often represented in art, but they were shown separately. The first time they seem to have been placed together was in the fourth century, and that representation consisted of "the Hand, the Lamb and the Dove," which is said no longer to exist. Some of the best attempts, however, have come exactly when we seem to be grasping at straws -- or perhaps more accurately, at braids. The British essayist Sara Maitland, writes that "Although many of us have grown up gratefully with St. Patrick's cloverleaf image of the Trinity -- three leaves making up one clover leaf -- there is always room for some new imagery as well. Another favorite model of the Trinity is that it is like a child's pigtail. If the Trinity is seen as a plait -- three equal strands, smoothly interrelated -- there are some advantages. First, you can tear one of the leaves off a clover threesome and leave the other two still related, but if you pull one of the strands out of a plait, the whole thing collapses. Inasmuch as there is a Trinitarian God, this threefold revelation makes perfect sense, and obviously the same thing applies: You cannot have any two of the sources without the third because the whole thing falls apart. At times, when plaiting, it is important to look at the whole pigtail and check that the hair has been reasonably accurately divided into three. Both the orthodox churches of the East and the charismatic movement have suggested that perhaps the mainstream churches of the West have become excessively Christ centered -- that their emphasis on the second person of the Trinity has made the pigtail somewhat lopsided. In the same way, I would suggest that perhaps we have allowed the strand of revelation in creation to get rather too skinny; that God's role as Creator and sustainer of the universe needs some fleshing out, some extra weight" (Sara Maitland, A Big Enough God [New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1995], 15-16). And, of course, Lutherans have always had trouble with the Holy Spirit. I don't think I ever remember a sermon on the Holy Spirit until I seminary and then only my senior year. For many of us, however, words will always fail to capture the truth of the Trinity. A lucky few may have other, more dramatic ways in which they are capable of capturing the essential qualities of a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here is another attempt at understanding the Trinity that you might wish to use with your people. Remember playing with mercury when you were in grade school? Mercury is an unusual metal because it remains in liquid form at room temperature. This makes it both highly useful and potentially quite dangerous. In elementary school there was a period of time when some of us started bringing small pill bottles to school with a few drops of liquid mercury swimming around in the bottom. During the duller parts of class, we would empty the contents of our bottles into the little craters on the desks that were designed to hold pencils. While the teacher droned on, we amused ourselves by taking the points of our pencils and dividing the large, single mercury bead into dozens of tiny little balls that shimmered and skittered on the desktop. Most amazing of all was that simply by rolling the small drops back to touch each other, they were all reabsorbed back to re-create the one large, silver ball. The liquid mercury existed both as those separate beads and as that unified mass. When considered as one, it was seamless and whole, perfectly round and stable. But it also existed as those separate identities, themselves completely independent and with their own character. Might this give us some hint into the workings of the triune God? God is whole, fully formed and diamond-perfect; not some piecemeal work that is stuck together with divine duct tape. But as a Trinitarian reality -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit -- the divine is also known in seamless separateness. Not lopped-off parts that look incomplete, but individual beads of divinity that shimmer with their own purpose and power. Yet the whole is recalled at a touch, the three wholly part of the one. Jesus counseled Nicodemus that if he really wanted to experience the kingdom of God, he himself would have to undergo a change of community and identity. He would need to be born anothen -- both "from above" and "anew." As a resident of this kingdom of God -- as a re-created individual, Nicodemus was told he would be introduced to the wind of the Spirit and the sacrifice of the Son. Faced with all these fresh categories of divine activity, little wonder poor Nicodemus could only stammer, "How can these things be?" "How can this be?" is the great question throughout history when one is faced with the mystery of the Trinity -- Three-in-One and One-in-Three. In Helen Waddell's famous book Peter Abelard, the Canon of Notre Dame converses with one of Abelard's fiery young disciples, Pierre, about the master's latest treatise on the Trinity. Pierre asks: "Have you read the De Trintate, Gilles?" Gilles nods. "It is more than his accusers have, I be bound." "And is it heretical?" "Of course it's heretical. Every book that ever was written about the Trinity is heretical, barring the Athanasian Creed. And even that only saves itself by contradicting everything it says as fast as it says it." In the long run, perhaps the only way the church can ever hope to understand the triune nature of God is for the church to be more truly the church. The doctrine of the Trinity reveals that relationships stand at the heart of the universe. Atoms do not exist unless they are in relationship with other atoms. You and I do not exist unless in relationships with others. Even God exists in relationship. The human soul is not within. The human soul is not without. The human soul is between. This means that we exist personally, communally and socially in relationship with others. Our identity is as the body of Christ in relationships with this world. The measure of our faithfulness is found in our Good-News relationships with the world. It is in relationships that we can perhaps begin to incarnate the character of Father, Son and Holy Spirit into our lives as disciples. How do we relate to others so that all aspects of the Divine are glorified? How do we look for our mission, our future? Joanna Macy, an educator, ecologist and author, suggests three directions, each of which seems to reflect one aspect of the Trinity. 1) To incarnate God the Creator: Work with what is at hand. What has the Father/Creator God given you that is all around you. There is no perfect Job Charming. Find purpose and delight in the small things. 2) To incarnate God the Redeemer: Work with your pain; work through your pain; give your pain a purpose; and work with others in pain. Recognize where you have been so that you will know where others have been. Like Christ, you bear wounds where you have been broken. 3) To incarnate God the Holy Spirit: Work with your passion -- what do you care about? What makes your heart sing? What gets you outside yourself and into the world? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. One in three; three in one. Person, Pain, Passion. Let not one supercede the others. They are all individually part of you and you part of them. One in three; three in one. Go and walk in the light of the Trinity. AMEN