As near as I can tell, Trinity
Sunday is the only Sunday on which we celebrate a doctrine, not an event or person.
Doctrine usually comes into existence
to combat heresy (wrong belief)…
which usually is when a Christian says too much
—they nails down things so fully that they put God in a box
—and any God you can box up, is an Idol, not the Living God.
Orthodoxy, saying something right
about God,
is always a humble, tempered position,
usually taking a middle ground between two extremes
(bowling alley theory of Heresy and Orthodoxy).
When it comes to the Trinity,
these creeds we profess are attempt to:
-avoid Modalism (where the persons of the Trinity aren’t persons, but masks)
-and Arianism (where the Trinity is “the Father and the Exalted Creatures”—which
might be a fun name for a rock band, but its bad theology).
Yes,
our professions of faith insist that the persons of the Trinity are Fully God
and Fully One.
Faithful confession about the Triune
God holds in tension and navigate between: Uniqueness & Divinity,
Trinity and Unity,
Persons and Deity,
Transcendence and Imminence.
And in the midst of all that, we
can run into an entirely different danger
—a doctrine becoming a calcified thing,
instead of a confession of faith.
Luther saw this plain
—that’s why his summary of the Creed
(if you’re using the Pentecost Prayer Book, you’ve been using it regularly)
—his Paraphrase, was clearly HIS confession
-Wow! God the Father provides shoes for me!!!!
-Wow! God the Son has purchased me from my kidnapper!
-Wow! God the Holy Spirit calls me through the Gospel!
And, in a similar way today, I
wish to make this doctrine genuine and fresh, as a blessing of
you all today.
“The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.”
Prayer
May the
Grace of the Son be with you.
He’s your Redeemer!
Your relative, he pays your bail.
He keeps your bookie away and the loans from coming due.
He’ll never abandon you.
After all, in our Baptism we are
marked by him forever, forever his.
Because
we belong to him, Saints,
we are citizens of the City of God,
entering into its economy through
service and solidarity—care and mercy
—the same mercy, the same costly generosity, he embodied for us.
He
is light, revealing what it means to be truly human.
He’s what right and real authority looks like; he reigns.
May the Love
of the Father be with you.
The one who loves us like a good
parent.
Who provides for and protects us,
and does the same for everything that is—seen and unseen.
A
love that is creative,
for the mere joy of companionship,
for peaceful harmony,
honest good work,
gentle walks through the Garden,
and rest as part of the rhythm of life.
The one who has no beginning,
but provides both beginnings and ends for us
—who offers something out of nothing
and orders chaos,
making it good and very good.
In him there is peace.
May the
Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.
The Spirit hovers, and proceeds
—whirlwind cycles of action
—calls, gathers, enlightens, keeps, and is making us holy
—and then does it all again…
and also, the still small voice
who stops the hearts of even the bravest prophet.
Breath that raises the dead,
and the grounding that lets us trust God at all.
With that trust, we can come
together and be a Spirit people
—always catching up to what the Spirit has already prepared for us.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
With these words we gather every
week. Together as people baptized in the Triune name. A community connected to
the mysterious unity of the Godhead.
If we are made in the image of God, and we are, there must be some of
this reality
—the Dance of the Trinity,
the interrelationship of God with God’s self,
that spills out into relationship with us…
The Son is conceived by the Holy
Spirit,
so that we might be born to new life,
Jesus Christ begotten of the Father,
that we might entrust our prayers to him.
The Spirit proceeds from the Father
and the Son,
that we too can march in that grand Spiritual parade
—carried along on that trajectory,
the stream of Spirit swelling up behind us.
Hear this siblings! The Son
redeems us and the Spirit forgives us daily,
so that we are what the Father has declared us, “Good and very good.”
And strangely enough,
we are created by the Father,
to be redeemed and forgiven!
The
Father provides common things and the Spirit gives us Spiritual gifts.
The
Spirit give us the ability to believe the Son’s story,
and shall raise us up to new life like the Son was raised
—he is the First Fruit of the Resurrection!
The Spirit keeps us in the Faith,
the Son keeps us in the Kingdom,
the Father keeps us in his merciful protection.
At
a certain point our language breaks down…
fresh words, but themselves touching the edges of heresy,
and it all gives way to mystery,
a return to that simple blessing of Paul’s:
“The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.”
Amen!
