Trinity Sunday
Penelope Bridges
The selection of readings for Trinity Sunday feels a little contrived, as if the people putting the lectionary together said, “Where can we find anything in Scripture that might hint at a Trinitarian image of God?” This is because the doctrine of the Trinity is something the church came up with over the course of its first few centuries, not anything that Jesus actually said. That’s one of the challenges in preaching on Trinity Sunday, as if the whole idea of a God who is both three and one weren’t challenging enough.
The traditional terms for the members of the Trinity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – are basic to our worship language. In fact, baptism in the Episcopal Church requires the exact statement, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” . I once added the word God into the mix when the Bishop was visiting, and he took me to task after the service for deviating from the formula.
For many people today, the traditional terms might be too gendered or too anthropomorphic to encompass God. Some substitute Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier – but maybe that is too task-specific for the source of all being. As for the gender question, I wrestle with the masculine designation of both God the Creator, who made both male and female in God’s image, and of the Holy Spirit.
While the Proverbs reading personifies Wisdom as a woman who was present at the beginning of Creation, our Gospel excerpt seems unnecessarily male-centric with the repeated use of “He” for the Holy Spirit. It’s jarring to my ear. Why characterize the Spirit as “he” when the noun in both Hebrew and Greek is grammatically neuter? When we say the Nicene Creed, some prefer to use the feminine pronoun for the Spirit. I try to avoid genderizing the Spirit by reverting to the older translation that avoids the issue by using “Who”: “Who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified; Who spake by the prophets.”
What to do with this naming dilemma? Maybe we should rechristen the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and Love. After all, love is the essence of God. As St. Paul writes, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” First the precious gift of Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit. Love upon love, generously shared.
It seems to me that Trinity Sunday is less a day for explanations and more a day for praise and thanksgiving. In spite of all the brokenness around us, we are called to praise God in whatever form we know God by, and to celebrate love in whatever form we experience it.
There is a long history in the Church of disputes, arguments, endless discussions about the exact nature of the relationship among the three persons of the Trinity. Why has it been so fascinating to church authorities? Is it perhaps parallel to the obsession of some with the exact nature of some human relationships? Perhaps trying to parse out the nature of the Trinity is as inappropriate as seeking to know what people get up to behind closed doors.
Can we just accept that the Trinity is a divine community whose nature is love and that generates so much love that it spills out into the world? Let’s respect the privacy of the Trinity and simply rejoice that God’s nature is to share and receive love in an eternal dance of companions.
Part of the joy of following Jesus is learning to rest in the mystery and wonder of God’s creation and all that God has given us. Our worship here is intended to provide a dimension of mystery, to lift us up above the mundane and let us exercise our holy imaginations. Sometimes only poetry will do, or even wordless music, to express adoration, to contemplate the infinite, to immerse ourselves in the ground of all being.
Trinity Sunday is the perfect day to celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion. Each person of the Trinity is distinct and yet they are together. As the Eucharistic Prayer says, they are “co-eternal and equal”: one is not more important than the others. It is a community of three, and the love generated spills out unconditionally to all who will receive it. And let us not forget that the initials DEI make up the Latin word meaning “Of God”. Human beings are imago DEI – made in the image of God, the diverse and beautiful God that loves us eternally and without discrimination.
I see the beauty of unity in diversity when I see the current images of protesters in San Diego and LA, a rainbow of colors and styles, in contrast to the monochromatic ranks of police and military personnel facing them. I understand that the police, National Guard, and Marines are just doing their jobs and obeying orders, but I cannot help noticing how much more attractive and interesting the protester crowd is. Diversity blesses us with surprise and new insights; it opens our minds to the possibility of change; it plants compassion in our hearts. Diversity strengthens and enriches community.
You may be aware that there has been some controversy surrounding preparations for this year’s San Diego Pride celebration. The headline singer engaged by San Diego Pride for the festival has a record of making antisemitic statements. Our Jewish siblings have discerned that the engagement of this singer makes them feel unsafe and disrespected, and so a number of organizations are boycotting the parade and festival this year. I cherish our good relationships with both Pride and the Jewish community, but I cannot support Pride in their decision to go ahead with the singer despite the community’s distress. There have also been calls for friends of the Jewish community to withdraw from the parade and festival.
I took this request seriously and discussed it with executive staff and Susan Jester, our public relations staffer. We came to the conclusion that, while we strongly support our Jewish siblings and have deep empathy for their pain, the missional call for us to demonstrate the church’s support for the LGBTQ community by participating in the parade is the more compelling responsibility at this moment. So, for now, St. Paul’s will be part of the parade; we will not be part of the festival; and of course all parishioners are free to make their own decisions about participation. I have communicated with our Jewish friends about this decision.
The point of my telling you this story now is that Pride is above all a magnificent celebration of diversity. As you’ll know if you’ve ever attended, the parade is a dazzling, incredible demonstration of humanity in all its glory: it is a unique opportunity for many of our neighbors to be completely themselves in the company of thousands of like-minded individuals. For St. Paul’s it is an opportunity to represent the many Christian communities that are willing to be a safe haven for LGBTQ people, and thus honor the God-given diversity that the Trinity illustrates.
If you have ever thought about the rationale for our mission statement that says we Welcome All, think about the nature of the Trinity. The love that flows in and among the persons of the Trinity inevitably overflows onto humanity and we are the beneficiaries of it. It’s a love that cannot be hoarded or parsed out but must be shared freely. Our trust in the Trinity demands that we welcome all, because we have to have somewhere to put that love; we cannot keep it to ourselves.
The Trinity is supremely unselfish, always pouring out that love, always reaching out further to welcome more people into its orbit. And each member of the Trinity acts to point us to the others: the Father gives us the Son and works in concert with the Holy Spirit to create and renew. The Son teaches about the Father and bestows the Spirit on those who seek the truth. The Spirit empowers us to praise the Father and follow the Son.
So this image of God as diverse community gives us a sense of freedom, of grace, of infinite generosity; and all that rings true with what we know of Jesus and his teaching. The Trinity is a mysterious concept to be sure, but if we can let go of puzzling over its meaning, perhaps we can simply rejoice, in St Paul’s words, that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
