Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Today is Trinity Sunday. (Chances are, not one of you came to church this morning knowing that. Nor, I suspect, did anyone come hoping for a long theological sermon on the Doctrine of the Trinity. People don’t rush off to church for Trinity Sunday. It’s just not the “draw” that Easter or Christmas is.)
Nevertheless, the wisdom of the centuries, reflected in the ancient Church calendar, suggests that Christians should take one Sunday each year to consider why we say that ours is a “triune God.” Why we say our God appears “in three persons,” Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (I liked “Holy Ghost,” – more poetic, more mysterious. But they’re discouraging “Holy Ghost” these days. They say it scares children. So what?)

In Greek theater, one actor played many parts. This was accomplished by the use of masks. An actor had a number of faces painted on a flat boards, with sticks for handles, and he held different ones in front of his face as he played different parts. These masks were called “personas,” so when we say “God in three persons” (“personas”) we mean one actor appearing to us behind three different faces. Three in one. That’s the sense of it.

One more historical fact: the doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the Bible, so, as Protestants, I suppose, we can take it or leave it. But watch out! While the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Bible, all three personas certainly are, and all are clearly presented as in some way divine. So we must ask the question the early church asked, “How are these three aspects, faces, facades, masks, personas of God related?” How can we understand God? Well, how has God appeared to us and how does he appear today? In three ways, really. So there you are. Trinity.
(In New Orleans, by the way, “trinity” means onions, peppers and celery – the three ingredients with which most of that good Cajun food begins.)

God the Father. (Patria) “Our Father who are in heaven….” In the sixties the gurus of social sensitivity warned us not to refer to God as “Father” because, they said, some people had bad fathers and the word might provoke unpleasant memories. That didn’t last – as so much of the sixties didn’t last. It was too much to lose! The image of God as a Father was too good, too rich, too wonderful. Jesus referred to God has his Father and encouraged us to think of God as our father. A father is strong, powerful love, you bet! But a father’s love is complex. It’s an active love, a love that sometimes chastens and reproves, even punishes. (The Bible doesn’t say, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” It’s tougher than that. It says, ‘He the spareth the rod hateth his son.”) A Father’s love counts every hair on our heads. A Father’s love makes sacrifices. It doesn’t always say “yes.” It holds up high standards. It sets boundaries. That’s a father isn’t it, and a good one? That’s real love, isn’t it?

Freedom is a warped idea these days. We think freedom means, “Nobody tells me what to do.” But that doesn’t make us free. That makes us slaves – slaves to our appetites, our passions, our cravings, our every wish and whim. Slavery to oneself makes a person most unhappy. There is no free-of-responsibility freedom. That’s for teenage fantasies. In real life there will always be some power, some order-giver, at the very heart of things which (whether we realize it or not) will make us what we are. In other words, we will answer to something. William Penn understood that. He knew there was no wil-o-the-wisp freedom. He did not say that men didn’t need to be governed. He said men would either be governed by God or they would be ruled by tyrants. I, for one, would rather be ruled by a loving Father, even if he does not always say what I want to hear, than by some earthly tyrant or by my own dead-end voracity. That’s the choice before us, I think, when we hear God referred to as “Father.” The first person of the Trinity.
God the Son. (Felius) “I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold. I’d rather have him than riches untold. I’d rather have Jesus than houses and land. I’d rather be led by his nail-pierced hand.” This historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son (whom believers call “Jesus Christ,” “Jesus Messiah”) has enthralled men and women for twenty centuries. I guarantee that the more you study him, the more you learn about him, the more you will be captivated by him. My favorite cathedral is Bath Abbey, in England. It’s the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen. And its approach to visitors is different from all the other cathedrals. In the others, tourists are usually handed a glossy brochure which tells of the antiquity of the building, the architect, the building materials, the changes over the years, and so forth. But when a tourist enters Bath Abbey he is handed a small folder which tells the story, not of the cathedral, but of Jesus. In the simplest of terms, it recounts his birth, his teaching and healing, his poverty, his humility, compassion, his death, resurrection and ascension. And, at the end, it says: It was for Him, and Him alone, that this cathedral was built, and it is for Him alone that it stands today.” God the Son.

A Jewish soldier whose Christians friends had been telling him about Jesus, went to his Chaplain, a Rabbi, and asked how the Jewish faith was different from the Christian. “Well,” the Rabbi said, “We Jews are still waiting for our Messiah. Christians believe Messiah has already come." The boy looked at him a long time and asked, “Rabbi, when our Messiah comes, what will he have on Jesus?” Jesus Christ is one of the three faces of God.

God the Holy Spirit (Spiritui Sanctus) We Christians don’t have to see Star Wars to know what “the force” is. We know the force, and we have felt its presence. It is the Spirit of God, and there are no galaxies it cannot conquer. God’s Spirit is everywhere in the Bible – in the creation story, which we read today, where the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters, in the covenants with Abraham, in the courage and wisdom of Moses, in the mouths of the prophets. But nowhere in the Bible is the Holy Spirit as present, and as conscientiously recognized, as it is in the Book of Acts, that is in the story of the early Christian Church. Scholars differ about many things in early Christian history, but they all agree on one: that something amazing happened to those eleven men, those remaining disciples, on Pentecost. There is no earthly explanation for it. They were transformed, overnight, from fearful, cowardly, timid, introverted men to courageous, strong, assertive, fearless human beings! These ordinary men, with no worldly credentials to recommend them, stood before kings and princes and testified for Jesus, they suffered and died valiant deaths for him, they brought thousands to his fold, and in so doing they changed the course of human history. What happened that day, of course, was that they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Which means they were filled with God. The third face of the divine.

The concept “God,” when we really consider it, is too much for most of us. Rudolph Otto called “God,” “the great mysterious tremendum.” The doctrine of the Trinity is there to help us sort God out. (For heaven’s sake, don’t get tangled up in the math of it. How can something be three and one at the same time?) Understand that the doctrine of the Trinity is one way, one time-honored way, to think about the God we see in the Old and New Testaments. And in your prayers, and your scripture reading, and in your personal devotions, think about God’s three faces, his three ways of being present to us. We need such human props to help us understand, even though our understanding of such things will always be partial, until that great day when we will know him even as he knows us.