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Trinity Sunday is all intellectual -- you don't feel anything because it is all in your head. It is about trying to understand the wonderful mystery of God--this three-in-one and one-in-three. It was, and is, a serious work of the church as we attempt to understand and to live into this mystery. Someone once said that the Trinity is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, explained by a fool. Here's your fool, as I attempt with you to delve deep into this mystery of the Trinity. The Doctrine of the Trinity is, in and of itself, an intellectual construct. It was formed between the years of 324 and roughly 451 a.d. at what is known as the Four Great Counsels. (The Nicene Creed, our creedal statement of belief, came out of these counsels.) The First Counsel was in Nicaea in 325 a.d. and dealt with Arianism; the Second Counsel was in 381 a.d. in Constantinople, and dealt with Polytheism; then later in 451 a.d., the Third and Fourth Counsels dealt with Eutyches and Monophysitism, respectively. A friend of mine once said that attending the Four Counsels might be much like attending a month-long lecture on the U.S. Tax Code. It's damn important, but not very exciting. For what we believe about this Trinity -- about this mystery -- is very important. What we understand about the very nature and substance of God--of God in Christ, of God in Spirit--informs all of our lives and how we behave as a Christian pupil of God. It informs us on levels that we can never clearly articulate, on levels that lie deep within us. Pelagius was a late Fourth and Fifth Century Celtic Christian theologian, later condemned by the Catholic Church as a heretic. He was one who fought beyond Orthodoxy, and yet I think he is a heretic that we must retain. He said these words: "You will realize that doctrines are the invention of the human mind as it tries to penetrate the mystery of God." So he believed that a doctrine was our way of trying to penetrate the mystery of God. Pelagius also said, "You will realize that Scripture itself is the work of human minds recording the example of the teaching of Jesus, Scripture divinely inspired, but the work of human hands and the human mind." Thus, it is not what you believe in your head that matters ultimately. It is how you respond with your heart, with your actions. It is not simply believing in Christ. It is becoming like Christ. Trinity Sunday begins the longest season of our church year. Next Sunday we vest this altar in the ordinary color of green, and we begin what is called the Ordinary Season of Life in the church. It is not until next December the third, the first Sunday of Advent, that we shift our focus. But during this long, sometimes tedious, very ordinary season of the church year, we are invited to penetrate the mystery of God and the mystery of our own lives.
This was
Isaiah's experience of penetrating the mystery of God in the year that
King Uzziah died.
After having
had that experience of the mystery of God, Isaiah hears God's call. And
he answers like every one of us probably would, if we’re being honest:
Isaiah then hears the voice of the Lord saying,
That is our call-- our call to vocation. It is our call to life. It is our call to the mystery of this God who lives in the flesh--three-in-one, and one-in-three. This One who is never fully comprehended, but always gives life and instills hope and gives us a broader view of the world and all of its goodness. Answering this call is an answer to the relationship that God invites us into with God and all of God's Godness; being in relationship with one another--caring for one another through thick and thin, refusing to judge one another without first examining those parts of our lives that need judgment and need reconciliation, and renewal and new life and new hope. That is our vocation. That is our work. I want to
end with some words from Norvene Vest concerning work--work understood
as vocation, what we are called to do and what we are called to be as
a result of this all-powerful, glorious, mysterious God. In her book,
Friend of the Soul:
A Benedictine Spirituality of Work, she writes:
I would posit that those are the marks of a Christian community. A community that will explore, that will discover, that will reflect and say its prayers; a community of creativity, of new life; a community of generosity of spirit. For in living those attributes, we not only say what we believe about Christ, we become like Christ, which is the whole purpose of the Trinity: to penetrate the mystery of God and to allow that God of Creation to change and transform our lives as the people of God. Excerpted from a sermon delivered at Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, June 10, 2001. Trinity Sunday Copyright 2001 Calvary Episcopal Church Isaiah
6: 1-8
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