Sermons

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The Trinity: Boring, Untrue, and Irrelevant?
Trinity Sunday
May 28, 2002
Associate Pastor Lynne Baab
Mark 1:9-11 and Ephesians 1:3-11

When I was growing up, my family attended the Episcopal Church. My parents were very faithful church attenders, and most of the churches where we went did not have children’s programs, so I was in church almost every Sunday of my childhood.

Maybe some of you have been in Episcopal churches, and you might remember that they usually have reader boards. Sometimes these reader boards are above the pulpit and sometimes on the other side, above the lectern. On the reader board, you’ll find the hymn numbers for that Sunday and the name of the Sunday. So the top of the reader board might say “the second Sunday of Advent” or “the fourth Sunday of Lent” or “Easter Sunday” or “Pentecost,” like last week, or “Trinity Sunday,” which is today.

In those days, all the Sundays between Trinity Sunday and the beginning of Advent, around Thanksgiving, were called Sundays after Trinity, like the second or the fourth or the tenth or the twentieth Sunday after Trinity.

I can see myself, as a curly-haired little girl, sometimes sitting quietly in the pew and sometimes fidgeting or draping myself over the back of the pew in front of me. I watched those reader boards a lot during those long services, and I would think about the names of the Sundays. I just loved the fact that almost half the Sundays of the year were “Sundays after Trinity.” The word “Trinity” appeared on the reader board almost half the year, and to my child’s mind, that’s exactly the way it should be. After all, the Trinity is about God, and that’s what church is about. In fact, I loved the Trinity as a child. There was something about that three being one and one being three that seemed to have just the right amount of mystery.

I’ve thought a lot about the Trinity in recent years because of the fact that 19 years ago my brother married a wonderful woman who happens to be a Unitarian. She attends a Unitarian church, and in my conversations with her over the years I have seen more clearly what a gift the Trinity is to us.

Today, on Trinity Sunday, I want to do some reflection about the Trinity. I’ve given my sermon a name based on one of the tapes in the Alpha class: "Christianity: Boring, Untrue, and Irrelevant?" As I was thinking about the Trinity, I realized that over the years various people have told me they think the doctrine of the Trinity is Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant. So I want to address those concerns today, in a slightly different order.

Is the Trinity untrue? The word Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible. There are only a handful of places where all three persons of the Trinity appear in one passage. I had Mike read one of them for you. At the baptism of Jesus, God the Father speaks from heaven and the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven like a dove. I read another one of those passages for you from Ephesians 1, where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are mentioned in the same paragraph.

So if the Trinity isn’t a concept that appears in the Bible, why do we need it? One of my favorite seminary professors, Cornelius Plantinga, was an expert on the Trinity. He had done quite a bit of writing on the subject, and he explained many things about the Trinity to us. He told us that the doctrine of the Trinity arose because of questions of worship.

The early Christians still attended the synagogue and worshipped the God of the Old Testament. They also worshipped Jesus – here was a man who performed miracles, raised people from dead, declared himself equal to God. He gave us so many blessings, many of them recounted in Ephesians 1: he enabled us to be adopted as God’s children, he redeemed us, gave us forgiveness and grace, he gave us an inheritance and eternal life. Surely this person Jesus was also worthy of worship and indeed the early church worshipped him.

So, were they polytheistic, worshipping two Gods? Then the presence of the Holy Spirit complicated things further. This Holy Spirit, the presence of God with us in power, is surely also worthy of worship. So are Christians polytheists, worshipping three Gods?

The early Church fathers thought and prayed about this long and hard, and came up with the language of three persons yet one God. Christians give praise and honor to one God in three persons.

Sometimes I imagine a bunch of cantankerous old men sitting around devising Christian doctrines designed to drive us crazy! It’s nice to know that the doctrine of the Trinity came out of a real concern about real worship – are we worshipping one God or three?

Second, let’s talk for a minute about whether the Trinity is boring. Celtic Christians would give us a resounding no to that question.

We had a class here a few months ago based on a book called The Celtic Way of Prayer by Esther de Waal. She points out that the Celtic Christians loved the Trinity. To them, mystery was a central part of faith, and they loved the mystery of the Trinity.

I recently read a definition of mystery as it relates to faith. A mystery is something we cannot explain with our minds but we understand its importance in our hearts. The Celts would say the Trinity is just that kind of mystery.

In your bulletins, I put a little handout for you today. There are two Trinity poems from Celtic Christianity. The second poem points all the ways that three and one appear in nature and everyday life: three joints in our fingers but only one finger, three folds in a napkin, three parts to a shamrock, and water coming in three forms: ice, liquid and steam. We sometimes us the shamrock or the water illustration to try to explain the Trinity. The Celtic Christians would never have tried to do that. They simply saw those things in nature and everyday life as a way to be reminded about the reality of God present in all of life. God in three persons, one God.

Let me quote a short passage from Esther de Waal’s book: “Here is a profound experience of God from a people who are deeply Trinitarian without any philosophical struggle about how that is to be expressed intellectually. Perhaps the legend of St. Patrick stooping down to pick up the shamrock in order to explain the Trinity is after all more significant than we might have thought. It is as though he were saying to those early Irish people: Your God is a God who is Three-in-One and this is the most natural and immediately accessible thing in the world!”

De Waal goes on to talk about a homey tradition in families in Celtic lands. Every night, as they banked the fire before they went to bed, they put three chunks of peat on the fire and said a little prayer to the Trinity. In the class here at Bethany, one woman talked about how much she loved that tradition. She said she now thinks about the Trinity when she puts three pancakes into one pan. Another woman showed me a necklace of hers this week, made of three circles. She said she bought it to remind herself of the Trinity.

Our culture is longing for a sense of mystery and transcendance. We can offer a little bit of that sense of mystery in the Trinity.

Now, the third question. Is the Trinity irrelevant? Here I am influenced by my conversations with my sister-in-law. I would answer that the Trinity is a huge gift to us because it helps us articulate where God is and what God does. In a Unitarian view of God almost by necessity, God is a bit vague. God is everywhere, but no where very specifically.

The Trinity teaches us that God the Father is in heaven, high and exalted and transcendant. From Isaiah 6: He is high and lifted up and his train fills the temple. And the angels cry “glory.” From Psalm 104: God is very great, clothed with honor and majesty, wrapped in light as with a garment. From Luke 15: The Father seeks out his lost child and welcomes us home. This majestic and mighty God is worthy of all praise and worship and honor because he is so awesome and because he seeks out each of us.

The Trinity teaches us that God is also human and understand us. From Hebrews 4: Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Jesus can understand our sorrow and pain, he is the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53). He bought us forgiveness through his death. Through his resurrection he conquered death. Where is Jesus? He began in heaven with God. Then he came to earth and walked our path with us. Now he is back in heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, interceding for us.

The Trinity teaches us that the Father and the Son are still with us in the presence of the Holy Spirit, who guides us, teaches us, empowers us, encourages us, comforts us, heals us. The Holy Spirit lets us know when we’ve done something wrong. The Holy Spirit is in us as individuals and in us as a body, transforming us both as individuals and as a body. The Holy Spirit is God with us.

So where is God? High and exalted in heaven. Walking on earth with humans in Jesus, and now interceding for us because he knows what our life is life. God is also in us and with us through the Holy Spirit.

In my conversations with my sister in law, I am so struck by the specific-ness of the Trinitarian God. We can articulate so clearly where God is and what God does because we understand that each person of the Trinity has a particular role to play.

Is the Trinity irrelevant? No, because we understand so much about God when we consider the three persons of the Trinity. We also learn about community through the relationship between these three persons of the Trinity.

God the Father, Son, and Spirit have been in relationship with each other since before time began. The Son obeying the Father, the Father giving honor to the son, and the Holy Spirit speaking only what he hears from the Father and the Son. The three submit and give honor to each other. This is the deepest model for community that we can have, a kind of love that never grabs for itself but always honors the other. We are made in the image of God, we are taught in Genesis chapter 1. What is the image of God that we have in us? Some theologians are now saying that the image of God in us is the ability to love, the ability to be in community. That’s what the three persons of the Trinity have been doing since before time began.

The Trinity informs us as we talk about God with others. If you are so fortunate to have a discussion about God with someone who doesn’t believe, you might find yourself saying, “What I appreciate most about God is this . . . but I know there is so much more to God that just that.”

Understanding the Trinity can help us get out of ruts in our faith. Do you feel a bit bored in your life of faith? Figure out which person of the Trinity you think about the least and pray to the least, and do some study and prayer. That may open new pictures of who God is for you.

Do you sometimes feel like God is distant and uninvolved with your life? Spend some time studying and praying to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Do you feel that you God is a bit domesticated and that you no longer look for surprises? Spend some time reading the Old Testament or Acts, focus on God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and you’ll be amazed at the ways God continues to surprise you.

The Trinity, most of all, is a call to prayer and praise and giving of ourselves. Of all the passages where the three persons of the Trinity are present, I picked Ephesians 1 because it begins with “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Blessed be God. Let’s give our lives to him. Let’s be like those Celtic Christians. When something reminds us of the Trinity, let’s pause and give honor to God for a few minutes.

I’d like us to close with John Stott’s morning prayer. It’s on the bulletin insert that has the Celtic prayers on the top. Each morning John Stott greets the three persons of the Trinity. Then he praises each one. They he prays to each one the specific kinds of things that flow out of what each person of the Trinity does. I’m hoping you might take this insert home and put it in your Bible or stick it on your refrigerator and use his prayer.

John Stott’s Morning Prayer

Good morning, heavenly Father; good morning, Lord Jesus; good morning, Holy Spirit.

Heavenly Father, I worship you as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Lord Jesus, I worship you, Savior and Lord of the world. Holy Spirit, I worship you, Sanctifier of the people of God. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Heavenly Father, I pray that I may live this day in your presence and please you more and more. Lord Jesus, I pray that this day I may take up my cross and follow you. Holy Spirit, I pray that this day you will fill me with yourself and cause your fruit to ripen in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God, have mercy upon me. Amen.

Two Celtic Christian Trinity Poems

O Father who sought me,
O Son who bought me,
O Holy Spirit who taught me.

Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair,
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin share,
Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer.