June 7, Trinity Sunday: – Monroe
Celebrating a “doctrine” –
This is an unusual day in the Christian calendar. A day for celebrating and focusing on a “doctrine”, a “concept.” In the whole history of Christianity there are a few others, but none with the prominence of the feast of Trinity, occurring on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. It has been observed in its present form at least since the 14th c.
In the church calendar we usually focus on persons – Jesus, of course, mainly; disciples; Mary; Paul; present-day witnesses and saints … the impact of our faith on us – but on this day – our focus is on a doctrine.
For many people it’s not easy to get excited about a doctrine. There is a pretty long and deep tradition to distrust rational doctrines and to prefer the personal, that which you can touch or feel.
As an illustration of that, I had a parishioner at my church in Michigan City who was at first perplexed by the doctrine of the Trinity. Then, ultimately she was put off by the logic and rationality of it. She firmly believed in God. She had a sense of who and what Jesus was and even the Resurrected Jesus living today. But to proclaim a “three in one” as somehow vital to being a Christian seemed bizarre to her.
She was exceptionally good with children and I was really glad to have her in the church. But ultimately she decided to leave because the doctrine of the Trinity just didn’t work for her.
The Doctrine itself
The doctrine grew out of a need to try to find words, to understand, to proclaim – the relationship between Jesus and God. Christians began to separate from Judaism because Jesus had touched them – you can read the record of that in the New Testament. The power, the grace, holiness of this person Jesus somehow had to be explained in relation to the holiness, the grace, the power of God. What the church came up with was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity.
Clearly the Trinity gets at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. But what are we to make of it?
The creed
The creed, whether it is the baptismal creed we used last week or the Nicene Creed we use this week – is Trinitarian in structure. The sign of the cross is by tradition accompanied with the words: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Baptism is: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
One major strand of the theology of the Trinity focuses on the use of the word “persons.” Trinity as: “One God in Three Persons.” This is probably the most familiar logical formula we’re accustomed to.
Without question the most difficult class I took in Graduate School at Notre Dame was a seminar on the Trinity, taught by Catherine Lacugna. 1
Her magnum opus, God for us : the Trinity and Christian life, seeks to move our appreciation and understanding of the doctrine away from a rational and logical argument and to make it possible to experience the Trinity through our own personal experience of salvation through Jesus.
I’m not sure how much better I understood the doctrine of the Trinity after taking her course. I said last week that after all these years I don’t really understand the meaning of baptism better than I did in my youthful attempts to live up to the expectations of being a Christian. It’s been a lifetime for me of trying to live into the meaning of baptism. That is no less true of the Trinity.
I make the sign of the cross in the name of the Trinity. And I pray every day, utilizing the language and even I might say the shape of the Trinity. Do I understand it? I’m working at being a Trinitarian Christian. I’m certainly not arrived.
Possibly the best way to say what I’m trying to say here is through the words of an African missionary by the name of Vincent Donovan.
In a classic work (Christianity Rediscovered), he tells his story of being a missioner in Africa and about what he learned of God among the Masai of Tanzania.
As I was nearing the end of the evangelization of the first six Masai communities, I began looking towards baptism. So I went to the old man Ndangoya’s community to prepare them for the final step.
I told them I had finished the imparting of the Christian message inasmuch as I could. I had taught them everything I knew about Christianity. Now it was up to them. They could reject it or accept it. I could do no more. If they did accept it, of course, it required public baptism. So I would go away for a week or so and give them the opportunity to make their judgment on the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they did accept it, then there would be baptism. However, baptism wasn’t automatic. Over the course of the year it had taken me to instruct them, I had gotten to know them very well indeed.
So I stood in front of the assembled community and began: “This old man sitting here has missed too many of our instruction meetings. He was always out herding cattle. He will not be baptized with the rest. These two on the side will be baptized because they always attended, and understood very well what we talked about. So did this young mother. She will be baptized. But that man there has obviously not understood the instructions. And that lady there has scarcely believed the gospel message. They cannot be baptized. And this warrior has not shown enough effort…”
The old man, Ndangova, stopped me politely but firmly, “Padri, why are you trying to break us up and separate us? During this whole year that you have been teaching us, we have talked about these things when you were not here, at night around the fire. Yes, there have been lazy ones in this community, but they have been helped by those with much energy. There are stupid ones in the community, but they have been helped by those who arc intelligent. Yes, there are ones with little faith in this village, bur they have been helped by those with much faith. Would you turn out and drive off the lazy ones and the ones with little faith and the stupid ones? From the first day I have spoken for these people. And I speak for them now. Now, on this day one year later, I can declare for them and for all this community, that we have reached the step in our lives where we can say, ‘We believe.’”—Vincent Donovan, from Christianity Rediscovered
For Donovan, this story illustrates why the faith we are living into as Christians is not an individual sort of thing. It is not, as many have been taught, just about an individual’s relationship to God. Our faith is a communitarian faith. It is a community built on and with Love. It is our basic experience of the one God – a community: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Believing vs. Doing
For centuries in the early centuries of the church a right understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity was the determining characteristic of whether one was on the right side of things. It was called orthodoxy. Orthodoxy was the thing that determined whether you were in the right party, on the right side of things. It never should have come down to that.
A way to understand this is as follows:
The earliest Christians experienced a new and powerful relationship with God through Jesus. It changed their lives. For centuries people could point to Christians as say, “See, he or she is one of them!” because of the lives they lived. It was the changed lives and the new and deeper experience of the Love of God that made these Christians distinctive.
Jesus, as we meet him in the New Testament, did not travel around Judea asking people if they believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He didn’t ask them, “What do you believe?” No, he said things like:
Matt 22:37 “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Divide vs. Bring together
It is the Trinity that is distinctive about Christianity. Baptism is incorporation into that Trinitarian community. One God is bound together in the love of three persons. The baptismal community is identified as a community of love.
We have had enough of focusing on what divides us. It is time to stake our lives on what binds us together. There is nothing that does that better than the Living God, creator of all that is and that shall be.
What makes us Christian is the evidence that others see that Christians “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.” Where it is abundantly clear that Christians “strive for justice and peace among all
people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
It is the Living God who binds us together as one. The doctrine of the Trinity has the potential to overturn centuries of division and alienation – in the church, in our societies, in the human family that has been plagued with violence and slavery. Our baptismal faith as a Trinitarian faith has the potential to be transforming and unifying. It is time.
I dream of a time when the people of our land will look at a group of folks who bind up the broken hearted and who see common humanity where others see us vs. them – will look at this group of folks and say, “They must be Christians.”
We’re not there yet. Trinity Sunday can serve to beckon us to the reality St. Francis saw in his prayer:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy.
We’re not there yet, but we’re on our way, Lord. Thanks be to God.
Notes
References
“Understanding the Trinity through the lens of love” Jun 23, 2011 by Thomas Gumbleton
“Trinity as Source, Word, and Spirit of Love: Relationship as Core of Reality” by Heidi Russell – LCWR National Assembly – August 9, 2018
Dale Hathaway’s note: The emergence and defeat of the doctrine of the Trinity. God’s economy revealed in Christ and the Holy Spirit ; The Cappadocian theology of divine relations ; Augustine and the Trinitarian economy of the soul ; Christian prayer and Trinitarian faith ; Thomas Aquinas’ theology of the Trinity ; The teaching of Gregory Palamas on God. Re-conceiving the doctrine of the Trinity in light of the mystery of salvation. The self-communication of God in Christ and the Spirit ; Persons in communion ; Trinity, theology and doxology ; Living Trinitarian faith. National Library of Australia ↩︎
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