Trinity B: Three-in-One Plus One!
Three-in-One Plus One
Dear Partner in Preaching,
Imagine with me for a moment, the delight you would experience in discovering that you had a long lost uncle or aunt who had made you the heir to their estate. Can you see it? You’d wake up one morning and discover that they had left you riches beyond count, that your major financial worries were over, and that you really didn’t have to worry all that much about the future.
If that scenario happened, how would you feel? What would you do? Or, more to the point, what would you do differently? And here I don’t mean what would you run out and buy – though I suspect that most of us would treat ourselves to something 🙂 – but I mean something more along the lines of, what would be different about your day-to-day attitudes, practices, habits, and outlook? How would knowing that your future is absolutely secure change your present?
I ask because it’s just this scenario that the Apostle Paul is describing in these few verses of his Letter to the Church in Rome. Note the language he uses:
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:15-17a).
According to Paul, we are not only God’s children, but also heirs, and not just heirs, but co-heirs with Christ. Now, stop here for just a moment and think about what Paul is really saying. That God considers us co-heirs – that is, equal inheritors of all God has to give – with Christ, God’s only begotten Son.
Not only that, but Paul goes on to describe the difference it makes. Rather than being afraid – of the future, of what people may think of us, of our status, of our standing with God – Paul invites us instead to imagine a life of courage, the courage of those who have been adopted by God and invited into the full measure of God’s blessings and riches.
Jesus says much the same to Nicodemus, inviting him to image that we have the opportunity through our life in the Spirit to be born anew, born from above as God’s children, those so precious God was willing to give his only Son as testament to how much God loves all of us.
All of which brings me to the Trinity. (Betcha didn’t see that one coming. 🙂 ) Look, here’s the thing: I don’t for a moment pretend to understand the Trinity, and quite frankly I don’t frankly trust those who say they do. (Goodness, but even Augustine said it was beyond him.) But I do know this: at the heart of our understanding of God as somehow three-in-one is the notion that you can’t fully or finally understand God without talking about relationship. That God is so full of love that there has to be some way of talking about that loved shared in and through profound relationships. Some say that’s why God created the cosmos and humanity in the first place, to have more people to love. But the Trinity goes even further, saying that from the very beginning of time the dynamic power of love that is at the heart of God’s identity and character can only be captured – and that dimly! – by thinking of the love that is shared. (Perhaps it’s simply impossible to think about love that isn’t shared.) And so God’s essential and core being has always been a giving and receiving and sharing of love that finally spills out into the whole of the universe and invites all of us into it. First through creation and God’s series of covenants, then and pre-eminently in the sending of God’s Son to demonstrate in word and deed just how much God loves us, and now as the Spirit bears witness to God’s ongoing love for us and all creation.
Which means, I think, that when we talk about the Trinity as God being three-in-one, we really haven’t captured the heart of the doctrine and reality unless we recognize that God is three-in-one in order always to add one more – and that’s us, all of us, an infinite “plus one” through which God’s love is made complete in relationship with all of God’s children. And that’s what these passages testify to – the profound love of God that draws us into relationship with God, with each other, and with the whole of creation and the cosmos.
So I’ll ask again: what does it mean for us to live knowing we are God’s beloved children, adopted and chosen and named co-heirs with Christ? And when I ask this, I’m not actually doing the heaven-and-hell-thing, as if you can sum up our life as Christians as a get-out-of-hell card. Rather, I mean what difference does it make NOW? What difference does it make to know that you are unconditionally loved? That you have immeasurable value in God’s eyes? That no matter what to do – or is done to you – and no matter where you go, yet God always loves you and cares about you?
I sometimes wonder if part of the reason so many of our people have a hard time connecting faith to everyday life is simply because we don’t take God’s promises seriously enough. And so perhaps this week, Dear Partner, after opening up this incredibly expansive and jaw-dropping promise that we are all born anew through the Spirit and declared co-heirs with Christ, we might ask people to think about what decisions they might make this week knowing they have God’s unconditional love and confidence? How might their relationships look different in light of God’s promises? How might the challenges at school or work be put in perspective when they remember that they are co-heirs with Christ? And what kind of risks might they take in their relationships or careers knowing that the creator and sustain of the universe has their back?
You probably remember the parable about the eagle who was raised with chickens, and so stood in its barnyard scratching for corn as it watched these glorious birds (eagles!) fly the skies. According to Paul, we’re all eagles, and perhaps our task this week is simply to remind people of that and send them out to fly. After all, it’s the three-in-one God who has invited each and all of us to be God’s “plus one” at a heavenly feast that begins this very week.
Blessings on your proclamation, Dear Partner, as your words help set people free in the Spirit to live lives of courage and creativity. Thank you; even more, thank God for you.
Yours in Christ,
David
First draft of sermon title: “Three Plus One Equals One”.
Dear David,
Once again you hit a high note in your commentary. Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday that we deal directly with the evolution of a church doctrine. In response I offer the following:
The Holy Trinity – Sunday – May 31, 2015
It is Holy Trinity Sunday.
Time to dust off the Dogmatics.
Speak of God as H-2-0:
water with three parts –
mist, liquid, ice.
Or a three leaf clover will do
to disclose the Three-In-One.
Why do we bother with
images, icons, projections of God
worthy to be shattered
by the mystery unsolved?
How dare we define the Divine,
Domesticate the Godhead?
Go ahead: Draw your pictures,
Color your triangles,
Speak of the Three-In-One,
And the One-In-Three.
Use the Athanasian Creed litmus test
Of Father / Son / Spirit.
But all the while do not trust
The limit of language,
The confinement of metaphor,
The simplicity of simile.
The Ancients knew
One could not be
In the presence of the living God
And live.
Moses beholds God’s backside,
Jeremiah – God’s fingers in his mouth,
Isaiah God’s robe and a hot coal.
The Christ confined in flesh,
Spirit unmanageable,
Cosmic-Creator.
Expand do not contract God
For God is the Great Iconoclast.
And we at last
With Job
Stand in the Divine Presence
Jaws dropping
In muted wonder.
Kenn Storck / May 25, 2015
HI Eric,
I too would be interested in getting permission to share with my congregation, of course with due credit and with your permission.
Wow!
Ken, May I use your post in my sermon with credit given?
Eric
Thank you for asking permission to share the Holy Trinity Sunday poem. Yes, please share with credit and copyright @apoemasunday by Pr. Kenn Storck.
I send out an original poem each Sunday based on the lectionaries readings. Let me know if you would like to be receive via email until I get a blog going.
Blessings on you preaching.
Pr. Kenn Storck
ELCA – retired 3/2015
Yes, three-in-one/one-in-three. I guess what I’m hearing is more of “all for one/one for all” in that when we talk about our encounters or experiences with the divine, we might easily slip into monarchian, modalism, adoptionism, Arianism, etc. Somehow, though, it seems we need to understand when we credit 1/3, we are still getting the full 3/3, whether we recognize it or not. We get “all for one.”
Maybe that doesn’t make it any simpler or easier, but I think we speak so generically about “God” most days, most times, with one of these other heretical(?) unconsciously in the background, likely not intentionally. But we have to remember that “one for all” version of the Trinity, as well.
I tell my flock that I could give them a working knowledge of Einstein’s mass energy equivalent in ten minutes with a chalkboard. Understanding the Trinity is more of a faith matter.
Eat neapolitan ice cream … then pick up a bowling ball (while humming ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’) to address the difficulties of life this side of heaven. God will count His score as yours; and, you’re good.