Isaiah
6: 1–8; Psalm 29; Romans 8: 12–17; John 3: 1–17
This
is the homily given at St. John’s Church; Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene
Tucker on Sunday, May 27, 2018.
“OF THE HOLY
TRINITY”
“God
in three persons, blessed Trinity.”[1]
This,
of course, is a line from the famous hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy”, which will be
sung in churches all around the world today.[2]
Standing
on this side of heaven, it is difficult for us to grasp the mystery of who God
is, a God who is One God, in three Persons.[3] “How can
that be?”, we ask ourselves.
Offering
a homily or sermon on this day, Trinity Sunday, in the Church’s calendar can be
a very daunting task. (In fact, let me say here that the thoughts which follow
don’t presume to be an exhaustive consideration of everything there is to know
about the Trinity. The best we can do here is to offer an introduction to what
can be a very demanding subject.) Though it is a challenging assignment, yet it
would be good for us to embark on a brief voyage of discovery to see what we
can learn about God’s nature. We will all be the better for it, I think.
We
should begin with the understanding that there is but one God. That is our
inheritance from Judaism, whose declaration from ancient times is this: “Hear,
O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) That
understanding, of course, is the one which informed all the original disciples
who were destined to become apostles.
But
then, God mixes things up a bit. He does so by sending Jesus, the Christ, to
take up our humanity.
As
those who lived and moved with Jesus reflected on everything He did (that
string of deeds culminates in His rising to new life again on Easter Sunday
morning), they came to understand that Jesus, the Christ, was God Himself, God
with us, or – in Hebrew – Emmanuel.
(It
is important that we remind ourselves that the reflection of the early Church
on the mighty things that God had done took many years to come into a full and
firm understanding of God’s nature. What we have come to affirm as being true
about God’s nature as God in three persons took centuries of reflection and
debate to become the basis for our Christian faith.)
So,
to borrow some language from biblical scholars, what we are talking about is
the Christ Event, a term which describes everything that Jesus Christ did, from
His teachings, to the miracles, to the victory over death on Good Friday and
Easter Sunday, everything.
If
we understand that everything we know about God is due to God’s revealing His
nature to us Himself, then, in Christ, God’s revelation is complete. The
Scriptures affirm this truth when we read the statement, that Christ is “the
image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) Jesus Himself confirms the
relationship with His Father, saying, “If you have seen me, you have seen the
Father.” (John 14:9b)
So
the Christ Event is the starting point for a wider understanding of who God is.
The Christ Event, as we’ve just mentioned, looks backward into the nature of
God as Father. But the Christ Event also looks forward into the coming of the
Holy Spirit.
It
is to the subject of the third person of the Holy Trinity that we now turn.
The
things that Jesus Christ said about the sending of the Holy Spirit sparked the
same sort of reflection among the early disciples-become-apostles as had gone
on with the reflection on the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ
as Son and God as Father..
Early
on, in Judaism, the understanding about God’s Spirit was quite different than
the understanding that developed among Christians: In Judaism, there was an
understanding that God’s nature involved a Spirit, but that Spirit was seen as
something that simply emanated from God. With the sending of the Holy Spirit on
the Feast of Pentecost (an event we celebrated last Sunday), God chose to
reveal Himself in a more specific way. Jesus had predicted this revelation
prior to His death and resurrection.
Once
again, with regard to the subject of the Holy Spirit’s identity, power and
relationship to the Father and to the Son, we are dealing with God’s revelation
of Himself. Jesus Christ is the starting point for the reflection of those
early Christians on the nature of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
Now,
we would do well to make some specific comments about the nature of the Holy
Trinity:
Capturing a sense of the whole: The human mind, though we are created in the
image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26–27), has trouble grasping the
idea of a God who can be One God in three Persons. We human beings can wrap our
minds around part of this concept, though not all of it. And so, we often lapse
into a focus on one Person of the Trinity, often to the point of ignoring the
other two Persons. It’s important for us to remember that, whenever we are
focusing on one Person of the Trinity, the other two are always present, as
well.
Modalism: The next thing we ought to talk about is
something called Modalism. It is the idea that God exists in three ways of
presentation, or modes. An example might help to explain how this works: Speaking personally, I am a father to my
children, I am a grandfather to my grandchildren, and I am a priest (sometimes
called Father by my parishioners) to my parish church. Who I am to each of
these three different constituencies depends on what the relationship between
us is. We can characterize that relationship by saying that I am operating in
different modes when I am dealing with my children, my grandchildren or my
parishioners. So, too, with regard to God, we often think of God as being
presented to us in different ways, or modes. Using this way of understanding
the nature of God can be of some assistance, it seems to me. But ultimately,
its use is quite limited.
Is there a precedence of Persons in
the Trinity?:
Part of the mystery of God’s nature is that all three Persons of the
Holy Trinity are so unified in their relationship to one another that it is
virtually impossible for us – this side of heaven – to distinguish where one
Person’s identity leaves off and the next one begins.[4] There seems
to be an equality among the three Persons of the Trinity.
So we could correctly refer to the Trinity in the most common way, saying,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we could also say put the Son first, saying
Son, Father and Holy Spirit, or Holy Spirit, Father and Son. You get the idea.
Now, having said so, there does seem to be some precedence given to the Father.
Jesus Christ offers this precedence by saying that He had been sent by the
Father. This and similar statements appear often in John’s Gospel account.
Welcome to the mystery of God as One God in three Persons!
Understanding God for His deeds, or
for His nature?:
It is becoming more and more common today to refer to God as Creator,
Redeemer and Sustainer. These terms are used in place of the traditional terms
of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But here a problem arises: Using the terms Creator, Redeemer and
Sustained describes things that God does, but they do not describe God by the
biblical names with which He is identified. Personally, whether the use of
Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer are attempts to avoid patriarchal language, or
are used for some other reasons, avoidance of the traditional terms neglects
the witness of Holy Scripture and the language our Lord Jesus Christ used with
reference to God as His Father.
Welcome,
then, to the mystery of God’s nature, that God whom we worship who is One God,
in three Persons, the blessed Trinity.
AMEN.
[1] The term “Trinity” does not appear in the
New Testament. The term itself is the combination of two words: “Tri” = three and “Unity” = one. The New
Testament does have references to the three Persons of the Trinity…they are
Matthew 28:19 and II Corinthians 13:14.
[2] The text of this hymn was written by
Reginald Hebe (1783 – 1826)r, who was an Anglican bishop who served in India.
[3] The terminology that is used when we
consider the mystery of the Holy Trinity owes a debt to the third century
theologian, Tertullian, who is credited with the origination of the use of the
term “Persons”.
[4] The technical term for this interpenetration
of one Person of the Trinity with the others is perichoresis (coming from the Greek).
