May 31: “Who ARE All These People?”
Sermon for Trinity Sunday
by The Rev. Sandra Nixon
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Where does the ocean end and the wave begin?
These are examples of koans (k-o-a-n-s).
Anyone know what a koan is?
A koan, in Zen Buddhism, is a paradoxical question meant not to be solved logically so much as contemplated until it opens the mind to a deeper reality.
Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Home By Another Way, describes the doctrine of the Trinity as something like a Christian koan.
How can one God inhabit three forms?
How can God be both three and one?
God - Christ - Spirit. Now that the Holy Spirit has officially arrived to usher in a new liturgical season - the season after Pentecost - we can now talk about the Trinity. Hence we now have Trinity Sunday.
In preaching about the Trinity, I am very much persuaded by Barbara Brown Taylor’s approach - that is, not to try to logically solve what is essentially the mysterious nature of God, but to sit inside and contemplate those koan-like questions that the concept of the Trinity evokes, and pray to be opened up, in our contemplating, to a reality deeper than words, deeper than logic.
So:
How can one God inhabit three forms?
How can God be both three and one?
The bible often compounds the problem of getting our heads around these questions by making it sound as if all three “persons” of the Trinity operate independently of one another.
In that farewell discourse in John that we were talking about last week, Jesus talks about “going to the father” and then the father sending the spirit, the advocate”.
And at Jesus’ baptism, the heavens open, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son.”
Father, Son, Spirit — all appearing distinctly.
Barbara Brown Taylor gets into all our heads I think, when she asks: “Who ARE all these people?” How can God the father be his own son? And if Jesus is God, then to whom is he talking the he prays? And is the holy spirit the spirit of God, or Jesus, or ?? And if they are all one, then why do they come and go at different times, and how can one of them send another of them?”
(Phew… doesn’t it feel good to just put that all out there?)
Of course, we aren’t the first to ask those questions.
In the early centuries, the church became increasingly concerned about codifying its official position on these and other questions, and so gradually, especially through the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity became more formalized, based on that language that we hear in Matthew, where Jesus commissions the disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you”.
“Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. This specific Trinitarian language eventually became the shared baptismal formula recognized across most Christian traditions.
In fact, even today, some churches would question the validity of a baptism that did not use those exact words.
And yet, limiting our imagination of God to exclusively masculine language can feel too narrow for the richness of scripture itself when it comes to experiences and images of God.
Which brings us to that beautiful closing blessing from Paul in 2 Corinthians:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with all of you.”
Interestingly, Paul is probably not trying to define a doctrine here at all.
He is blessing a fractured community.
Second Corinthians is one of Paul’s most personal and emotional letters. The church in Corinth was struggling with division, conflict, competing loyalties, and questions about authority and belonging.
And so Paul ends not with theological precision, but with relational language:
grace,
love,
and communion - or sharing in.
In other words, the Trinity here is experienced not as abstract doctrine but as relationship.
God known as grace.
God felt as love.
“God experienced as participation in, companionship with,
and mystical belonging within the shared Spirit.”
…
I also love that newer translations add in some rich textual nuances to Paul’s words
Encourage / agree with one another - not rigid sameness but mutual strengthening.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of/sharing in the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
Again, the relational language here is so strong.
…
Process and relational theologians often remind us that relationship is not something added onto reality later — relationship is what reality fundamentally is.
Modern physics, ecology, evolutionary biology — all increasingly point toward the interdependence, relationality, entanglement.
Nothing exists entirely on its own.
And perhaps theology has been trying to say something similar all along:
that at the heart of reality is not coercion or isolation,
but communion,
creativity,
interdependence,
mutual becoming.
And, if creation in some way bears the imprint and presence of God…, then we can also look to nature and the physical world for clues as to God’s nature.
And when we look at the diversity of the world and the “trinities” found in, they also point to a God that is relational and can be encountered as relational Trinity.
- body/mind/spirit
past/present/future
- solid/liquid/gas
Even the classic trinitarian illustration: the humble apple
skin, flesh, seeds
Ok, now forget the challenge of describing God as trinity and just consider how many experiences we have of God generally, and the different ways we describe God based on those experiences:
(BBT): “Some days God comes as a judge… whirlwind… brooding hen… eagle circling over the tree tops;
God the dazzling monarch; suffering servant… innocent child… birdsong… sun rising over a field; wise elder… prophet on a street corner…
God the teacher, friend, stranger;
God the still, small voice, the word of inspiration or blinding insight.
God is many, which is at least one of the mysteries behind the doctrine of the Trinity.
When we confess and celebrate and sing about God as trinity - we are proclaiming that God comes to us in many different forms, and yet also in the mystery that God is still one:
one ground of being;
one deep well of love beneath existence;
one creative pulse moving through the cosmos;
one sacred relationality holding all things together;
one life continually unfolding in and through creation.
Which means that when we experience a contradictory God (for instance, punishing versus loving) perhaps that says as much about our own fears, projections, and historical circumstances as it does about God.
And if we believe, ultimately, that we and all beings are in God, and God in us, then:
a)God is wonderfully diverse and
b) we have more in common and are more fundamentally connected to one another than we sometimes realize.
Trinity Sunday, then, isn’t really a celebration of a doctrine.
It is a celebration of mystery.
Of a God who is endlessly relational.
A God who is larger than any single image,
larger than any creed,
beyond any language we use.
And yet — somehow — still intimately present.
Calling us - in the words of Paul:
into grace.
Into love.
Into communion.
Into deeper belonging and abiding and sharing in the spirit
with one another and with all creation.
A God who is bigger than our words and our doctrines
but not beyond our experience.
Thanks be to God.