at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

On the Christian calendar, today – the first Sunday after Pentecost – is traditionally called “Trinity Sunday.” It is the day on which we are supposed to remember and celebrate the doctrine of the trinity – the Christian belief that God has revealed Godself as three in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Trinity Sunday has often been called a “preacher’s nightmare” because those of us vested with the responsibility of writing the sermon must find a way to talk about this abstract and intellectually difficult concept without using so much theological jargon that you all fall asleep. In fact, you may not have noticed, but because over the past few years, Trinity Sunday has been superseded by Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and Children’s Sunday the past few years, I have actually managed to avoid preaching about it three of the five Trinity Sundays I have been here. But not today.

Today we’re going to talk about the trinity and how this three-dimensional view of God has been a struggle throughout the history of the Christian Church to try to describe who God is, what God does, and how God works in the world.

The words of the trinity are familiar. After the reading of scripture, we sing the doxology which ends, “praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost” and during the offering, we sing Praise to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, “One God, triune, whom we adore.” We baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And many of the hymns we sing mention the trinity in some way. In short, the trinity is an undergirding tenet of our Christian faith.

But you won’t find the word trinity in the bible; it is merely a descriptive term, coming from the Latin tri-unitos, meaning three in the unity of one. But although the word trinity cannot be found in the Bible, the concept is biblical.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives the Great Commission, commanding his disciples to baptize in the name of “the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” which has endured throughout the history of the church as the baptismal formula for Christians. And in this morning’s epistle lesson, the Apostle Paul concludes his second letter to the Corinthians with this benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

The concept of the trinity came about in the first centuries of the church, when the early Christians grappled with how to express the three ways they had come to know God. One experience of God was as Creator. The term “Father” was attributed to this Creator God, and this analogy from human experience compares the connection between God and humanity to the intimate relationship between parents and their children

For the early church community, another understanding of God came through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God entered the world in the form of frail human flesh to participate in earthly human life – to share our “common lot.” Through the incarnation, the faith community came to understand that God was not just out there, but lived as one of us, sharing life’s pains as well as its joys. The designation “Son” was given to Jesus to underscore his close relationship to God, the “Father.”

And the third way the early Church experienced and understood God was as the Holy Spirit. As promised by Jesus, the gift of the Spirit came on Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday, and the Holy Spirit is the presence of God working in our hearts and in our lives.

The early Christians realized that, to depict God, they had to somehow come up with a way of describing all three of these ways that God had been revealed to them. At the same time, they needed to be true to their monotheistic belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And so the trinity was the way the early Christians could remain true to the unity of One God while conveying their three experiences of God – the one God who is at once over us and with us and in us.

There have been many attempts to try to relate this idea of three-in-one in terms we can understand. One way is to use imagery: the trinity is like a tricycle with three wheels, or a clover with three leaves. The trinity is like H2O, which can be in the form of ice, water, or steam.

Another way is to use pictures. The triangle is the traditional symbol for the Trinity used by Western Church. At first glance, an equilateral triangle seems to be a fitting symbol – it has three equal sides and therefore speaks of the equality of the members of the Trinity. But there is no way to look at a triangle without one of the points of the triangle being higher – or lower – than the others.

The Christians from the Eastern Orthodox Church have a better picture for the Trinity – the circle. In the religious art of Orthodox churches, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are often pictured as three figures sitting around a table together sharing a meal.

John of Damascus, a Greek theologian who lived in the seventh century, developed this understanding of the Trinity with a concept called perichoresis. Peri means "around." Choresis means literally "dancing." Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are like three dancers holding hands, dancing in a circle. And if we look past the metaphors and pictures, at the heart of that circle, is the Love who lives at the heart of it all.

The revelation that God is love is found in numerous verses of scripture throughout the Old and New Testaments. In the book of Jeremiah [31:3], God tells the people of Israel, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” and Paul [Romans 8:39] assures us that nothing “Will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The trinity is infinite Love seeking expression. And in the end, all avenues of expression – language, music, art, even the human mind – fall short of comprehending the majesty and mystery of God.

But we need not try to explain; all we need do is to experience the Love who created our world and fashioned us with such care; the Love who passionately desired to become one of us and for a little while pitched his tent among us; the Love who could not ultimately leave us but remains with us to inhabit every moment of our existence.

This is the essence of the Trinity; this is our triune God – the One who loves us unconditionally, infinitely, and eternally. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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