Trinity Sunday Impressions

Today's "psalm" reading, called Canticle 13, is actually Daniel 3: 52-56 in the Old Testament..  It is a portion of what is called The Song of the Three and is one of several parts of the Bible removed by protestants at the time of the continental Reformation.   Sad, as the passage is truly beautiful and constitutes pure praise of God, which we raise on this Sunday.

The fundamentalist sect in which I was reared prided itself on being bible-literal and also having a perfect, infallible interpretation of everything in Scripture.  When I was a youth, our pulpit minister preached an impressive sermon on the Trinity, using the traditional analogies of the spinning wheel and the shamrock.  Some months later, a guest evangelist preached a revival in our church and stated openly that the doctrine of the Trinity is not scriptural, is rather of Catholic provenance; and he even suggested that the Son and the Holy Spirit are subordinate to God the Father, fully repudiating the ancient doctrine of the Trinity.

To some extent both preachers were correct.  The Trinity is indeed Catholic Doctrine.  And the Trinity is not taught in Scripture.  St. Paul's listing of the three together (2 Cor. 13:13) does not imply any particular relationship.  And the formula in Matthew's gospel of about 80 C.E. as found at the end of the last chapter, clearly involved insertion of what was, by that time, baptismal formula.

The Trinity is a teaching of Christ's Holy Catholic Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and we do accept it for that reason.  That does not mean, however, that we can possibly understand it.   We struggle with the proposition that 1+1+1=1.  Perhaps we should be saying 1x1x1=1.  But, as Daniel Webster said about the equation, "I don't pretend to understand the maths of heaven." We are dealing with sacred Mystery and cannot pretend to plumb the inner life of God.  Let me just leave you with a couple of impressions that might be useful in living into the Mystery.

First, love is by nature effusive and finds its essence in relationship. And it is only in relationship that love is experienced.   There can be no one-party love affair.  The flow of love amongst the three Persons of the Trinity is simply how love works and, in the context of that divine love, we find that love overflowing and poured into our hearts by God, so that we are impelled to love others.   And that by nature means active love, which is sacrificial service.

Second, the first person or "Father" is perfectly imaged in the second person, Jesus, the "Son" or metaphor of God, who shows us exactly and completely how God cares, how God loves, how God serves and suffers with God's people.  The third person, or "Spirit" is the agency by which we are, however slowly and however imperfectly, formed into the image of the Son.  Together the three Persons are the One God who creates, redeems, and sanctifies the cosmos.  We are privileged to have been factored into God's equation, called to love God and our neighbour as ourselves.