From a sermon preached by Rev Paul Cowanon 6 May 2007...
From a sermon preached by Rev Paul Cowan
Job 19: 21 – 27a
John 16: 5 – 15
There is nothing new under the sun.
That's what my Church History lecturer said to us on a number of occasions as we looked at the roller-coaster ride that was the Church's development. Presently the Anglican Church seems intent on self-harm over its deliberations about women in leadership, sexual practice, and also in the past few weeks, how we are to understand the cross and salvation. But there is nothing new under the sun. The Christian Church, which began as one Church, split most painfully and has never recovered from it's rows about how we are to understand the Trinity. As one of my theological commentaries points out, "The doctrine of the Trinity is unquestionably one of the most perplexing aspects of Christian theology."
Now I know that Trinity Sunday is still a few weeks away, but this year it clashes with Environment Sunday, and this year, on 3rd June, we're going to focus on the Environment. So with our gospel reading, seemingly encapsulating Father, Son and Spirit, I thought I'd focus on the Trinity.
I say seemingly, because, when discussing the Trinity, nothing is straightforward. In our reading, Jesus promises the disciples the arrival of an Advocate; in Greek, Paraclete. Well surely it's obvious; the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. It's obvious until you read 1 John 2:1 with its very close ties to John's Gospel, We have an advocate (Paraclete again in the Greek), who is Jesus Christ the righteous. So John's Gospel seems to suggest that the Spirit of Truth is the Advocate, and John's first epistle seems to suggest that Jesus is the Advocate... It turns out that there are only two verses in the entire Bible that make clear reference to Father, Son and Spirit in relation to each other, neither are in John. (Matthew 28, 2 Corinthians 13)
So how are we to understand the Trinity when we have so little to go on? How are we to understand the Trinity, when, as in our gospel for today, the references are not straightforward? How can a monotheistic faith worship three persons? Is God one substance, three persons? Or is our Trinitarian theology just a way of making sense and giving expression and understanding to the differing actions of the one God? And if there are distinctions to be made between the three persons of God, what are their differences or characters, their positions or roles, and what is their relationship to each other? These are just a few of the questions that the Church has grappled with through the centuries, But especially during the first 500 years. Indeed many Christians ended up with the label of heretic for suggesting an understanding of the Trinity, which was subsequently ruled to be unorthodox. In may now seem odd that a row over how we affirm our Trinitarian faith was influential in the East West schism of the Christian Church.
So how are we to explain the Trinity? How do we affirm in faith a relationship, a being, beings that are beyond our human comprehension, that are a mystery? Well, a common response is to look for analogies or comparisons within our world. Some preachers of the early Church compared the Trinity to the root, shoot and fruit of one plant. The Irish Catholic preacher might rush to grab a shamrock with its three leaves on one shoot for illustration. Yet others talk of water, ice and steam. St. Augustine believed that there were traces of the Trinity to be seen in our human nature of, mind, knowledge and love. And the list of analogies could go on and on.
For many of us, these examples are good enough. We learnt about them in Sunday school, and we don’t have a need to question it further. Our faith is not based on a deeper understanding of the relationships within the Trinity. But for those who do wish to reason and question, such illustrations although highlighting the multiplicity- in-unity, fail to express anything of the personal and relational nature between Father, Son and Spirit.
Why do we bother talking of three persons? Why don’t we just talk about God? I’d want to answer those questions by saying that the reality is that our faith, both BC and AD points to the Trinity. To the One who created us, to the One who redeems us, to the One who is with us now and into the future. Each person of the Trinity has a part to play in the work of our life and salvation, Who creates, redeems, and who sustains us.
This is a fundamental statement of the Christian faith, and the reason that the Christian traditions insist on baptism being Trinitarian. When in a couple of weeks, we baptise Tom's grandson, it will be with the ancient words used by the Christian faith across the world, through the centuries, I baptise you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
That's the orthodoxy that the Church got to, but for the earliest Church, how were they to explain themselves to those who said that Christians believed in three rather than one deity? Many of you will be happy to hear that I’m not going to go through a brief history of the Church’s intellectual machinations about the Trinity. One, there’s not the time, two, I question how many of us need to know for the sake of our faith, and three, because I’m no academic. But let me just summarise where 2,000 years of theology has got us to.
When explaining the Trinity we’re left with a theological tightrope. It’s easy when teaching on the Trinity to fall, either by talking of God as one God who has different modes of operating – that denies that there are three persons to the Trinity. And one can fall on the other side quite easily by stressing too much the individual nature of each – that begins to sound like we believe in more than one God.
The Church Fathers consciously chose to word their understanding of the Trinity ambiguously, leaving questions, because they were well aware of what lay either side of the tight rope. And the Trinity was one of the toughest elements to agree on in the creation of the Creed we use today. Although we may have learnt a variety of ways, words and language to give voice to the Trinity, we’re still left with a tightrope to walk, and a mystery to embrace.
For my personal faith, and when I preach, the crucial question, beyond at least a basic grasp of our doctrines is, How does this truth speak to my heart and nourish me?… I’ll end by briefly answering this question for me, And you can take anything that is valuable to you, and forget what isn’t.
As I look back over my journey of faith, I’m aware that I have consciously and often unconsciously directed my attention, my questions, my pain, my doubts and my prayers to different persons of the Trinity. I’m also aware that I’ve grown to treasure the mystery of the Trinity rather than see it as an intellectual frustration or an embarrassment because I can’t explain it to others. I value the mystery because the unfathomable depth of God’s love and nature is something seductive that sustains my thirst, and energises my journey. If we had language that could fully explain God’s Triune nature, we’d find ourselves with a God who had been reduced to our very limited human nature. Here also for me lies a lesson in humility. God is God, my creator, my saviour, and the one who sustains me. Without the Trinity, I am nothing.
And finally, the relationships within the Trinity, between the Father, Son and Spirit, can be instructive and inspiring to our personal relationships. The relationship between Father, Son and Spirit, can also be instructive and inspiring to our breadth of traditions and denominations within the one worldwide Christian Church. Instructive to the Anglican Communion today, as it struggles to find ways forward.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are our perfect example of how we ought to endeavour to relate to one another, they are united and bound in love, distinct, yet not divided, different, yet not separate from each other.
I'll finish with a prayer of Jesus from the next chapter of John,
Holy Father protect them, so that they may be one, as we are one.
Amen.
