The Trinity is hard. Understanding it. And living it. But that is precisely what Jesus is inviting us to work out.
And why love isn’t neutral
Trinity Sunday | John 16:12-15
I’m confident it doesn’t surprise you to know that this isn’t my favorite Sunday to preach on. I have done little to hide my general sense of disinterest in this one particular Sunday. Of course, I’m not alone.
In seminary I learned that this is the Sunday seminarians, curates, and assistant rectors are most likely to have the task of preaching. And it is easy to see why.
None of us really likes preaching on Trinity Sunday. What with the weird gospels and the theological concepts. None of it has the same juice as the narrative or parable preaching we’ll be doing over the next few weeks.
It also has the added pressure of being about the central theological construct that is at the center of our global faith tradition. So…no big deal.
It isn’t easy preaching the Trinity.
The other thing I learned back then is that this Sunday isn’t only Seminarian Sunday. It is also (half-) jokingly referred to as the Sunday in which the greatest amount of heresy is preached. Church nerds know what that’s about.
This is because our attempts to describe the Trinity are all bound to fail.
We are trying to describe the idea that the deity: GOD: is three persons and yet also one. That they are always and eternally three and always and eternally one. AND also never not three and never not one.
AND that each person of the Trinity has a unique character, function and place, AND YET remains, not only part of the godhead, but one, in singularity with the godhead. In other words: totally different and also the same!
SO, God is always God. And never not God.
God isn’t like water turning to ice and steam. Nor is God like a seed. Or a leaf. We can’t describe the Trinity in analogies because each one is a heresy. And I’m not even joking. Literal heresies. People’s lives were ruined for trying to understand the Trinity by suggesting the nature of God is like water.
So we joke and tease each other about preaching heresy on Trinity Sunday, because we’re all stuck with an impossible task.
And ultimately, that is the real stuff of it. Choosing to either understand one another in the midst of this impossibility or condemn our neighbors for failing at perfection.
What’s at stake
What is at stake in the Trinity is probably not anyone’s faith. But something akin to common ground.
For the western mind, the Trinity is a compromise. And the kind that makes none of us truly happy. Because we’ve settled for a paradox. A paradox that only holds together if we all go along with it. Like a fragile peace.
For God to be Creator and Father, God needs to be powerful enough to do all of the things. And yet, for God to be whole and at oneness with all things, God cannot be alone. God needs a bestie to vibe with.
For Jesus to be divine and one with God, he then needs to be fully God. But for Jesus to be the person of the Trinity that is Son and also human, he needs to be fully human. Fully God and fully human at the same time!
From the third through seventh centuries, these notions of God and Jesus tore the church apart. Today, it seems that our biggest challenge is not recreating the Jesus Wars. We’re wrestling with the third person.
The Spirit
In the gospel, Jesus says that the Spirit “will guide you into all the truth”. And who doesn’t want that? Especially now! Maybe that needs to be our prayer. Holy Spirit, bring us out of disinformation and into all the truth!
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear that the Spirit will do this, here is what happens in my brain.
I think:
- Jesus is talking to these people nearly two thousand years ago.
- He’s promising them that the Spirit will guide them into truth.
- So then what explains…this. All of this disinformation and distortion of the truth in our world?
That’s a literalistic response. Don’t worry, though. I have many other responses. Including a really practical one. I also think about the dude who writes me a letter to tell me that the Holy Spirit wants him to condemn gay people.
What do we do with this? When the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, of God, seems really sus?
Listen to Jesus
I suppose the first thing we do is to listen to Jesus when he says that the Spirit will guide us into all the truth. So maybe we should consider that at the outset.
(As opposed to doing our own thing, ignoring the Spirit, and tearing down others.)
So what does that look like exactly?
The most obvious response is prayer. We all know that we’re supposed to pray. But we don’t always make it clear that prayer is more than just asking for things or for the sick to get better. So we pray also for guidance and presence and support. Our most recognizable prayer includes “your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”
We pray that we do what God wants.
We may also pray for connection.
When I was training to work at Barnes & Noble, I was taught to never point to the restrooms or a bookshelf. If someone is asking you for help, you walk with them to where they are going to ensure they find it. And if they are looking for a particular book, you help them find it on the shelf and put it in their hand.
In other words, we were to guide people. Guiding isn’t pointing. It also isn’t doing all the work for them. It is walking with. Walking the same path alongside. It is scanning the shelves together and showing how things are ordered.
The Spirit isn’t guiding us to three-hour YouTube videos or Q-drops on message boards where hate and conspiracy linger. Because we aren’t supposed to be doing all of this truth-seeking alone. We aren’t supposed to be measuring it against our own biases and expectations.
Most of all, we shouldn’t fall down a misinformation rabbit hole and say that the Spirit did that.
It may seem like we are led to this, but that doesn’t mean it’s the Spirit or all the truth.
Sometimes we might have a hard time figuring this out in our own lives. But the thing for us is that we start with seeking guidance from the Spirit, not a YouTube algorithm.
Algorithms don’t guide us toward love.
Our algorithms are built for engagement and heat and reactivity. They are therefore making us connect with our anger and keep us angry.
The Spirit, on the other hand, guides us into all the truth. For the truth she speaks is the words of the Father.
The Spirit is a person of the Trinity. And the Triune God is love. As Bishop Curry loves to remind us, if it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God. Which means God’s not in it.
That’s the problem with our bias toward neutrality; that truth itself is a neutral concept. Or even that love is a default position rather than a God position.
We must start from a God position, not a neutral one. So we start from a position of love and justice and health and wholeness.
Our neutral looks pretty biased to the purveyors of hate. But it also looks pretty biased to the purveyors of a true neutral position. Because we’re supposed to be for love and joy and justice and health.
In D&D terms, the Spirit will often appear to be Chaotic Good!
At the heart of faith is relationship
So let us pan back out and remember that this crazy Sunday we are trying to wrangle a difficult theological concept of a God that is somehow one thing and three things at the same time. And we are also wrestling with truth and how God in the Spirit affects our lives. This is the tallest order for a Sunday.
Our Eastern siblings in Christ, however, remind us that our abstract and utilitarian view of the Trinity is all concept and no beauty. They remind us that God in Trinity is a They. Singular and plural. They dance, eat, and share. They are in relationship and embody relationship.
Which rightly serves as an example and reflection of our relationship to God and one another.
So as we remember that our work is the work and we are called to be student teachers of love, we can bring these very ideas into our own lives.
That we start with prayer for guidance. And we commune with one another. And because God is present with us when we are present with one another, then we can experience the love of God. And receive a foretaste of what God wants for all of us. Love. Love. Love.
At the heart of God. And the heart of peace. May this also be the heart of church.