First Sunday after Pentecost
“Trinity” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Psalm 8, NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (John 16:12-15, NRSVUE)
I was an English major in college but was required to take about half of my classes in other subjects — ones with which I was far less comfortable — including the physical sciences. Thankfully, though, non-scientists like me had options that were less onerous than the ones meant for students seeking degrees in those fields.
These classes had official names in the course catalog and unofficial ones that students used to refer them: there was “Introduction to Physics” (aka “Physics for Poets”), there was “Introduction to Geology” (aka “Rocks”) and there was “Introduction to Astrophysics” (aka “Flying Rocks”). I opted for the prize behind door number three, which worked out okay for me: I learned some interesting stuff, I got decent grades, and I met my wife there. All in all, Flying Rocks proved to be a solid choice on my part.
Because these classes were primarily for students focusing on the humanities, they didn’t require knowledge of higher-order math (thanks be to God); if you’d taken algebra in high school, then you were pretty much good to go. But it ended up being way tougher than I thought it was going to be.
You see, the classes were meant for humanists but scientists had to teach them — a fact about which some of those scientists were not thrilled because they had better things to do; for example, one of our professors that year worked on the Hubble Telescope, which was launched a month before I graduated. Asking a professor like that to teach someone like me about this stuff using high-school math would have been kinda like inviting Michelangelo to decorate the Sistine Chapel and telling him he could only use a box of crayons.
But these professors — either inspired by the challenge of enlightening a class of angsty philosophy and English majors about the ins and outs of the universe, or, more likely, simply complying with the orders of a dean or a department chair — all did it. Unfortunately, however, this resulted in a whole lot of work for me and my fellow students.
As it turns out, algebra isn’t the best way to account for the mysteries of space and time. For starters, you have to go through a lot more trouble to get where you’re going than you would if you just used advanced math; think of it like driving from Salt Lake to San Diego but rather than taking the direct route by just heading south on I-15 you decide to go through Canada instead.
In addition, the relative imprecision of algebra in that context means that you can only approach some answers without ever quite getting to them; again, think of it like driving from Salt Lake to San Diego and never being able to get closer than Escondido.
But if algebra’s all you have to work with, then that’s what you work with. And I, for one, don’t feel too bad about this because even the greatest scientific minds of all time — people whose math skills are way better than mine — still haven’t figured out all there is to know about the universe and, because they’re human, I doubt they ever will. But good on them for trying. Astrophysicists’ ways of understanding things may be more robust than mine are but, at the end of the day, we’re all just looking for some answers without ever quite reaching them.
This is what came to mind for me as I was considering what to say about the Trinity today (though, in retrospect, astrophysics might have been an easier topic to address). We tend to talk a lot in church about God and Jesus and far less about the Holy Spirit, so the rare mention of the Spirit last week (in the Pentecost story) inspired the folks who created the church calendar to make today the day on which we acknowledge the idea of a God that is somehow both three in one and one in three — God as Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer; God as Mother, Child and Spirit; God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost (use whatever words work for you because none of them are wrong and none of them could ever be completely right). I guess you could also compare it three separate but equal branches of one government — remember what that used to be like?
Anyway, if you went looking through the Bible for a thorough and definitive depiction of the triune God, then you’re gonna be disappointed because there isn’t one. The doctrine of the Trinity and the statements of it that followed (in writings like the Apostle Creed) were hundreds of years in the future when the events of Gospels took place and when the New Testament was written.
The closest the Bible actually gets to a description of the Trinity are passages like today’s from John, in which Jesus talks about himself, God and the Spirit, while only hinting at their relationship to one another. And this left believers with a whole lot of explaining to do.
So, how did the early Christians understand the way these three manifestations of God relate to one another? Well, that would depend on who you asked. The fathers of the Eastern Church (sorry, they were all men) said the Spirit comes only from God, while the fathers of the Western church (yeah, they were all men too) said the Spirit comes from God and from Jesus. For the Western church, the Spirit has it’s source in God and it’s Jesus who then gives the gift of the Spirit to the church.
Who’s right? I don’t know. And John clearly had a tough time getting to the bottom of this too; I say that because there are places in John’s gospel where Jesus says he’ll send the Spirit and place when he says that God will send the Spirit and places (like the last verse of today’s reading) when he implies that God sends both him and the Spirit. So, at the end of the day, it’s perfectly clear — you know, like mud.
People have been getting their minds wrapped around this axle for a few thousand years now and no one’s managed to reach a definitive answer. But good on them for trying; it seems like we’re always trying.
It’s true: people have been seeking explanations for things as long as there’s been people and things, and questions like: “What is the nature of God?” and “How does God manage to be three-in-one and one-in-three at the same time?” and “Are God, Son and Spirit equals or is one of them like the ‘boss’?” are, admittedly, as complicated as question get. It’s easy to understand why people have always wanted to know the answer, to derive, using the tools we have, a way for making it all make sense.
The community to which John wrote his Gospel was having a rough time and they needed it all to make sense. The Jewish people had been scattered to the four winds, Jesus’s closest disciples were on the run, and Jesus himself was gone (though he promised to return at some point in the future). They likely felt abandoned and forsaken — well, perhaps until they thought about what Jesus had said to them before he left, part of which we read today.
You see, during his life here on Earth, Jesus talked a lot about being about in communion with God — about being one with God — and made clear to his disciples that God wished for them to be one, to be in communion, as well. But now that Jesus is no longer there (at least in the way he used to be), where are they going to turn, how are they going to hold it all together?
Cue the Spirit, who comes to them (and to us) not bearing a truth any different from that which God has already made known through Jesus, but rather interpreting that truth, helping us to understand that truth, inspiring us and strengthening us to live that truth, as times and circumstances change.
God and Jesus and the Spirit are connected for all time. God and Jesus are in heaven (wherever that it) and the Spirit is here among us, connecting us to God and to Jesus and to one another. The Spirit abides and the communion continues — because God is communion, God is relationship. At some level, this is what the doctrine of the Trinity is striving to say — using finite and imperfect words to describe an complicated and perfect truth.
Like scientists who’ve tried (with models and math) to move us closer to understanding the universe without ever quite getting there, theologians have sought (with models and words) to move us closer to understanding God without quite getting there. We must, as Paul says, continue for the time being to “see in a mirror, dimly, that which we will one day see face to face.” And while we’ll never stop looking in that mirror for explanations, perhaps we should also, every now and again, stop and allow ourselves to revel in the mystery.
As I said earlier, I learned a lot of fascinating things in that class I took, I developed an appreciation for the magnificence and magnitude of the universe by seeking to understand it. But simply reading books and solving equations also felt incomplete.
And then one night we visited this giant telescope the university had. It was perched atop the building where our class was held, and we had to go at three am because that was the best time for viewing stuff. I remember standing there exhausted waiting my turn to take a look and when I finally stepped up and peered through that viewfinder, I was elated and speechless.
There was a tiny Saturn, it’s rings visible, shimmering as the sun’s rays, which had arrived there in the distant past made their way back to me in that moment. The image was shaky and blurry and uniformly the color of creamed corn; indeed, this version of Saturn looked more like one you’d find in a Mighty Mouse cartoon from the 1940s than it did like the crisp, multicolor images you see in books or on the Discovery Channel. But, for some reason, it made all the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Sometimes, encountering God — our mysterious three-in-one, one-in-three God — does the same thing for me. It’s hard for me to explain why or what or how that is. Sometimes, words (like equations) just fail us.
Then again, maybe that’s the whole point. There are just some things, try though we might, that transcend our ability to explain them. Oh, we’ll continue trying to explain them, because that’s what people do — and it’s good to understand the world around us, to whatever extent we can.
But we also shouldn’t ignore those feelings we have when we sense that we’re part of something way bigger than us (and our ability to understand it); when we’re awestruck by that which we can only see through a mirror (or a telescope), dimly; when we encounter mysterious things that make all the hair on the back of our neck stand up. The universe is one of those things, and God is too.
Let’s face it: When it comes to understanding God we’re all just trying to recreate the Sistine Chapel with nothing more than a box of crayons. But maybe, just maybe, we could, amidst all of our attempts at reasoning and system-building and doctrine-writing, also allow ourselves to experience the kind of joy and excitement that children do when they get a hold of a box of crayons.