Human beings seem to have a great need to find ways of speaking about or explaining God. We are forever trying and trying and trying to define God and to put God into words–indeed, as the Bishop of Oxford alluded to in the title of one of his books, to put God in a Box. Today we celebrate one of the most familiar formulas for describing God: the doctrine of the Trinity.
This is the halfway point in the Church’s year. We are about to enter, for more than a few days at a time, the longest period of the Church year: Ordinary Time. How appropriate therefore that as most of life is lived in Ordinary Time we pause to consider the nature of God as expressed in this doctrine of the Trinity. It is a moment to consider God experienced as creator, as incarnate, and as present in and among the lives of his people.
We always begin our services invoking this definition of God when we say “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” In some circles there have been attempts in recent years to expand this language. In the New Zealand Prayer Book for example, The Trinity is referred to not only as Father, Son and Holy Spirit but as “Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life.” Rebecca Oxford-Carpenter, in her article Gender and the Trinity suggests that the all-masculine image of God in the Trinity came about and was accepted because women lost their roles of authority in the early church at the end of the second century. She argues that “cultural and political trends led to the development of an increasingly patriarchal church and that it was then that God’s image became masculinized.” Whatever the case may be the fact remains that people struggled to find the terms to talk about God and we still do.
It is an important issue–how we speak of God–for as today’s gospel shows we have been given, as the phrase has it, “a great commission.” We are to go, as the eleven did in the first days, and make disciples of all nations. But what does that mean? What is it to be a disciple? Certainly we are to be followers of Christ and share him with others. But what is it we share and what is the appropriate way of sharing Christ with others? What words do we use to describe God to people and what kind of God are we describing? Sometimes it feels like we use too many words. Sometimes it feels as if God gets lost under the weight of words we use to try and depict him.
Anthony de Mello tells a story about a group of disciples who came to the Master full of questions about God. The Master said “God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Every statement about him, every answer to your questions, is a distortion of the truth.” The disciples were bewildered. “Then why do you speak about him at all?” The Master smiled and said, “Why does the bird sing?”
Perhaps that is the reason for us to speak of God: joy. Too often God is portrayed, God is drawn in language and images that are dour, depressing and paint a picture of a God that is more interested in catching us doing something naughty rather than loving us unconditionally. The picture that can be painted through the mass of words we use is of a God that seems barely alive.
I remember a friend of mine, who is now a priest in British Columbia, telling me the story of how she one day got into a discussion with the organist at her church. They were wondering if Jesus ever smiled. The organist said no, he could not believe that Jesus ever smiled and then he went on to fulminate about all of the changes in the church. He said the church should never change. And my friend, not a person to mince words, said to him “Tell me, do you believe that God is alive?” He was taken aback by this and said, “Yes, why do ask?” “Because,” said my friend, “is it not true that the only way you can tell if something is alive is if it changes?”
Perhaps this is a key to what we share with others. We are to convey that God is alive, dynamic and involved with the story of humanity in a way that gives life to all people. That is not to say that God changes. But God, while not changing in essence, does move and is infinitely creative–God changes the ways in which he is involved with his people. I suppose what I’m trying to get at is the belief that while we celebrate today a doctrine of the church which was largely fixed in time several centuries ago it never-the-less describes an active, dynamic and loving God today. God is three in one and one in three; that is not disputed. But what does this trinity mean?
In his book The Spirit of Life Jurgen Moltmann writes:
“Whereas Christ, the Son of God is called the source of grace, and God the Father is called the source of love, “fellowship” is designated as the nature of the Spirit himself. The Spirit does not merely bring about fellowship with himself. He himself issues from his fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the fellowship into which he enters with believers corresponds to his fellowship with the Father and the Son, and is therefore a Trinitarian fellowship.”
The Trinity is fellowship; it is community. Many of you will be familiar with the Russian monk Andrei Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity. The icon was painted in the first quarter of the fifteenth century and illustrates the passage in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis where Abraham is visited by three angels at the oak of Mamre. In the Eastern Church this has always been interpreted as a prefiguration of God in three persons–as Trinity. If you look at the three figures of the angels in this icon you will see they are enclosed by a circle; there is a remarkable unity about them. They are, each one, inclined toward each other in a respectful manner with a gentleness of expression that is truly moving to behold. They seem to embody ” one God in three persons who complete one another in an endless circle of loving communion. The centre of the perfect circle outlined by the three figures is the chalice which signifies the sacrament of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation.”
It is always important for us to read, to understand doctrine through study. But sometimes we need to allow ourselves to learn in ways that go beyond words. So as we consider today the doctrine of the Trinity, there can be no better way to contemplate it and gain a glimpse into its meaning than by sitting quietly, without words, and gazing at one of the most moving, beautiful and spiritual icons ever painted by Andrei Rublev or, perhaps, by anyone else.
Amen.
Terrance Bell