I do get the power of the metaphor – I understand the power of the personification of spirit or truth or wisdom or grace. I understand that Jesus referred to God as Father. But I imagine that if the spirit of truth is still speaking, she might respectfully suggest the word Author in place of Father. And if we are not going to use neutral pronouns, we really must use the feminine.

There is something very lovely about the spirit of truth listening first and speaking what she hears. The spirit of truth follows the central command of the Hebrew Bible: Hear. Listen deeply. The spirit of truth speaks what she hears when she listens deeply. It’s like Quaker meeting or the Great Silence in monastic life. The spirit of truth is still enough to hear and then communicate the voice of the Deep – the Author of us all. Our word for that, I think, is Inspiration.

You know, today is the day that the Church designates “Trinity Sunday.” That’s what this Gospel lesson is doing here in our lectionary. It appears to contain the foundational ideas, the primary evidence if you will, of the three persons of God. Trinity Sunday is a day to focus our attention on the mystery of unity-in-diversity of God – of threefold unity – and it’s the kind of topic that theologians have written libraries full of books on. My problem is that I can’t see how any one of them has gotten close to making sense of what the early church took several centuries to agree on – one God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they finally said, and after that I imagine church leaders were so exhausted that nothing else has ever really taken hold (except maybe Unitarianism). I learned a Unitarian joke this week that goes: we believe in one god – more or less, give or take. Sounds a little like Emmanuel Church don’t you think?

I have to confess that I’ve never been able to get interested in systematic theology in general or the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically. And somehow I’ve managed to avoid preaching on Trinity Sunday for a good number of years. This year I must have gotten distracted because I didn’t plan carefully enough! I do take some comfort from Adam Gopnik’s great piece in the New Yorker this week, called “What Did Jesus Do? Reading and Unreading the Gospels.” In it he summarizes Philip Jenkins’ new book called Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1500 Years. Gopnik writes, “The passion with which people argued over apparently trivial word choices was…not a sign that they were specially sensitive to theology. People argued that way because they were part of social institutions – cities, schools, clans, networks – in which words are banners and pennants.…It wasn’t that they really cared about the conceptual difference[s].…They cared about [who]…were going to run the Church.” And that is still the case with doctrinal arguments today, it seems to me.

But if I back away from arguing the rightness or wrongness or “the only-ness” of the doctrine of the Trinity and just think about whether there is anything useful in it for us, then I notice that I am drawn to the idea that the Trinitarian model is one of the divine in relationship – in community with one another that moves beyond a singular idea of one – to a communal idea of one for the Divine.  The interesting thing about relationships and community is that they are always messy – full of disorder and imperfection. One of the fascinating things about Jesus, whether you view him as a great religious leader or the Christ, or both, is that Jesus was not teaching about removing oneself from the mundane or the common. Jesus spent his life teaching that the Divine was in the midst of the mess of everyday life and everyday relationships.

One of the things that hangs many of us up are the names for God in the Trinity. I really think the ancient Israelites had it right when they made a word that could not be spoken that represented the Holy One. The idea is that God’s name is so Holy that it cannot be uttered. Silence or a substitute word or a place-holder is all that makes sense. Another way to understand the name of God is the sound of breathing in and out.

Hebrew Scripture did have many titles for God: the wisdom from on high, the creator; the one who sees me, the eternal. And there were descriptions of God being like a rock, like a potter, like an eagle, like a father, like a judge, my favorite, like an author – creating the world with words. And there were activities associated with God: God who creates and blesses; God who calls; God who speaks; God who rules and disciplines; God who rescues and restores. God was both male and female in Hebrew Scripture. Male and female were created in God’s image. Hebrew scripture has many place-holder names for the Divine in addition to Lord or sovereign – some of the best are ha shem” (The Name), ha makom (The Place), and perhaps the most intriguing, the word mi which is Who. One answer, then, to the question asked in Isaiah (40:26) about the stars, “Who created these?” is “yes.” Who. I know it sounds a little like the Abbot and Costello routine. Who created these? Yes. Who? Yes.

It was not until Jesus’ followers started comparing their guy to Caesar that they got really stuck. Caesar claimed to be Lord. Caesar claimed to be Divine. Caesar claimed to be the Son of God. Jesus’ followers claimed all that for Jesus – Jesus, not Caesar, was Lord. Jesus, not Caesar, was Divine. Jesus, not Caesar, was the Son of God. In fact, Jesus was the ONLY son of God. Not Caesar.  God was Jesus’ father, whose primary qualities as parent were love and compassion, discipline and mercy. And God became Jesus’ followers’ father, too, when Jesus called them brothers and sisters. Whether creating the world, redeeming the horror of the crucifixion, or inspiring the gathered community, it was all the work of same God – and thus the building blocks of triune God became codified as masculine – and God has sounded like a boy’s name ever since.

But the idea of the Divine as the Author of existence, of the Divine in the midst of the mess, and of the Divine listening deeply and speaking – that is, inspiring, seems to me to provide a generous amount of elbow room – and elbow room is always what we are looking for more of at Emmanuel Church. Next week we’re back to Luke, I promise! In the Holy Name of the Trinity: Author, Word and Inspiration.