Trinity Sunday, (C), May 22, 2016; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O indescribable Holy One, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

For those of you who struggle with the Gospel of John, this Gospel reading is for you. It begins with an acknowledgement that, while there is much more to say, Jesus knows that you cannot bear it now. Perhaps this is recognition of saturation, of exhaustion, of grief, of the lack of additional capacity among Jesus’ followers. It seems like it might be compassionate, parental. Or, perhaps the scribe was just tired or short on papyrus and so he wrote that into the Gospel story. Either way, I like to imagine that it is a statement that is true in every age that there are more things than we can hear or bear. I find it to be a very hopeful idea that there is more wisdom and truth than are recorded in the scriptures. Wisdom and truth were not completely revealed in Jesus’ time – they are not completely revealed even yet. The revelation of the Divine is ongoing, continuing.

So far, so good. But then our text has a series of potholes that, for this feminist preacher, threaten to blow out all of my tires. In this little passage – in three short verses, the masculine pronoun appears eight times in reference to the spirit of truth. He he he – for crying out loud! This drives me crazy. The Greek word for spirit (pneuma) is neuter and the word for truth (aletheia) is feminine. The spirit of truth is not a he. It reminds me of a conversation I had with one of my cousins when she saw a t-shirt I was wearing from the Episcopal Women’s Caucus. The t-shirt says, “God is not a boy’s name.” And my cousin Linda said, “well God does sound like a boy’s name.” And I responded, “of course God sounds like a boy’s name – because you have never heard anything but male pronouns referring to God!” She agreed that she hadn’t, but insisted that it just sounded weird to think of God in any way but “he.” But I digress. Listen to the passage read this way:

“When the spirit of truth comes it will guide you into all truth, it will not speak on its own, but will speak whatever it hears, and it will declare to you the things that are to come. It will glorify me because it will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that it will take what is mine and declare it to you.” 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. “When the spirit of truth comes she will guide you into all truth, she will not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears, and she will declare to you the things that are to come. She will glorify me because she will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Author has is mine. For this reason I said that she will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

Remember breath and spirit are the same word – the same thought in both Hebrew and Greek. Breath makes vocalizing or speaking possible. There is something very lovely about the breath of truth (or the spirit of truth) listening first and speaking what she hears. The spirit of truth follows the central command of the Hebrew Bible: Sh’ma. 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. Do you believe in Inspiration? Do you know how she works? Can you control her? Would you want to live in a world without her?

You know, today is the day that the Church designates “Trinity Sunday.” That’s what this Gospel lesson is doing here in our lectionary. Although it’s not particularly strong evidence (in my humble opinion), it appears to contain the foundational ideas, 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.

I have to confess that I’ve never been able to get interested enough in systematic theology in general or the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically. I’m so much more interested in early Christian development before doctrine and systematics started getting hammered out (and I do mean hammered). I take some comfort from Adam Gopnik’s great piece in the New Yorker Magazine a few years back, called “What Did Jesus Do?: Reading and unreading the Gospels.” [1] In it he summarized Philip Jenkins’ book called Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1500 Years. Gopnik wrote, “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 was]… going to run the Church.” And that is still the case with doctrinal arguments today, it seems to me. Who gets to run the Church?

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 quite 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, when they are real. One of the fascinating things about Jesus, whether you view him as a great religious leader or the very embodiment of 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, and ultimately even on the gallows.

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. Breath – spirit – wind – in and out. That sound is the Holiest Name of God.

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.

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. It’s a way out of what can feel like a very narrow place of dogma: Divine as the Author of existence, the Divine in the midst of the mess, and the Divine listening deeply and speaking and inspiring. As people of God, we might understand ourselves called to be co-creators, co-operators, and conspiritors (conspiring with God.) Next week we’re back to Luke, I promise! In the Holy Name of the Trinity: Author, Word and Inspiration.

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