Trinity Sunday (A), June 11, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O Holy Trinity One God, 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.

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Are you excited?! I bet a few of you are! It’s the only Sunday dedicated to a doctrine. For those of you for whom doctrine feels like a scratchy piece of clothing, don’t sweat! It’s just one Sunday. Twentieth century theologian, Karl Rahner reportedly claimed that if the Trinity were to quietly disappear out of Christian theology, most of Christendom would not even notice its absence. (But I do think we’d miss the hymns.) Given the urgent needs of the world, the urgent needs in our own congregation, is the Trinity something that I should be spending any time preaching on? Pondering this question, I took what I imagine was one last trip to the library at Episcopal Divinity School, into the stacks to stare at the shelves of books devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity. I opened a dozen or so, and thought to myself, “this is a fool’s errand,” and I returned to my desk at home.

Trinity Sunday is a feast that has its roots in the Middle Ages, according to the entry in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. I read this: Trinity Sunday was quite popular in England in the early second millennium of the common era, and that Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, also known as “that meddlesome priest,” was consecrated on Trinity Sunday. Hmm. Maybe there’s something here – but is it material for a sermon or is it a rabbit hole? This is tricky territory for me because, as most of you know, I am so much more comfortable in the world of words, translations, grammar, Biblical literature. I don’t find compelling evidence for the Trinity in Biblical literature (even taking into account our prooftext Gospel verse from Matthew’s last chapter), and I’ve never been sufficiently interested in patristic theology or Neoplatonic philosophy (or not yet anyway). What is there to say about the doctrine of the Trinity at this Episcopal parish with our Unitarian roots and our covenanted relationship with a synagogue and our healthy skepticism intact? As a caveat, I just have to say, that if your faith in the doctrine of the Trinity is strong, this teaching sermon may not be for you. (I don’t think it will weaken your faith and I hope other parts of our worship this morning will feed your soul.) This sermon is for those for whom describing the divine as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” is so much of a stumbling block that you want to dismiss Trinitarian ideas altogether.

I want to suggest to you that the Trinity is a way out of the narrow place of binary metaphysical paradigms that characterize our dualistic thinking and polarize our world: female/male, poor/rich, good/evil, body/spirit, white/black, sickness/health, life/death. Binary systems feature opposites that when held in tension create a balance or stasis. Many of us get stuck in “this or that,” “on or off,” “yes or no,” “rock or hard place.” By contrast, ternary systems (that is, systems of three), are elegant, dynamic and generative, forward moving. In ternary systems, three independent forces create new realms of possibility.

Episcopal priest and retreat leader, Cynthia Bourgeault, has a relatively new book called, The Holy Trinity and The Law of Three in which she develops her idea that for Christians, Trinity is a way of connecting to a cosmogenetic law (The Law of Three) that governs things from subatomic particles to the vast expanse of interstellar space. There is room for religious pluralism here. (For Christians, Trinity is a way of connecting to The Law of Three, not the only way and not only Christians connect to The Law of Three.) One of the foundational principles of the Law of Three is that there are three forces involved: affirming, resisting (or denying), and reconciling. The third is not a product of the first two or a compromise, or even a solution, but an independent force that, in interaction with the first two, creates a new phenomenon or a new possibility. In simple terms, think seed, earth, and sunlight = sprout; or flour, water, fire = bread. [1]

Cynthia Bourgeault calls Christianity’s trinitarian system a “radical truth at the heart of Christianity,” and a creative template as well as cosmic law, and she calls for a re-awakening of wonder that has been has been so severely damaged by Enlightenment Christianity’s “downsizing [of]…mystery to make it fit within the domain of historical facticity.” [2] It’s a tragic loss – the loss of a sense of mystery and wonder. In the Bible, three is a number that means real, true, perfect, holy, substantial. If something happens three times, it really happened; if someone was dead for three days, that person was really dead. In sacred and in secular story-telling, following the rule of three means humorous, satisfying, engaging, and memorable material. [3] The Latin phrase omne trium perfectum means every set of three is complete, or everything in three is perfect.

While I don’t believe that “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” was something that Jesus ever said, I do think that he was a ternary rather than a binary thinker and practitioner. I see ternary patterns in his teaching and his hopeful and forward moving ministry: creative, relational, and dynamic. His followers – his learners or disciples – saw God beyond, God beside, and God within; the Divine as Author, and Word, and Inspiration or Author, and Word, and Interpretation; and they called it Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They experienced the activity of the Holy One in creation, incarnation, in sanctification. In each iteration, the three are One, and the One is Love. According to Bourgeault, love is not a personal attribute of God, “but an energy field arising out of the interplay of three independent forces.” Love is the phenomenon, the possibility arising from the Holy Trinity (like bread is the possibility arising from flour, water, and fire). Trinitarian thinking has gone awry when it is focusing on abstract conjecture about the inner workings of the Godhead. Trinitarian thinking about the divine mystery must be an animating vision of generative, redemptive, and sustaining love at work in the world. Our lives depend on it!

I find the doctrine of the Trinity to be a subversive idea, challenging dualistic or binary constructs that don’t leave room for the children of God. (Of course, that’s only true if we can wrestle it out of the tight spot into which the Church’s dogmatic insistence on Father-Son-Holy Ghost has squeezed it.) But here’s another piece of wisdom from Cynthia Bourgeault that gets at the animating vision. In ternary thinking, she says, “the enemy is never the problem but the opportunity; and the problem will never be solved through eliminating or silencing the opposition but only through creating a new field of possibility large enough to hold the tension of opposites and launch them in a new direction.” [4] Think about that for a minute. The enemy is not the problem but the opportunity. That sounds like Jesus to me, and I wonder how understanding that might change the nature of conflicts – in our homes, in our communities, in our nation, in our world. Maybe G.K. Chestertown was right when he said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

The imperative command from the Risen Lord to the eleven in the very end of the Gospel of Matthew that we heard today is not found in the word, “Go.” That’s a participle – as you are going, with the sense of wherever you go. (Now I’m back in familiar preaching territory!) The imperative is to make disciples [5] (which is to say followers) of the Way by fully immersing (which is what baptize means), fully immersing all people in the name of generative, redemptive and sustaining love, and teaching them to listen deeply to Jesus’ teachings about the inherent dignity of every human being. The best way to teach that, of course, is to show that you believe in the inherent dignity of every human being. The eleven have returned to the spot where they heard The Sermon on the Mount. That is not a coincidence. That is what they are to remember from that sermon (I’ll summarize): you are blessed in poverty, sorrow, in showing mercy, when you are persecuted, blessing upon blessing, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, what’s in your heart matters, do not worry, do not judge, love your enemies, bear good fruit with your words and deeds. And they are also to remember that Jesus is with them always, even to the end of the age.

I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon that Trinity Sunday seems to have been widely celebrated first in England. And so I’m going to end with a poem from one of the Anglican Divines, George Herbert. In his artful use of threes, he writes of the phenomenon of love, the possibility arising from the Holy Trinity. Here’s Herbert’s poem called “Trinitie Sunday.”

Lord, who hast form’d me out of mud,
  And hast redeem’d me through thy [love],
  And sanctifi’d me to do good; 

Purge all my sinnes done heretofore:
  For I confesse my heavie score,   
  And I will strive to sinne no more. 

Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,    
  With faith, with hope, with charitie;   
  That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.[6]

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