The Rev. Keri T. Aubert     Isaiah 6:1-8

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont  Psalm 29

June 7, 2009 Romans 8:12-17

First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, Year B, RCL      John 3:1-17

On the Episcopal Church calendar, today, the Sunday after Pentecost, is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is one of the seven principle feasts of the Episcopal Church. Of the seven, it’s the least energetically celebrated. Perhaps that’s because Trinity Sunday commemorates a theological concept—and one that most of us, including me, will probably never truly understand. Three persons in one substance? I don’t know.

Whether or not we truly understand it, the Trinity is a central tenet of the faith we profess as Christians, and it makes us theologically unique among monotheistic religions. Every Sunday we affirm the Trinity through the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed as we know it was formulated in the fifth century, after passionate and sometimes violent controversies over the nature of Christ. In defining this nature, the Nicene Creed set boundaries between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy and codified the language of the Trinity.

Following the Nicene Creed, the orthodox formulation of the Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To be valid, a baptism must be done in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Our formal prayers are offered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, we would probably do well to remind ourselves more than occasionally that humans are limited in both their understanding of God and their language for God. Our efforts in both these endeavors will always fall short. Even the earliest church fathers recognized that human language can never adequately describe God. For example, in the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo called talking about the Trinity, “speaking of things that cannot be uttered.”[i] More recently, a poet addresses God as “Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs.”[ii] That sounds about right: as my guinea pig is to me, so am I to God.

I’m not saying that we’re guinea pigs. But thinking about it this way may help us to understand why it’s such a struggle for us both to know God and to find ways to describe our knowing. It’s appropriate for the church to provide us with guidance for this. But while “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is the fundamental Trinitarian formulation, I suspect that it is constraining and perhaps even dangerous to limit God to a single set of descriptors. A single set of descriptors cannot possibly encompass the breadth and depth of divine being and doing, and cannot possibly convey that breadth and depth to us. It may be that expanding our repertoire, so to speak, can help expand our understanding of God.

A more specific problem arises from always naming all three persons of the Trinity as male. Feminist theologians contend that exclusive male imagery implies “essential divine maleness” and eliminates women from the image of God.[iii] I suspect that we all agree that God transcends our human notions of gender. Intellectually, then, we know that God is not male. But humans don’t operate solely on the level of intellect, and so the words we use for God affect us emotionally and spiritually. In other words, there are lots of good reasons why we might think about how we name the three persons of the Trinity. A common gender-neutral formulation of the Trinity that you may have heard is God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

When we begin to talk about the Trinity, there are two overarching themes. First is the question of how the three persons of the Trinity operate in relationship with one another. Second is the question of how the three persons of the Trinity operate in relationship with creation, including us. Both questions, you’ll note, are all about relationship. You might say that one is about internal relationship and one is about external relationship. To describe how the three persons of the Trinity operate in relationship with one another, there’s a great word, perichoresis, first used in the fourth century but recently revived. Perichoresis refers to the mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Trinity. It indicates completely interpenetrating and intimate relationship in which each person participates in what the others are doing. It’s sometimes described as a dance with three participants. It’s not far from there to Augustine’s formulation of the persons of the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and Love.

To look at how the three persons of the Trinity operate in relationship with creation, we might move on to medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich. Julian used vibrant—and sometimes feminine—imagery in her Trinitarian formulations, offering accessible descriptions of a personally caring God. Rather than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the triad that Julian most frequently uses to refer to the trinity is might, wisdom, and love.[iv] Some of her other triads include: joy, bliss, delight; maker, keeper, lover; being, increase, fulfillment; nature, mercy, grace; fatherhood, motherhood, lordship.[v] For Julian, activities of mothering become locations for divine activity; she refers to “Christ our mother.” Julian helps us imagine a God who is nurturing rather than domineering and compassionate rather than vengeful. She helps break open our perceptions of God.

We affirm that human beings are created in the image of God. More to the point for Trinity Sunday, human beings are created in the image of the Trinitarian God. We are incarnate images of the Trinitarian God. The coming of Christ was just the beginning of the new way of God’s gracious activity in the world. That way continues even today, as we strive to live lives that reflect Jesus but also incarnate the other persons of the Trinity. In short, where one speaks of the Trinity, one might also imply speaking of how human beings might act in the world. The physical provides the opportunity for God’s gracious action, through the Trinitarian God, and through human beings as the Trinity’s creation and image.

However God is acting—as first, second, or third person of the Trinity—that action is informed by love, either love moving among the persons of the Trinity, or love directed toward human beings and all the created order. This provides a retreat from the wrathful God so often depicted, but it also says that love can and should inform all human activity. Again reflecting the Trinity, this must take place internally, through expressions of self-love, and externally, through expressions of love toward others. As human images of the Trinitarian God, we are called to act as individual agents of change for the good of all of creation. Using Julian’s terms, we are called to be—and perhaps more important, we are empowered to be—might, wisdom, and love in the world.

I’ve done some playing with Trinitarian imagery, and I might suggest that our Trinitarian God is the one who creates, liberates, and enlivens. God is a creating, liberating, and enlivening force within us. God calls us to create, to liberate, and to enliven. In the end, understanding the Trinity may be less important that simply knowing it and living it.

If the theology of the Trinity is principally a theology of loving relationship, then it is a theology that we have infinite opportunities to put into practice. One of the places we put it into practice is with one another. Today, right after the service, together we will remember the history of All Saints Church. In essence, the history of All Saints Church is the story of how this community has been created, liberated, and enlivened and has created, liberated, and enlivened—not once but continuously and miraculously. When we tell this story, we join our story with the stories of Isaiah, Paul, John the Evangelist, and so many others, named and unnamed. It’s really all the same story, and through it we claim our place in the cloud of saints who have witnessed to the loving relationship of God with God’s creation.

I suspect that one of the things this will do is to remind us vividly that this church is not a building or a doctrine. This church is each one of you and every person who has walked through its doors. It is every person who has been here to create, liberate, and enliven. It is every person who will yet come here to create, liberate, and enliven. As we look back as preparation for looking forward, we open our hearts so that we may continue to receive God’s bountiful grace.