Trinity Sunday

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 18, 2008; Trinity Sunday, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 28:16-20) -- The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Trinity Sunday is unique. It is the only feast of the Church Year that celebrates a doctrine rather than a person or an event. Each year on Trinity Sunday, preachers try to shed some light on the mystery of the Trinity. For me today, that means a pretty abstract, theological sermon. I don't have any good stories; no good illustrations. So I need your help. I need you to work hard to stay awake, to be open, and to think. Thank you for trying. I'll preach something more entertaining the next time.

Our simplest statement about God is this: God is love. But love, to be love, must be given to the Beloved. Full love is requited love, when the object of love returns love equally. How wonderful that is, though. In the mutual outpouring, of love given and received, something new is created -- the very love that unites takes on a certain reality. Love creates a living, breathing unity. When love is strong, it gives life.

God is love. The communion of the Lover, Beloved and Enrapturer. Eternal loving. Eternal self-giving. The Father pours out the divine life into the Son; the Son speaks and embodies this life; and the Spirit brings both together in passionate delight and love.

That's some theological talk about the Trinity. But here's what is important about that. This same Trinitarian love is in us. The divine love of the Trinity makes us who we truly are. Jesus tells us, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love."

We were created by love, for love, to love. That's all we have to do. When Jesus summarized the commandments, he wrapped them into this one word. Love. Love God, neighbor and self. Everything else hangs on this. Or, as another theologian said, all morals and ethics boil down to one thing: Love God, and do what you will.

It's not an entirely pretty, romantic picture, though. Loving will put our lives at risk. Becoming a loving person can feel more like agony than like bliss or peace. Jesus was willing to accept the risk. He was willing to be a full person within the brokenness of human existence.

Here's the beauty and power of what we call salvation. In the miracle of God's grace, the whole creation is included within the loving embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God has chosen to be with us. Intimately. God has chosen more than just to "have a relationship" with us. God has chosen to be in us. And God has embraced us into God's own life. The Trinity describes how God embraces all creation, including evil.

Simone Weil describes the "stretching apart" of the Trinity this way:

God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. God created love in all its forms. [God] created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, God went the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. The distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.

This tearing apart, over which supreme love places the bond of supreme union, echoes perpetually across the universe in the midst of silence like two notes, separate yet melting into one, like pure and heart-rending harmony. This is the Word of God. The whole creation is nothing but its vibration.

Simone Weil is no ivory-towered academician, writing abstract theology from a safe distance. She lived in Nazi occupied France, and she suffered from chronic illness all her life. She knew evil, and she knew affliction. She knew the cross of Jesus to be the stretching out of God to us in our affliction and separation from hope.

On the cross, the Word of God cries out in dereliction, finding us, sharing our plight, crying to the Father. Our lostness and distance from each other and from God has been embraced within God's eternal life of love, within the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. That Love is One Love, the bond of supreme union, which we know as the Holy Spirit.

In heaven this love is the song of pure joy. In our world it is the heart rending harmony of a child crying, a victim suffering. Where is God? God is in and with the unrescued Chinese child lying below the rubble of a school destroyed by an earthquake; God is in and with the family that food relief will not reach because of the xenophobic government of Myanmar. God is in and with the Tibetan monk who is being beaten this hour in an underground cell.

On the cross, Jesus took into himself all of our evil and all of our suffering, even the experience of feeling abandoned by God and accursed. Jesus absorbed it all into his being and offered it all back to God. Our suffering is forever embraced and offered within this eternal loving which is God's life. And God's answer is resurrection. New life! Never condemnation. God never says to hell with you. But rather God eternally receives Jesus' intercession, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Jesus took our bitter separation from God into his own life, lived in its midst, loved its victims, and shared our fate. Jesus brought all of this to the Father. Therefore we know: NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. We are completely free! Safe. Liberated from our own evil and that of others. We are enveloped into the life of the Trinity. This is the "one thing." The "one thing" worth knowing. Love. Living in love.

So, whenever you experience any manifestation of the love of God -- whenever there is anything good or anything true or anything beautiful in all the world -- it is the manifestation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, eternally creating and loving the universe into being. But that's the easy part.

In the deeper, darker mystery of the Trinity, whenever you see willful evil, meaningless suffering, or utter lostness -- it is also the manifestation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, eternally embracing and offering our brokenness on the cross of Jesus.

God's response is always love. Love expressed in infinite ways. The familiar love given as truth, beauty or goodness; and the dark love that is the embrace of death into resurrection. We swim in an ocean of divine love. There is no escaping the love of God, even if we crucify him.

So relax. Breathe. There's nothing that can break our union with God, because Jesus has taken everything and everyone to the Father. There's nothing to worry about. All we need do is let love come to us. Let God love us. Let God's infinite love breathe us into being. And having been infinitely loved, all that we need do is to love: God, neighbor, and self. It's like most mysteries. Essentially, it's very simple. Not easy. But simple.

God is love. We were created by love, for love, to love. That's all there is.
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Some of this sermon is composed from notes for a class I taught to our young people's Confirmation group. The topic was the Trinity, and I used material from Mark McIntosh's fine book "Mysteries of Faith," volume eight in the New Church's Teaching Series. I'm pretty sure I've copied some of his language and some of his writing without quotes, but on a Saturday evening, it's too late to be scrupulous about that. I'll just ask his forgiveness instead of permission, and recommend that you buy and read his nicely written introduction to the theology of the Church.