Sermon for Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
Isaiah 6:1-8+Canticle 13+Romans 8:12-17+John 3:1-17
If the gospel I just read from John caused you to think, "Wait, didn't we just hear about John 3:16?", then you win a gold star. This passage was indeed read not long ago on the 4th Sunday in Lent back in March. So, what gives? Why has it come around again so soon?
Well, today is Trinity Sunday, and this encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus is filled with references to the Spirit, that elusive third person of the Trinity. But centuries ago, sometime before the 14th century, there was no Trinity Sunday. Today would have been the Octave - or eighth day - of Pentecost. And we all know what happened on Pentecost when the Spirit appeared as tongues of flame and a great wind blowing in and through the people gathered in Jerusalem, sending them to the four corners of the earth. Powerful, unpredictable, unsettling - this Spirit deserves two Sundays, don't you think?
Today is the only feast day in the church year devoted not to a person or an event but to a doctrine, and it can understandably be baffling or boring or incomprehensible, and yet the Trinitarian faith is part and parcel of who we are as Christians.
Each week, we affirm this faith in the Nicene Creed when we claim to "believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty," "in Jesus Christ, the only son of God," and "in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life" (BCP 358). Have those words become so familiar that they have lost their power, that we say them without really embracing them? Or maybe it's all just too much to comprehend.
Countless heresies have been launched in trying to describe or define the Trinity, so I will try to avoid that, but it might be helpful to know that the God who created all things became one of us to save us and sent the Spirit as God's ongoing presence to guide us in right pathways.
Still confused?
Okay, let's try this.
My grandfather was a Baptist minister, and in that tradition, you hear an awful lot about Jesus - Lord and savior and all that. The focus is principally on the second person of the Trinity, God in human form.
I don't know if you've ever been to a Pentecostal Church where folks get slain in the Spirit and speak in tongues, but that tradition is Spirit drenched. That's where it's at.
We Episcopalians couldn't possibly talk too much about Jesus, preferring to refer to Christ. We don’t want to sound too much like those Baptists, do we?
And God forbid that we should lose control under the power of the Spirit.
No, we prefer God to stay at some manageable distance - not too close, observed from afar. I once attended a weeklong course at Westminster Choir College under a renowned English organist and choir director who said that those of us of the Anglican tradition don't like to be to "god-dy" about things. As if somehow people are supposed to intuit that we do, in fact, believe in a God who is with us, who loves us, and who guides our actions in the world.
These three persons of the Trinity are intertwined in an eternal dance, and we can no more separate one from the other than we can separate our thoughts from our brains or our heartbeat from our hearts. Jesus was formed by the Spirit's coming to Mary and was anointed by the Spirit descending from above at his baptism. There is no Jesus without the Spirit just as there is no Church without the Spirit. And it all proceeds from God our Father and Mother and Creator.
The prophet Isaiah experienced this creative energy in the temple way back in the 8th century BCE. There he was, minding his business, just like we do when we come here each week, and he was shown a vision of seraphs - those highest beings of the angelic order, praising God until the pillars shook. And one of them came upon Isaiah and touched a purifying coal to his lips. Isaiah was anointed and sent.
Last Sunday, we baptized five children in the name of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and anointed them. Now they are sent, just as you are sent.
But, sent to do what?
St. Paul tell us that we are heirs of Christ (Romans 8:17), and if we are heirs then what we have inherited is Christ's mission which he made very clear as he launched his ministry in Nazareth: to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:18).
We are sent into the world to serve, the "rent we pay for being," as has been said.[1] Yet we do not do this alone. The Spirit of God makes the power of God ours, the love of Jesus ours. The Trinity is the ongoing, empowering means by which we know that we live not for ourselves alone but for the God who is with us and those God has given us to love and serve.
I don't know about you, but I can't do all this alone. I need the power of that divine threesome to fulfill my vocation in this world. And I need all of you working together alongside. Maybe some six-winged angel with multiple googly eyes is not going to swoop down on this place and purify us with fire, but just imagine that she did, and respond accordingly.
Here I am. Send me.
[1] Initially by Marian Wright Edelman but copied and changed many times over. https://creatingthefuture.org/quotes-about-being-of-service/