In
some ways, the celebration of the feast of the most Holy Trinity is a challenge
for preachers. Perhaps some expect that the mystery of the Holy Trinity will be
unveiled in ten minutes or less. No way! I wish there was a book such as The Holy Trinity for Idiots to help me
in this task, but… I’m sorry, it has not been printed yet – and, not, it is not
the Bible where the word Trinity is not included! In fact, every time, from the
first century until now, every time theologians, saints, and holy writers have
come with some way to make find an easy way, they have only contributed to
muddle the waters even more!
Certainly,
it is not that theologians or preachers lacked talent or spiritual experience.
Rather, it is more fundamental – It is impossible to reduce the magnificence of
the God-head into the known categories of human thought. In fact, this mystery
is precisely what the Church proclaims today: God cannot be tamed or dissected.
It is the God Creator, a God who says, I
am who I am (Exodus 3:14), “God is.”
As
we heard in the Lessons a few Sundays ago, when Paul visited Athens began his
speech by pointing that the Greeks had a statue dedicated to the "Unknown God." In fact, the unknown
god pillar was a representation of a god whose name and nature had not been revealed
to ancient peoples.
We
must not rush to criticize the Athenians. We should remember that at one time God
himself refused to assign himself a name (Exodus 3:12-14) and forbid his people
to erect an image or representation of the deity (Deuteronomy 5:7-9). God was
far greater than human understanding, and any intent of “putting in a nutshell”
the deity would result not only in a dishonor to God, but certainly a
disservice to his worshipers. Why so? Because, by creating an image of a God
who defied limits it will create in his worshipers a misleading image. And, indeed
true to form, this is what happened and still haunts us even today.
If
Christians had followed the rule, certainly art history would have been
completely different to what we have now, much to our loss. On the other hand,
it would have avoided engraving the image of Jesus in the minds of all peoples
as a pale Italian or German looking guy. Anyone who has done shopping in the
neighborhood certainly has noticed that Palestinians look anything but pale
skinny fellows with light brown buckly hair. Had our ancestors followed the
script, perhaps, just perhaps, the old and current religion wars may have never
happened. So, maybe there is something about the prohibition of trying to pin
down God to our likeness.
God
is. Human categories like age, sex, or any physical or even psychological
description does not apply. God is not “he”, “she”, or even “it.” And even
before we launch ourselves to explore the sex life of God, we first must deal
with the limitations of human languages. Even if it is a biblical expression,
certainly God is not “the Ancient of Days.” If God exists outside time, he
cannot be old or young. God is.
In
Jesus of Nazareth, we have a revelation of the deity limited by God’s own
choice as what can be revealed in the human and temporal context. “In Jesus of Nazareth the whole fullness of
deity dwelled bodily” (Colossians 2:9). And, therefore, Jesus is the best and
only way for revealing how God is at heart. No less, no more.
We
know that the Holy Spirit, though invisible, is not a liquid but a person, someone
who can be grieved and can comfort us, can instruct us and direct us, can make decisions
and speak to us and for us. But moves like the wind and, like the God-head –
and unlike Jesus – was never born and will never die – it is outside our
temporality, and yet the Spirit comes to abide in us!
The
plenitude of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not revealed so much in
physical attributes, which by definition are limited by time, culture, and the
physical universe, but by an ethical conduct, virtues, and values. Thus, the
whole character of God really comes through in terms that transcends language,
culture, and time: goodness, justice, compassion, righteousness, grace, and all
the other moral and non-tangible qualities to which we can relate wherever we
live or wherever we are.
Understanding
– as far as we can within our own limitations – the fact that “God is” and that
each person of the Trinity reveals a unique facet of the unity which is “God
is” is, I would suggest, as far as we can go. That we cannot pin down God to a
formula or that we cannot define “God is” in terms that fit squarely in human
categories in itself, is self-revealing, although puzzling. When Moses is sent
to Pharaoh to request his people’s freedom, he asks, “Well… gee… whom am I
going to say is sending me?” And we can all understand the poor’s man plight,
asking Pharaoh to release his slaves! But all that he is told is that “I am”
(“God is”) was sending him. (cf. Exodus 3 ff.) But as we know, that was too much
for Moses – and indeed, for all the peoples after him – and we took “God is” –
a reality beyond all realities – and reduced it to a name, and even worse, just
one more app in the great game of religions.
Fr
Siciliano commenting in his blog remarks that, “Today we praise God in the Trinitarian formula in which we were
baptized, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’
Each time we enter church and bless ourselves with water we repeat that
formula. At the closing we will be blessed and sent into the world in the name
of the Trinity.” We should also keep in mind that the words that we use –
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit even if they are familiar words to which it may be
easy to relate, God is not contained or limited to the notions that those words
convey. “But they do remind us of our God
in whom we are in a parent-child relationship and whose creative Spirit
continues to form us into disciples of Jesus Christ.”[1]
You
may wonder, if so little can be said about the inner nature and workings of the
Holy Trinity – other than to say than “God is” – why make such a big fuzz about
it, and even assigning it a special day in the Christian Year? If there is so
much mystery, if there are so many unknowns and undiscoverable things about the
inner nature of our God, shouldn’t we be better off setting the whole issue
aside and forget about it? It is a good question. Indeed, on Trinity Sunday many
preachers like to take some of the readings as their sermon themes rather than
trying to deal with the Trinity save as in passing. But there is a reason to
highlight and celebrate God’s nature even if we may end up with an
“incomplete.”
The mystery of the Most Holy
Trinity is not a forbidding and scaring man-eating mystery or a vengeful
specter seeking to destroy his creatures. Rather, it is an inviting, redeeming,
and healing mystery, offering wholeness, life, and love. And if we dare to
immerse ourselves in the Trinity’s loving embrace, we may grasp – perhaps – a
tiny fraction of what our God really is – larger than our formulations, larger
than our expectations, even larger than doctrines and even the church as a
temporal institution. The familiar words of the Doxology that we say at the
conclusion of Evening Prayer spell it out beautifully – “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than
we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the
Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen (Ephesians 3:20-21).
However, it is in this Holy
Mystery where we may find who we truly are,
“eternal beings framed in time, eternal souls formed in clay,” and in
finding who we truly are, somehow love and grace will be poured on us.
Finally,
let us remember that the Holy Trinity is not an abstraction. Like Moses of old,
today God is sending us in the power of the Spirit to set the captives free in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the good news that we are called
to proclaim, even if we cannot completely work out all the details. However,
what we’ve got is enough – God is love and God has loved us from day zero in
the cosmic calendar and bids us, patiently to return home to find true life and
wholeness.
O
Zion, haste, thy mission high fulfilling,
To
tell to all the world that God is light...
Proclaim
to every people, tongue, and nation
That
God, in Whom they live and move, is love...
Publish
glad tidings, tidings of peace;
Tidings
of Jesus, redemption and release...
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