El Greco, Holy Trinity
Living Theology
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
Sunday after Pentecost, 22 May 2016
Homily preached at 9:00 a.m. sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
Homily preached at 9:00 a.m. sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
When I was a boy, I looked forward to the delivery each day
of the local newspaper. I always turned
first to the comics page, and read Charles Shultz’ Peanuts. My favorite Peanuts strip of all time had
Lucy van Pelt and her younger brother Linus seated at a window looking out on a
downpour of rain. Lucy says to Linus, “Boy, look at that rain. What is it floods the
whole world?” Linus replies, “It will
never do that. In the ninth chapter of
Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the
promise is the rainbow.” Lucy smiles and
replies, “You’ve taken a great load off my mind.” Linus replies, “Sound theology has a way of
doing that.”
Theology. The word in
our day and age has an intimidating, threatening ring to it. For many of us, it is redolent of dry and
dusty intellectualism that at best kills love and the spirit, and, at worst, hurls
authoritarian anathemas and excommunications and burns witches and heretics.
There is another Peanuts strip with Lucy and Linus. Linus asks Lucy innocently, “Do you ever
pray/” Lucy responds, “ That’s kind of
personal, isn’t it? Are you trying to
start an argument? I suppose you think you’re somebody pretty smart, Don’t
you!” Later, Linus sighs to Charlie
Brown, “You’re right. Religion is a very
touchy subject.”
Today is Trinity Sunday, a celebration of a theological
doctrine. Since both of those words,
theological and doctrine, for many of us here in Ashland trigger reactions like
Lucy’s to Linus’ question on prayer, I wanted to talk a little today about how
theology—and in particular the Church’s theology on the Most Holy Trinity—is
actually connected to our life in all the ways that matter.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity mentions a friend who says
he prefers the reality of experience, the spirituality of going out and
experiencing the beauty of God’s creation, to the unreality of the dry and
deadly musings of theologians any day. Lewis
writes:
“[A person who] look[s] at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, … also will be turning from something real to something less real… The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based upon what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map ” (p. 154).
The important thing to remember when you talk about theology
and doctrine is this: the heart of
Christianity is not in theology or doctrine.
It is in the experience of the living God in our lives and our loving
service to and compassion with others.
“The first commandment is love God.
The second is on par with this: love your neighbor.” This is the life-giving heart of the Church.
The Church fathers got into the business
of theologizing and defining doctrine only when they realized that some ways of
thinking about God and ourselves were not life-giving, and in fact got in the
way of this experience.
How you think impacts on how you experience life and the
world. How you believe colors how you
live. If you believe that God is a
violent, bloodthirsty deity, you probably will not have much difficulty in
warlike behavior of your own. If you
believe that God is a complete mystery, unrevealed and unrevealing, that kind
of takes away any ability for God to actually teach you anything or change your
life. If you believe that the face of
God was revealed in the face of Jesus of Nazareth, you will probably take very
seriously any evidence you may find about just who this person was and what he
taught. What you believe colors how
you live and experience the world.
“Heresy” in Greek
simply means a choice, or an alternative option. The Church over the centuries has identified many
such “choices” as something to be avoided.
A history of these theological controversies and exclusions make a very
sorry story, one where Christians have not been their best at following
Jesus. But it is important to remember
that the Church fathers cared about identifying orthodoxy and expelling heresy
because of the distortions they saw that these “choices” wrought on a
comprehensive and healthy Christian life.
Even judging by today’s standards, many of these condemned
ideas present problems to Christian life. Believing that the Son was created or
begotten in time, and that Jesus thus became the Son, technically called
Arianism or subordinationism, suggests that the only relationship possible with
God is one of simple submission to higher authority. This works all sorts of mischief in the life
of the Church.
Believing that the father, son, and holy spirit are simply
three separate masks the one person of God takes on, three separate ways we
experience God, technically called modalism, also robs us of community at the
heart of all things and leads to subordination and submission as the sole way
of relating to God and to each other. One of the reasons I tend to stick with the
traditional formulation “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” rather than some of the
newly tendered three-fold descriptions of God that are intended to be more
gender inclusive is that I fear that these new ways of talking about God tend
to be modalistic and miss the essential social or communal character of God in God’s
self. It is important to be inclusive,
especially in our theology of God. It is
also important to keep a clear mind on the social nature of God.
The doctrine of the Trinity is hard to grasp. Believing that
God the Father was the God of the Old Testament, with Jesus being begotten as
his Son in the New Testament, is a common way Christians have of trying to make
sense of it. But this too is subordinationism, and it tends
to bifurcate the Bible into a bad “Old Testament” and a good “New” one. Judaism is seen as primitive, good only
insofar as it points to Christianity.
This form of Arian belief leads often to what is called
“supercessionism,” the idea that Christianity has replaced Judaism as God’s
true people. This belief is the source
of most historical anti-Semitism, even secular anti-Semitisms that reject
Christianity.
On your bulletin covers today is a quote from liberation theologian
Leonardo Boff. I think it summarizes the
main ways Trinitarian faith is life giving and affirming:
“We believe that God is communion rather than solitude. Believing un the Trinity means that at the root of everything that exists and subsists there is movement; there is an eternal process of life, of outward movement, of love. Believing in the Trinity means that truth is on the side of communion rather than exclusion; consensus translates truth better than imposition; the participation of many is better than the dictate of a single one” (Leonardo Boff, Holy Trinity, Perfect Community).
Here is the core of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It expresses why it was so right to name this
Church here in Ashland “Trinity.”
Community, consensus, free give and take and mutual service—this is what
makes us who we are.
Henri Nouwen says that at the end of each day there are
basic questions that we must ask ourselves to see whether we are following
Jesus. They for me also tell us whether
we are living the theology of Trinity:
“Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?
Did I say words of healing? Did I
let go of my anger and resentment? Did I
forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions.”
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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