Living Theology (Trinity Sunday)

Lakota Trinity, Fr. John Giuliani

Living Theology
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Sunday after Pentecost, 27 May 2018
Homily preached at 8:00 a.m. said, 10:00 a.m. sung Eucharist 
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland

The Very Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D., 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.” 

Today is Trinity Sunday, a celebration of a doctrine in theology.  For many of us here in Ashland, both those words—theology and doctrine—tend to be trigger words.  They have an intimidating, threatening ring to them.  For many of us, they are 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. 

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 early Church leaders 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. 

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 touch you or change your life.   If you believe you are at heart a exactly depraved wretch, you may from time to time actually act like one.  If you believe that the face of God was revealed in the face of Jesus of Nazareth, you will probably take very seriously who he was and what he taught.    What you believe colors how you live and experience the world. 

 “Heresy” in Greek simply means a choice, or alternative.  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 the Church first began to be concerned about such things only when it saw the harm that some “choices” of belief wrought on a comprehensive and healthy Christian life.  

Even judging by today’s broad inclusive standards, many of these condemned ideas are problematic.  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 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 of, three separate ways we experience, or three different functions of, the one person God, technically called modalism, also robs us of community at the heart of all things and leads to submission to domination as the sole way of relating to God and to each other. 

I know how beloved some of the newer more gender inclusive three-fold ways of talking about God are for many of us here.  “Earth maker, Pain bearer, Life Giver” touches us because it is grounded in things we touch and feel.  But I fear it obscures the inter-relationships at the heart of God.  “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” may seem too androcentric.  But when Jesus taught us to call God our father, our abba, he was not emphasizing gender, but parental intimacy.  Perhaps “Parent, Child, and Sacred Breath” might work.    It at least preserves the relationships in the Trinity rather than giving us different functions and reducing each of the persons to one of these.   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.

Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff writes the following: 

“We believe that God is communion rather than solitude.  Believing in 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.