Bad Analogy Sunday

The Yanny/Laurel debate is just the most recent incident in our struggle to make everything either/or. 

Good morning and welcome to Bad Analogy Sunday. Or, as it is also known Trinity Sunday. It is a day when preachers get up in the pulpit and do their best… not to commit heresies or theological atrocities. It is a day when we try to say just the right things about who God is. Often in the process the sermon-giver bores the congregation into submission and all leave displeased or upset.

I apologize if this is your first time in this Church. Perhaps, you heard our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry at the Royal Wedding last Saturday. Maybe you thought, “Alright, that message was inspiring, easy to understand and all about love. Why not try the Episcopal Church?” While that is usually right, on this day preachers think they must somehow simplify the immense nature of God into a ten minute homily.

We try to condense God’s nature into terrible analogies. For example that God is like the three states of water: ice, liquid, and vapor. This of course is Modalism, which is a heresy that wrongly claims God is not three distinct persons, but rather takes three different forms. Or, we claim that God is like a star that creates light and heat, which is Arianism. Arianism is another heresy that wrongly attests that the Son and the Spirit are subordinate and creatures of God the Father.  There are many, many other bad analogies wheeled out today. For today homilists, like me, try to explain our infinitely transcendent and eternally intimate God who is Father, Son, and Spirit!

Now, your being here is not all bad. Watching preachers on this day is sort of akin to watching an athlete like a snowboarder or gymnast trying an extremely difficult run. Part of what is captivating is knowing that at any moment the competitor could crash and burn. But, why is that? Why is talking about the Trinity so tough?

In our part of the world we do not do well with ambiguity, such as a God who is three-in-one and one-in-three. The West likes certainty. We want to know for sure. Beyond a shadow of a doubt we want to be able to point to what is real. But, we have reached an age that is lazy when it comes to actually pursuing the truth.

Nowadays, what matters most is not actually gathering evidence, but rather fighting for the position, the candidate, or the side that we feel is right. So many people today are too lethargic to actually see beyond the way that they have always seen things. So, what happens? Either/or thinking emerges.

Society has created a worldview of binaries, an existence of dichotomies, black or white thinking. And people say things like, “I am either right or wrong. It is either true or false. That person is either gay or straight, male or female, Christian or other, American or not. It’s us against them.” Not only this, but a moralistic overlay gets placed on top of this way of seeing the world. And people believe that one way—their way—is good and the other is bad. Thus to talk about the Trinity is not only precarious because I might put my foot in my mouth, but it is also subversive and even a little dangerous because it bucks against this either/or way of the world.

Now often our Biblical passages in the Lectionary provide us with a clear path for articulating the given theme of the day or season. However, today it is a bit more challenging. When our Holy Scripture was written the Church had a very primitively articulated theology of the Trinity. God as Father, Son, and Spirit did, does, and will exist forever and for always, but the early Church’s understanding of this was in its theological infancy.

So why shoehorn a complex idea into the Sunday after the Pentecost? Why cobble together bits of Holy Scripture that seem to mention the persons of the Trinity? What is the point of this day when we celebrate God as three-in-one and one-in-three? For one, we do this because it is God’s eternal nature. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. The persons of the Trinity are coequal in power, majesty, and glory, while being separate persons… i.e. the Father is not the Son is not the Spirit, etc. But, given our current context of either/or, us/them, my tribe/your tribe existence the concept of not two, but one-in-three and three-in-one challenges the binaries through which we see the world.

Perhaps you heard the sound clip floating around the internet last week. To some it sounds like Laurel (which is clearly right), while to others it sounds like Yanny. It’s a silly example, but it quickly created a stir because everyone was either Team Laurel or Team Yanny. The creators of the soundbite eventually let all know that both names were said at the same time in the clip. And, what one hears depends upon the default register of that person’s hearing.

But, one priest I know took it a little further than this. He wrote, “A thing can be two things at the same time, depending on context and perspective, even if you can only perceive one of those perspectives. Shocking, I know. Now apply to your relationships and consideration of other human beings.” My friend in responding to something silly stumbled upon a very cogent theological thought on the Trinity.

When talking about who God is we so often want to say something definitive. This is good and right so to do. However, when someone else says something different about who God is our first instinct may very well be to shoot them down as wrong. How will we learn about the complexities of God if we only rely upon how we see God? How will we learn of the complexities of each other if we already have our minds made up about who the other is? A thing can be two things at the same time depending upon context and perspective, even if I can only perceive one of those perspectives.

The mysterious nature of the Trinity makes sense one moment and defies our feeble minds the next. God is Father, but God is also Son, but God is also Spirit. God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. While none of these is the other, they are all God and they are all one. One equals not the other, but all equal God. To see this truth though we cannot simply see things with our either/or, literal eyes. This is what got Nicodemus stuck.

He heard Jesus say that one must be born again. The word for “again” is also the word for “from above.” Jesus was talking about both of those at the same time. Nicodemus only heard “again,” and thus was stuck. He could not get the full grasp of who God was in that moment, for he was seeing with literal, either/or vision.

We too can see get stuck seeing God or other people with either/or vision. But, this will only allow a very limited view of God or the world. A view that will keep us thinking only on the literal level. We need the literal level, but to see the immensity of God we need both/and vision. We really need beyond both/and vision. We need three/and vision. We must be willing to be mystified, stupefied, and astonished by God being THREE—Father, Son, Spirit—AND one—God.

The gift that today provides us is not good preaching. Rather, it’s the opportunity to wonder about the ultimate reality who God is. God and the multiverse that God creates goes far beyond literal, either/or existence. The Trinity and our wrestling with this BIG theological idea gifts us with a chance. A chance to see what is on the surface and what runs much deeper. It helps us to see that we need each other’s viewpoints. And, it provides us an opportunity to dream beyond the black and white thinking that pervades so much of society. May we expand our vision to see the enormity and complexity of each other and God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.