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| Despite what my childhood self would have wanted, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not come together to form God, like a mega-robot in Voltron or the Power Rangers (that's Partialism), and just one of the many Bad Analogies preached today! |
Holy and undivided Trinity, One God, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be cunning enough to know the same. Amen.
Good morning and welcome to Bad Analogy Sunday. Or, as it is also known Trinity Sunday. This is a day when preachers hop into the pulpit and do their best… not to commit heresies or theological atrocities. This 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.
Maybe this is a good time to say hello to everyone who is coming to All Saints for the first time, WELCOME! Perhaps you are looking for a church home after the pandemic or trying to make meaning out of the last fifteen months. Now usually on Sunday mornings we do not celebrate a theological doctrine, nor do we attempt to simplify the immense nature of God into a ten or eleven-minute homily. Still, it feels fitting to be talking about the complex nature of God in this complicated world in which we live.
Just like it is nearly impossible to easily explain the challenges we have lived through during this pandemic, it’s nearly impossible to easily explain the nature of the Trinity. Still, we preachers try, and we do so with 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 say 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 creatures of God the Father.[1] Or, my favorite bad analogy, to become God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit must come together like a mega-robot in Voltron or the Power Rangers (That’s Partialism). There are many other bad analogies wheeled out today (keep reading you might spot another), for today preachers try to explain our infinitely transcendent and indelibly intimate God who is Father, Son, and Spirit!
Now, your being here is not all bad. Watching homilists on this day is sort of akin to watching an athlete, like a gymnast trying a never before completed vault or a steeple chaser trying to clear the big water jump. 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 the Western world, we do not do well with ambiguity, such as God being three-in-one and one-in-three. The West craves certainty. We want to know for sure. We desire certitude beyond a shadow of a doubt! But, let's face it, we have reached an age of laziness when it comes to pursuing the truth. When we want to know now, we just google it, right?
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 are too entrenched in one way of thinking to see beyond the way they have always seen things. So, what happens? Either/or thinking emerges.
We see the world in binaries, dichotomies, black or white thinking. And we say things like, “One of us is right and the other is wrong. It is either true or false. That person is either gay or straight, male or female, black or white, Christian or not, American or not, us or 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. So, 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 runs counter-cultural opposing this either/or way. Usually in the Church we have an authority on challenging subjects and turning to it, you might wonder, what do our Holy Scriptures say about the Trinity?
Often our Biblical passages throughout the Sunday Lectionary (the readings we hear each week) provide us with clarity. However, today it is a bit more challenging. When the Books of the Bible were written the Church had a very primitive articulation of the Trinity. God as Father, Son, and Spirit did, does, and always will exist, but the early Church’s expression of the Trinity was in its theological infancy.
So why shoehorn a complex idea into the Sunday after Pentecost? Why cobble together bits of Holy Scripture that barely 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. God has always been this divine community that is forever and always both distinct and united at the same time. But, given our current context of either/or, us/them, my tribe/your tribe existence the concept of not two, but three-in-one and one-in-three challenges the black or white lens through which we so often see the world.
This bucks against our desire to talk about God in a definitive way, but when we do this we can fumble and stumble too. Like saying that God’s nature is akin to an egg—whites, yoke, and shell—which is actually Tritheism, or the belief that there are 3 gods who share the same substance. Working out what we believe about God is good and right so to do, as is saying something conclusive.
And, as much as I am poking some fun at historical heresies, individually we will struggle to fully articulate the indescribable nature of God. So, when other people say something different about who God is, what if, instead of immediately casting them out as wrong, we listened? I wonder, how will we learn about the complexities of God if we only rely upon how we individually see God? How will we learn of the nuances of each other if we have already made up our minds about who the other is? The Divine Community of the Trinity teaches us that something can be multiple things at the same time, even if you or I can only see one of those viewpoints.
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 all at once. 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 minds. This is what got Nicodemus stuck, at least for a time.
In today’s Gospel lesson, we 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 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 through a literal lens.
We too can see get stuck seeing God or other people with either/or vision. However, 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. Now, here’s the thing, we need the literal level, but to see the immensity of God we need both/and vision. We really need beyond both/and vision—sort of like having beyond 20/20 vision. We need three-and-one vision. We must be willing to be mystified, stupefied, and astonished by God being THREE—Father, Son, Spirit—AND ONE—God.
The gift that Trinity Sunday provides us is not good preaching—by now you all clearly know that. Rather, the gift is an opportunity to wonder about the ultimate reality of who God is. God and the multiverse that God creates goes far beyond a 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, especially today as we come back together and discern who God is calling us to be beyond this pandemic. In God’s very nature we are gifted this opening to dream beyond the either/or thinking that pervades so much of society. We are invited to see that God’s essence is divine community, which is what we are called to be as well. May we expand our vision to see the beauty, the enormity, and the complexity of each other and God who is one-in-three and three-in-one. Amen.
[1] “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies” Lutheran Satire, published March 14, 2013, accessed May 30, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw&t=99s.
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