Other texts: Proverbs 8
Today we celebrate the Trinity. A celebration, it seems, of a doctrine. Not a story, not a parable, not a teaching of Jesus. As I said earlier, for some the idea of the Trinity is what makes Christianity rich and meaningful. For others, the doctrine of the Trinity seems obscure, institutional, and a barrier—a stumbling block—to knowing and living a life of faith.
God in three persons, we say. The creeds of the church are organized around the Trinity. Our prayers often end with invocations to the Trinity: in the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, Amen. We baptize in the name of the Trinity.
But it is not as if the Trinity were well and equally understood. People have been arguing about its meaning since almost the time of Jesus. Some say—I’ve said—that the formula of the Trinity is God’s name. Some say it is a mystery. That’s what my mother told me when I was of that age to ask your mother about such things. Don’t ask me, it’s a mystery. Some say the three-ness of the Trinity is an expression of our experience of God. We experience God in three different ways: creator God, savior God, and God in the immediate presence near us.
But if it is God’s name—we are not short of names for God. Formal names, familiar names, nicknames, names with meaning and not. And if it is a mystery—God is a mystery no matter what. A God in one being is a mystery. God does not need elaboration to be mysterious.
And if it is because we have many different experiences of God—people have many experiences of God, not only three but lots, or maybe not even three. It all depends on where you draw the outline. God the creator, but how about God the creation itself? God intricately bound up in the wonder and magic of life. God the comforter, but how about God the sufferer? Or God in the agents of comfort, those who bring comfort. I see God in creation, people say. I see God in people helping others, people say. God is the redeemer, the rescuer, but how about God the oppressed. I see God in the victims, people say. It is all one God.
God is not us. So we have a hard time saying what or who God is. We have to be suspicious of sentences that begin “God is …” Even sentences like the one I just said: “God is not us.” How do I know that? I don’t know that. All we really can say are sentences that begin with “In my experience of God …” Or in the combined experiences of many people in different places and over different times. That is all information we can use. But it is in the end personal. We can adopt what scholars and priests say about God and choose to believe what they say. But their saying so and our saying so does not make it so. This kind of belief is a very powerful and well-attested-to way of coping with our experience of the world, which includes our experience of the divine.
The Trinity is chronological. It emerges in history. That does not mean God emerges in history, but the doctrine does. It starts with God the creator. God the ruler of the universe. God who separated one thing from another, who animates life by breathing into the dust. God the first person of the Trinity. The God characterized equally by the people of the Book: God is one.
God the second person of the Trinity is Jesus. The embodiment of God and a person of the earth. Once you say that Jesus is God, and that’s what Christians say for sure, you have an issue. Are God and Jesus one? Is Jesus a kind of God, or a piece of God, or God like a visitor to earth from the heavens? Christians, and Lutherans especially, say that Jesus is 100% God and 100% human.
In the early church the nature of Jesus led to lots of discussion. Did Jesus the person know everything that was going to happen? Did God suffer on the cross? Can God suffer at all? If Jesus suffered, and if God cannot suffer, and if Jesus is 100% God—you see the problem. Some solved the problem by saying that Jesus wasn’t really God. Some said he wasn’t really human. Some said he was sometimes one and sometimes the other. All of these things eventually were declared to be heresies. Forbidden doctrines.
Someone wrote that Christians more than any other people of faith fight over tiny bits of theology, minutiae in the eyes of some. For example, in the verses from Proverbs that we just heard, the character of Wisdom says “The Lord created me at the beginning.” Of course, this is in Hebrew. And the word “created” here is also translated “possess.” The two meanings are different. In one case that Wisdom existed first and in the other case that God made her. Some think that Wisdom equals Jesus. Did God therefore make Jesus? In the Nicene creed, we say that Jesus is “begotten, not made.” That line is there because people had fought over how Jesus came to be. This kind of talk goes on and on throughout the ages. Was Jesus, for example, of the same essence as God the Father, or of the same substance? Maybe this is not something you worry about when you wake up at 5:30 in the morning. But someone did. The Nicene creed originally had this as its last line:
“But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' …—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.”
It was a big deal.
And God the third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. The spirit of God appears in one form or another throughout the Bible. The word for spirit means breath in both Hebrew and Greek. The spirit appears in the very beginning of Genesis at creation. The spirit holds council in Israel, and the spirit is sent by Jesus to be with his followers after his death. But the Holy Spirit has had a tenuous hold on the title of the third person of God in the Trinity. In the art of the early church, God the Trinity sometimes appears as Father, Son, and Mary (kind of a family portrait, I guess). Sometimes there is a dove, too. Sometimes only a dove. Sometimes there are three men.
All this intellectual chewing happens because people want to know about God in a way that lets them begin sentences with “God is …” They want to know what to say about God.
But the doctrine of the Trinity tells us less about God and more about us. We are creatures. God is creator. We catch glimpses of God. We recognize God from the works, as we might recognize an artist from the art, a band from the music. We are strongly convinced that God is here with us. Our stories tell us that God interferes with the goings on of humans. That God is intimately interested in humanity. That God came to be with us in flesh and blood. All these things are amazing. Plus, we feel that God is partly in us somehow. Made in the image of God, we say. Jesus in us, we say. Even more amazing.
How can that be? What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, the Psalm asks, what are human beings that you should care for them? When I think about the stars, the moon, the universe, how is it that you care about people? How is it that you care about me, for the words of the Psalm are singular. How is it that you, God, are mindful of me?
God lives with us in ordinary time and ordinary places. By the gate, at the intersections, up in the hills, Proverbs says. Those who are God-fearing feel it to be so. You get the idea in Proverbs that Wisdom and God are like close collaborators or proud parents. “Then I was beside him,” Wisdom says, “like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world,” she says, “and delighting in the human race.” They look on their creatures, their creation, and are delighted.
What we have of God are signs or clues or sightings or glimmerings. From that sometimes we are moved to think carefully and analytically about how things must be with God. It is like leaving a movie that is powerful, weird, and confusing. You turn to others for help and understanding. Critics, experts, friends. What just happened? All we know after all is that we are moved and astounded by God. Who seems to be big, attentive, close. And good.
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