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SERMONS

Trinity Sunday
June 7, 2009

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

"You will understand when you are a little older."

Perhaps you have said it yourself in the past week, when some unexpected question, some topic, that children should just know is off the reservation, pops up - in the car, at the dinner table, in Sunday School. This is something that adults say to children when they don’t know what else, or how else, to explain something. Something that often is not explainable until a person has done some living.

"What does circumcision mean?" I remember, clear as a bell, the look on that poor Sunday School teacher’s face when I asked, not once, but over and over. And how she bravely offered an explanation to a group of six year olds.

Looking back, I am grateful that she took the question seriously enough not to avoid it; although I had no idea what she was talking about.

There is an interesting reversal that sometimes occurs with adults and religious topics.

And so if I ask a friend, "Tell me about your understanding of the Trinity?" There will be a pause, perhaps a smile, or a frown, and then most likely - "Are you serious?"

When it comes to God, to Jesus, to religion, if we cannot answer a question, if we are stuck pondering the imponderable, there is something attractive about pretending to be simple-minded. Often in adult company, I find that there is sometimes the subtle assumption that the purest religion is associated with childhood. Perhaps it has something to do with innocence, awe, mystery . . . and perhaps an underdeveloped sense of appropriate guilt.

And so the deep questions, the complex questions, of our faith are avoided,

stepped over, tucked beneath a kind of "Aw shucks" posture, "Well, Jesus loves me - that’s enough."

Trinity? Ain’t that a River in Texas?

Keeping the essentials of Christian understanding an endeavor for children helps keep us off the hook. If the Church and the Kindergarten can be one and the same, then perhaps we can avoid those dictates of an Old Testament God speaking in Deuteronomy: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength - "nephesh" - vital energy . . . as though our minds are not implicated in one of these three.

Pretend to know nothing, and then you owe no one anything. Oh that it could be so easy.

But didn’t Jesus say, "Let the children come unto me . . ." And, you must enter the Kingdom as a little child . . .?" Oh that it could be so easy.

My sense is that Jesus wants us to be child-like, not childish.

A friend of our family mentioned that she had gone to the funeral of a minister in Laurel, and that one of his colleagues and friends said, "To be in the ministry means that you have to have the heart of a child, the mind of a psychologist, and the skin of a rhino."

There is something true about that statement, not just for ministers, but for every Christian: the heart of a child, the mind of a psychologist, and the skin of a rhino. When Jesus says that He wants us to be with Him as children, I don’t believe that He wants us to regress into Know-nothingness. Rather, He wants us to depend upon him the way any child must depend upon a parent for sustenance, for safety.

Which one of us would be proud of a child who decided not to study the hard subjects at school? Which one of us would encourage our children to only enjoy school, rather than be challenged by it? Who really wants a child that never leaves Kindergarten? God?

Today is Trinity Sunday in the Church. I often compare the study of the Trinity, how God is known as three persons yet one God, as not unlike the study of theoretical physics - bringing onto the page comprehensible thoughts and insights about something that cannot be seen, something that is by definition, beyond a total comprehension.

Very simply stated - if you open your Prayer Books to page you will see the Athanasian Creed. An early attempt agreed upon by the Church to give some shape to a God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Do you see how it is a string of adjectives and adverbs?

Though it might seem simplistic or archaic, try putting those building blocks together from scratch, try earning their truth in your mind, your body, and your soul, and then you may have some useful critique.

There are many ways to conceive of God as a Trinity: St. Patrick’s Three leafed Shamrock. The three molecules of H2O existing as ice, water, steam, 3-dimensional space, and St. Augustine’s Loving Father, Beloved Son, and the Spirit as the bond of love between them.

Trying to understand God as Trinity is not easy . . . we might want to say Aw Shucks.

Of course it is easier to put God into our boxes, whether they be about warm feelings, or the simpler times of childhood, but before we toss out any consideration of the Trinity, we might be careful. Was it not the Pharisees that our Lord chided about keeping God in a box of their own notions and assumptions?

Was it not the Pharisees who plotted to take Jesus’ life, because He was trying to teach them something of God that contradicted what they had been taught since childhood.

You see, there are all sorts of containers that we would choose for God other than the container that God has chosen, and IS, in Himself. And one of the graceful invitations, or burdens, depending on how you read, of being human is that God means to remake us into His image; rather than have us remake Him into an image of our own.

The comfort of ending our prayers - In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - is that we must accept the invitation of great-heartedness, of courage, of adventure, of progression in spiritual maturity, rather than regressing into Know-nothingness, or an "Aw Shucks - that’s just too deep, or too hard, for me" kind of Christian faith.

The glory is in the struggle to comprehend. The glory is accepting that invitation from God to have our whole selves, our whole being, including our minds, turned inside out like a glove, Transformed . . . rather than arranging our thoughts about God, the way we might arrange furniture in a room.

The deep answers of our faith, like the Trinity, should give us pause. Give us a moment to scratch our heads and say, "Do we really have all this figured?" Have I reached the end of what I might know and discover about God, about others, about myself? Do I have the courage to be taught, to be given a vision, and purpose, greater than I might choose for myself?

The gift of knowing God as a Trinity is that God is always above, below, before, behind, and one step ahead of us. One step behind us. God is alive, cannot be captured by the world, not even by our minds, and therein lies much of the path of our salvation.

As Jesus says to Nicodemus, it is not God who is born again, but we who are born again for God’s sake, so that we might know the true nature of God, and how we are being created anew in the image of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

No one gets to stay in Kindergarten forever, nor would we want to . . . why not have courage, go out into the big world, the real world, and get to know the three people who are working so hard to save your life.