Trinity Sunday Year A RCL June 19, 2011
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13: 11-13
Matthew 28: 16-20
We celebrate this morning Trinity Sunday, and this gives us the opportunity to try to clarify the doctrine of the Trinity, which tells us that God reveals Godself to us in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.
In our reading from the Book of Genesis about the creation of the world, there is a great joy. God is creating this wonderful world for the love of it, and we notice that, after each stage of creation, there is a refrain, a very positive refrain—“And God saw that it was good.” The creation is good and we are created as good people. Our other two readings today emphasize the love of God in three persons and our vocation to spread that love.
Robert Farrar Capon, an Episcopal priest and theologian, captures the spirit of the creation better than anyone I know. For our newer members, there is a tradition here at Grace, a tradition started by our beloved brother in Christ, the Rev. David Walters, who served Grace for twelve years. The tradition is the reading of the creation passage from Capon’s book, The Third Peacock.
“Let me tell you why God created the world. One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems he had this thing about being. He would keep thinking of all kinds of unnecessary things—new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked God the Son suddenly said, ‘Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go out and mix us up a batch? And God the Holy Spirit said, ‘Terrific, I’ll help you. So they all pitched in, and, after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Spirit put on this tremendous show of being for the Father. It was full of water and light and frogs; pine cones kept dripping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers—and men and women and children everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them, and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, “Wonderful! Just what I had in mind. Very, vcry good. And they laughed for ages and ages saying how great it was for beings to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea and how kind of the Son to go to all the trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend all that time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they said how wonderful and good it was.” Capon reminds us that this process is going on all the time. God is constantly creating. There was not just one “celestial bash,” as he puts it. Capon writes,
What happens is not that the Trinity manufactures the first duck and then the ducks take over the business and a kind of cottage industry, it is that every duck is a response to the creative act of God. God the Father thinks up duck #47307 for the month of June AD 2011, God the Spirit rushes over the edge of the formless void and, with unutterable groanings broods duck #47307 and over his brooding God the Son, triumphantly shouts, ‘Duck #47307!’ And presto, you have a duck. Not one, you will note, tossed up in some response to a mindless decree, but one neatly fielded in a game of delight. The world is not God’s surplus inventory of artifacts. It is a whole barrelful of the apples of God’s eye, constantly juggled, relished, and exchanged by the persons of the Trinity. No wonder we love circuses, games, and magic. They prove we are in the image of God.”
Now I want to share with you the theology of a man named John Macquarrie, an Anglican theologian who uses an analogy to explain the Trinity. Vision, plan, realization of the plan. Let’s take a work of art, say, a novel. The artist has a vision. She plans the book. There will be this or that character and these characters and there will be this situation and these events and so forth. Then the author writes the novel. God the Father is the author. He has the vision of creation. God the Son is the plan, the Word, the logos, the model, the blueprint for human life. By coming among us and living his life, and by his teaching and preaching, he gave us the details of how life should be lived. God the Spirit brings about the full realization of God’s vision and plan. The Spirit is God at work in us and in the world. The kingdom, the vision, the shalom of God is not yet complete, but it is in process, It is growing. We are called to be co-creators to bring in the shalom of God.
Another way to think of the Trinity is God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God, the Sanctifier. God the Creator, transcendent and holy, yet immanent, within us, near us.
God the redeemer. Christ. God walking among us. Immanuel. We can enter into the shalom of God right now by living the life in Christ, aligning ourselves with the vision of God’s kingdom, which is even now growing like the mustard seed or like the invisible yeast in the dough.
God the Sanctifier—the Holy Spirit. Often, especially in the Eastern Church, the Spirit is associated with Wisdom and is seen as feminine. The reign of God has begun but is not yet complete. The Spirit is the one who is bringing it to completion.
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sanctifier. Vision, Plan, Realization of the Plan. Three persons who are one, three aspects, three ways in which God reveals Godself to us. And God’s joy in the creation, God saw that it was good.
God’s loving creative energy. What a wonderful thing to celebrate. What an amazing thing to be part of. The Holy Trinity is the original model of Community. And what a team they are. The joy and mutuality and encouragement with which they do the ongoing work of creation is our model for how to live in community.
Amen
Filed under: Reverend Janet Brown, Sermons | Tagged: 2 Corinthians, Book of Matthew, Genesis, Holy Trinity, Psalm 8 |
Grace Episcopal Church (Sheldon, VT) 