Trinity – 2023
Matthew 28:16-20
Marian Free
In the name of God, creative, generative force, loving, sacrificial being, empowering and energising breath. Amen.
A little while I saw a meme that featured Jesus and the disciples. The first frame, pictured Jesus preparing the disciples for his ascension. Jesus was saying: “Don’t make this too complicated”. In the next frame, after Jesus has ascended the disciples see a group of people coming over the hill. “Oh no”, they say, “here come the theologians!” The creator of the cartoon was implying that theologians complicate simple tenets of faith by analysing and explaining them.
It is easy to imagine that we would be better off without those academics who make meaning out of scriptures, who turn apparently simple texts into complex ideas. The fact is, that without theologians, we would be confronted with a multitude of conflicting ideas and no arbitrators to determine which interpretation was more accurate or more reflective of the teaching of Jesus and its reception by the first believers.
The early church provides two cases in point – the Incarnation and the Trinity – both of which proved controversial in the first few centuries. In the gospels, Jesus is depicted as both human and divine, but there is no detailed argument as to how this works in practice. The most direct claims are those of Jesus in John’s gospel in which Jesus consistently claims that he and the Father are one. In the Synoptics, there are no direct claims that Jesus and the Father are one (Mt. 11:27 being an exception), but in those gospels Jesus shown to have power over demons, over the natural elements and over life itself – powers previously associated only with God. It seems obvious that the gospel writers took for granted. that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, but they provide no explicit statement to this effect, and give no explanation as to how such a thing could be. It was left to the early church to determine what this meant and how it could be explained. The result was a number of theories about the nature of Jesus and fierce arguments between various bishops and theologians.
Similarly with the Trinity. God as Creator/or Father, Son/Christ/Lord and Spirit is referred to unselfconsciously throughout Paul’s letters and to some extent in the Gospels, but nowhere is there any explanation as to how God can be both three AND one. There is no biblical description of the way in which the three persons of God relate to each other. A Trinitarian God was such a departure from the strict monotheism of Judaism, that there was no language to accommodate a new way of thinking about this same God. The first believers took for granted that God was in some way three persons in one God, but they did not have the appropriate language to defend that belief. It was left to later scholars to find language that honoured the equal value of each member of the Trinity and to describe the relationship between the three – language that often takes away from the relaxed way in which the early community accepted and related to a Trinitarian God.
Interestingly, though the Pauline letters use the language of God, Lord, Christ, and Spirit interchangeably, and though Paul coined prayer: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian formula with which we are most familiar “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” occurs only in Matthew’s gospel. This is in no small part because the gospels were trying to tell the story of Jesus and to record his teaching – rather than to make meaning. of his life, death, and resurrection.
That said, the conclusion to Matthew’s gospel tells us two things – one, that by the 80s, Trinitarian language was being used as a matter of course and two, that the language of Trinity was an essential component of the baptismal liturgy. In other words, at least by the time Matthew was written, the idea of a three-fold God had solidified into a formula – a formula that was accepted even by this most Jewish of the gospel writers. At the same time this formula was used (without explanation) as an essential part of the liturgy that welcomed new believers into the community.
It seems that the early church did not have to reflect on the nature of the Trinity or on the relationship between the members of the Trinity. Early believers appear to have taken three-fold nature of God for granted – without seeing any contradiction between that belief and their existing belief that God was one.
Perhaps the best attempt to make sense of a three-fold God is the Athanasian Creed, which can be found in the back of your Prayer Book, and which used to be said on Trinity Sunday. “So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved must think thus of the Trinity. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.)
The Trinitary is first and foremost relational and communal. The persons of the Trinity are non-competitive, inclusive. No one person of the Trinity has priority and no one person of the Trinity is dispensable, but all work together in unity.
The God whom we are called to worship in not a lonely, isolated, all-powerful despot, but a loving community whose roles are both distinct and indistinguishable. The God whom we worship is not a distant and indifferent power but a fellowship that is so concerned with our well-being that God’s very self shared our humanity becoming one of us and one with us. The God whom we worship is not static and unchanging, but dynamic and innovative, dancing through time and space – before time and beyond time.
The God whom we worship invites us into the dance, into communion with Godself and promises to be with us always, to the end of the age.
Swallowsrest 