Trinity Sunday (Fr. Guiliano)

In the name of God most Holy. Amen. 

“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

If you flip to the back of the Book of Common Prayer, you can find these words. They are on page 867 in a section titled, “Historical Documents.” The text is drawn from the Articles of Religion adopted at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1801, but they are older than that.

The wording goes back to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion adopted by the Church of England in 1571, and before that to the Forty Articles of 1553, and before that the wording appears in a whole variety of medieval and early modern confessions that, despite some differences, mostly say and do the same thing. They proclaim our faith: faith in the Holy Trinity. Three persons, existing in the unity of the Godhead, “of one substance, power and eternity.” And, we might add: of one wisdom, one justice, one life, one goodness, and authority; one eternal and beneficent will; one action; one love, for God is Love.

This is the faith into which we are baptized, the faith by which we were confirmed. It is the faith that keeps us through all our days, undergirding our life and affections. It is faith in the God who guards and defends us on every side.

This faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is revealed in the Holy Scriptures, both Old and New. They are united in proclaiming one God. In the revelation given to the prophets of Israel, we learn of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. We learn, too, of his Son and Spirit. Though this Trinity is proclaimed more openly in the New Testament, the revelation is not absent from the writings of the prophets. We can see Father, Son, and Spirit.

The Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets … tell of our God creating by speech, by command, by language. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their starry host” (Ps 33:6). In Genesis 1, we read of our God’s creative work. As he speaks, things leap into being. “Let there be,” he says. 

We see in our mind’s eye this Creator, this Maker, this Artist Supreme: who does not fashion things already made, but calls into existence the things not yet made. He calls things that do not exist as if they do. We call God our Father, and we are right to do so. This is not just a sop to Father’s on Father’s Day, but he is Father in a specific sense. He is the origin of all things, and more importantly, he was never without his Son and never without the Spirit. They are eternally one. 

Just as a speaker has Word and Breath, so our God had his Word and his Breath. In creation, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were all at work…and remain all at work.

Obviously, this Trinitarian faith is proclaimed more openly in the New Testament. There, what was once implicit or shadowy or ambiguous becomes clear, open, and full of light. The Spirit of truth came upon the disciples, and has guided the Church into all the truth. 

To take our reading: Proverbs 8 spoke mythically of a Wisdom present with God before the creation, a Wisdom calling out and raising her voice. John 1 speaks of the Word who was in the beginning with God and by whom all things were made. Proverbs 8 speaks of a Wisdom that rejoiced in the inhabited world and delighted in the human race. John 1 speaks of the Word becoming flesh, dwelling in that inhabited world and dwelling among us. Here is fulfilment. And what else does John 1 say? 

“We have beheld his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” We have beheld his glory! The disciples came to know the Son of God, the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, become human as Jesus of Nazareth. He was human. They met his family; saw his hometown. They were taught by him on earth for three years, witnessing his miracles and his kindness. In all this, he was also God the Son. 

And after the cross and resurrection, he taught them by his Spirit and guided them into all truth. This God we proclaim came to us in person, and revealed his holy character. Jesus came, and as he was known as the Son of God, he taught us to call upon our Father and his Father, and to receive his Spirit. Our faith is built upon this personal revelation, and it has kept the Church ever since.

What does it mean to hold and proclaim this faith today? What does it mean to praise God the Trinity today? I have been struggling with this question over the past few days – not because I lack confidence in our God or in the Church’s articulation of our faith, but because the events of the past week have been so strange and distressing. 

And we live in a time in which many people do not notice what is happening. Most Americans do not follow the news in any traditional sense, some 60% rely primarily on social media or other similar sources. Do we even know there is another destabilizing war in the Middle East? Do we know there were political assassinations in Minnesota over the weekend and a manhunt? Have we followed the protests or the mobilization of the National Guard and Marines in California, the collapse of charities and civic institutions locally and nationally, and so many other things that have happened just in this past week. 

Sometimes, the way forward for the Church does not seem clear, and I must say what I wrote for this sermon earlier in the week does not feel totally sufficient. But let me try to say something.

I am thinking of the phrase from the Letter to the Romans. “Hope does not disappoint us.” God does not disappoint us. We are connected to a living tradition going back over millennia, not just to the time of Jesus, but to the time of the Hebrew prophets, to the time of Abraham, and before that, to the unknown times of early human history. So, obviously, this faith, this hope in God predates our young and often immature nation; it predates most of what we know of our ancestors. Our hope is not encumbered by its ties to any one political system or culture, nor is our faith is not identified with any one political party (Republican, Democrat, Green, Socialist, Flying Spaghetti Monster). This hope is certainly not tied to any one political leader. 

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of earth,” says Psalm 146, appointed today for Morning Prayer. We pray for our leaders; we do not put our hope in them. 

“All my hope in God is founded. He doth still my trust renew. Me through change and chance he guideth, only good and only true.”

None of this is to say that we should remain uninvolved in today’s challenges or today’s politics. Of course we are; we are alive now; we cannot escape these things. And our faith is not just about the past or about heritage or about comfort. It is about God’s purposes here and now. It is about struggle.

When the Letter to the Romans was read earlier in the service, I was struck as I always am by what Paul says about suffering. We stand in the grace of God, he says, “and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” 

"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

It is precisely because we know God the Trinity that we may endure all times, and freely engage them. We must be fully alive to the pains of the world, to the struggles of our neighbours and our communities, we must share in them, and do something about them.

Christ did not draw back from sharing in the sufferings of the people he came to redeem. Part of how he revealed the love of God among us was by drawing near to those in need. 

If we are separate from all of this, if we just try to shield ourselves from our neighbors’ suffering or turn away from what is happening…are we walking in the way of Jesus? Are we following the teaching of the saints, who said, “we boast in our sufferings”?

These moments mold us. We are being shaped now by the groanings of this country, and this earth. But we have choices. Will we let the times deform us? Or will the eternal love of God, the glory of the Trinity poured into our hearts, slowly transform us? 

“Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” 

“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness”: God the Trinity.

Let us believe in this God. Let us follow this God. Let us be changed by this God’s love.

Sin and death and hell 
shall never over us final triumph gain; 
God is Love, 
so Love forever over the universe must reign.