Sermon for Trinity Sunday. May 30th 2021. The genderless God.

 

 

The Gospel According to John 3:1-17

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” ³Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

 

 

 

[A modern image of the Trinity, based on Rublev's Icon (see notes at the end)]

 

 

Loving, eternal God, I pray my words, may be to your praise and glory in the power of the blessed trinity. Amen.

There is a tale about a priest, who once stood up to speak on Trinity Sunday, and after a pause, they said, “The Holy Trinity is a mystery.” Then they sat down again.

I’d like to reassure you, by saying that I never considered sitting down, or perhaps by the end of this sermon, you may wish I had, so, we’ll see.

There are many challenges to understanding the Trinity, its nature for one thing, that has always been a challenge, three in one and one in three, it’s like Christian mathematics. The big challenge though is how to relate the Trinity to today and make it relevant, especially to us.

The first thing to hold onto, is that God is eternal, with no beginning and no end, so that, by extension, so is the Holy Trinity. Eternity though, is big, and I mean, really, bigly, big, and it goes on for a very long time, and I mean a really very long time, like when you’re six and waiting for Christmas Day, tomorrow. And if you try can try to think of the biggest thing you can, like the universe, God is way bigger than that.

So, to think in human terms, let’s say that the Trinity has a past, a present and a future, it always was, always is, and always shall be.

It was only with the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, that we came to understand that the Trinity even existed, an almost pre-Trinity time in our history.

Since then, the Trinity has been on an ever-developing journey, interpreted from the Bible, and a valuable part of the personal faith of every Christian.

So let’s begin with the universe and narrow it down a little, the eternal, universe filling nature of the Trinity shouldn’t be underestimated, the three persons have always existed, everywhere and will always exist, even after our planet ceases to exist.

Most importantly to us though, the Trinity exists now. Interceding, creating and redeeming us every day.

On a day-to-day basis, we generally accept in our churches that our God is a triune God, a Trinitarian God, three in one, god in three persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Oh and fun fact: we are a Trinitarian Diocese, did you know that the full name of our cathedral is the “Cathedral Church of St Peter and the Holy and Indivisible Trinity.”

The name itself describes nature of the trinity as indivisible, it cannot be separated from itself. Theology and a beautiful building all in one.

Okay, may be that’s not as much fun as it could have been.

The Trinity is part of our creeds and is one of those doctrines of faith which many of us are happy to accept and believe, without necessarily understanding, instead declaring it a mystery of faith.

And to be honest, one of the things I like about being a Christian is that there are elements of uncertainty, of questions waiting to be asked, explored and hopefully understood, but, at times remaining a mystery.

And that’s okay too, if all we take away from this is that the trinity is a mystery, that’s fine, faith is defined as believing in the unknowable without proof, but to question and explore is also good.

One of the essentials to understanding the Trinity is always going to be scripture, after all we can’t go wrong there, and the Gospel reading for today probably gives us as much help as we are going to get, which, to be honest, probably isn’t as much as we would like,

but like most of the Bible, there are elements of the Trinity in this passage, God is mentioned seven times, in blue, Jesus is mentioned six times in green and Spirit, four times, in yellow. They are intertwined throughout this passage.

The crucial, though equal, link in the Trinity[1] is Jesus. Jesus talks about being born of water and spirit, referring back to his baptism.

And I do love that image at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus emerges from the water, baptised by John, with the Holy spirit descending as a dove and then God speaking so that everyone can hear him, this is perhaps one of the strongest Trinitarian moments in the Gospels, where they are all active, present and perfectly aligned.

In our churches, we remember this link at every baptism, so that just like Jesus emerging from his immersion in the Jordan - at our baptism, we are baptised, as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28, "baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" We are baptised in the Trinity.

Of course, the reading for Trinity Sunday is also helpful because in the conversation with Nicodemus, the link between baptism, the trinity; the Holy Spirit, God and the Son of Man, is powerfully drawn together at the end, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

This drawing together directly links our being saved, to the saving power of the Trinity, to the relationship with the three in one, which through our baptism, our relationship with God, interceded by Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, we are saved.

So while the Trinity exists in the Bible, the word does not. And the Bible doesn’t explain how we end up with a word like Trinity so embedded in our faith.

So how did we get here?

The word Trinity was used first in the 2^nd century by Theophilus of Antioch, to him, the Trinity was God, the Word (as described in John’s Gospel) and Wisdom.

Tertullian, in the 3^rd Century was the first to use of the definition we now know. A God of three persons but of one substance.

For early Christians, the nature of Jesus was a very big question, was he a man, a God or something else, and then, who is Jesus in relation to God. Was he God’s son, did he have the same status as a deity, or was he lesser, or different.

There was much disagreement then, in how he related to God and the Spirit.

Councils were formed, sides were taken, splits in the church took place. It was a time of great change where the essential elements of our faith were defined.

The conclusion for the church, was that God exists as three persons but is one being, having a single divine nature. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all one, all eternal and are the all loving creator of heaven and earth.

Of course, the nature of humanity is to keep on exploring the mystery of the God we worship.

One interesting avenue to this is the Trinity described as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, which is intriguing, it’s used in the New Zealand prayer book, where culture is closely aligned to creation, and the world around us, so then we have God the Creator, Jesus the Redeemer and Holy Spirit, the Sustainer.

These names, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, are also significant because they are genderless. In our patriarchal history, God becomes male by default, which sets the male gender up to adopt a God like persona, perpetuating the patriarchal oversight of society.

It has been said, “When God becomes male, the male becomes God.”[2]

Both father and son are male, while the Holy Spirit, and wisdom, are often associated with the feminine.

Yet are we so sure that God is male, female, or neither and I’m fairly sure God isn’t an old white man with a big beard on a cloud.

So, when we seek God in the silence, we strip back our understanding of God and the words we use to describe God[3], then we get a little closer to the eternal, creator of the universe, a genderless divine being.

As society moves on, much faster than the church, equality and inclusivity become more and more significant in our culture, and minority groups which were marginalised in the past, look at the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, wondering, where do I fit into this male centred faith.

So, it’s not a surprise when we then see people seeking an understanding of the Trinity which is more relevant to them, and that is if they’ve not already given up on the church, as many young people do when all they can see is a sexist, homophobic, racist organisation, which in many ways, it is.

And many of us in the church are aware of this, battling injustice, while also just trying to do good, to help, love and bring hope and into every situation, while occasionally making mistakes.

So, it is challenging, to move beyond the stereotypes of traditional Trinity and traditional church.

So while we do, let’s try think beyond both divine and human made hierarchies, gently taking away all those layers of tradition, words and assumptions.

And while some of this is provocative it’s really about a passion for, a yearning for God, to be in a relational, one-to-one, loving, relationship with God, through the community of a Trinity where we know God, meet Jesus and embrace the Holy Spirit.

This relational view to the Trinity is a shift away from what we have known, where we see the Spirit as a force, which invites us in, with whom we can join, and participate, in a wonderful, divine, dance with God, with Jesus, with wisdom, the Angels and all the Saints.

So however we understand the mystery of the Trinity, it’s community of three in one which never leaves us alone or lonely, it is present now, inviting us in, to a seat at this table to join in prayer, in sacrament and in eternal life, creating and redeeming us through the unifying presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

[2] Mary Daly said in 1971. Alistair McGrath (Ed.), Christian Theology: An Introduction (Chichester, Blackwell, 2014). P260

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology

http://www.patrickcomerford.com/2020/06/a-new-interpretation-of-andrei-rublevs.html

Mark Bozzuti-Jones and Kelly Latimore collaborated on an interpretation of Rublev’s icon that Mark that was based on this well-known icon but with an understanding of metaphors of God that allowed them to see the angels as women without problems, yet allowing an but an important exploration of God as mother/sister/feminine.

The three figures are sitting at the table, but this time they are holding hands. The Christ figure is in the centre, bridging the Holy Spirit and the first Person of the Trinity.

In traditional iconography, blue always represents divinity (the sea and the sky) and red is humanity (blood). God the first person of the Trinity is on the left in bright heavenly robes, points towards the viewer and looks at the other seated figures, acknowledging the viewer’s presence.

The Holy Spirit is dressed in green, representing growth, wilderness, nature, the earth, she holds out her hand inviting the viewer to the table.

On the table the rainbow tablecloth is yet another metaphor, symbolising that at the table of the Trinity all people are welcome. Instead of the Eucharist, as in Rublev’s version, there are grapes and wheat, symbolising the work that is still to be done.

In the background, we see a Temple, where God dwells, a tree representing Christ crucified, and a mountain symbolising the spirit calling us out into the wilderness, towards a new way.