Adding Up the Trinity

My father was man who always did business with people he knew and trusted. Whether it was fixing the furnace, calling the plumber, or getting his hair cut by his brother Roger, who still cuts hair at the Plasman Barber Shop in Holland where 17^th Street meets South Shore Drive, my dad liked to know with whom he was dealing.

He was that way with the family car too.  When it needed attention, especially a tune up, my dad when he was alive, and also my mom to this day, took the family car to his trusted mechanic Carl.  Carl operates a repair shop on Blue Star Highway near Saugatuck.   My dad was fond of saying that Carl was as honest as the day is long, and to prove it he always sent my dad home with a plastic bag of used parts he had taken and replace with new ones.  In that little bag I’d find things like dirty spark plugs and worn out condenser, maybe a cracked distributor cap or a corroded wire or a rusted battery connector.   I don’t know what my dad would have done had Carl had to replace a transmission or a rear axle, but I suspect Carl would have found a plastic bag big enough.

I think what my dad liked about dealing with his favorite auto mechanic, was not only that Carl was honest and knowledgeable, Carl made it pretty simple. Nowadays, you don’t get a plastic bag of your car’s old worn out parts, you’re more likely to get a computer printout that sets out to explain in ways befuddling and baffling to most human beings what’s out of whack, what sensors aren’t sensing and what microchips aren’t micro-chipping.  To the common person, who just wants the vehicle to run better, it’s all rather mystifying.  

If we’re honest about it, as honest as we dare to be, maybe that’s all we want and all we expect out of religion.  Religion should be about the business of making life better, more meaningful.  The presence and practice of religion should make the world a better world, and people a better people, me a better me, and you a better you.  That’s about as straightforward and simple as dirty spark plugs in a plastic bag on the front seat of my father’s ‘64 Chevy.  

Today is Trinity Sunday!  I want you to absorb that fact and please contain your excitement. The Trinity is a doctrine, and perhaps that’s reason enough to get a little nervous or disinterested. Christmas is about a birth. Easter is about an empty tomb.  Pentecost is about a Spirit poured out.  But the Trinity is about a doctrine hammered out in official church deliberations in the fourth century.     

Most of you know enough about the Trinity to name the key players: In traditional language there’s the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.  Our hymns this morning say the same. One God, we say, but three persons.  Three in One. One in Three.  Strange arithmetic!

It got even more confusing for me a couple months ago, when I received an email on April 1^st (aka April Fools Day).  It came from Vatican City -- Oprah Winfrey had been declared the fourth person of the Trinity, according to an astonishing new theological agreement hammered out by the world's major Christian denominations. Along with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the popular talk show host will be recognized as another person in the sacred and indivisible unity of the Godhead--or Quadhead.  No longer a Trinity, but a Quadinity.

I googled “Trinity” and got 41 million entries.  That seemed a bit daunting even for a preacher who likes to do his research, so I looked up “Trinity” in the Grand Rapids yellow pages and got fifteen phone numbers, thirteen of them churches, one a development corporation, and one called Trinity Wireless Towers.

Did you know you can’t find the word Trinity in the Bible?  It’s not there.  Jesus never uttered it.  Paul never named it.   When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus at the trial, he asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus replied, “You say so.”  He did not add, “And, by the way, in a few hundred years, I’ll be known as the second person of the Trinity.”

The Trinity is a problem if you’re talking theology to a Jew or a Muslim.  It is no less a problem when talking theology to a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness or a Unitarian.  How do we account for one God in three persons?  If the Creator is God and Christ is God and the Spirit is God, even a second grader knows it all adds up to three.

Sometimes we seek out analogies. Water can be liquid, steam and ice. Three forms but one substance.  A woman can be a wife, a mother, and a sister all at once.  Not three women, but one.  A shamrock leaf has three leaves, but it’s still one leaf.  Ok, I’ll stop.

Since most theological discourse comes down to what one believes and what difference it makes in one’s life, I should like to offer my understanding of the Trinitarian mystery in three words. 

                                                            BEYOND      ALONGSIDE       WITHIN

I believe in the mystery of the God beyond me.  I believe in the God of Psalm 8.  The God of galaxies and black holes, of quasars and exploding novas.  I believe in that presence beyond, the Higher Power of the universe who gave the leopard its spots, and the zebra its strips and the elephants its trunk, and the scorpion its sting. Whether those came about instantaneously in a single moment or through the slow evolution of a billion years, it makes no difference to me whether God works at time warp speed or with a slow meandering.  I believe in the mystery of God beyond me.

I believe also in the mystery of the God alongside me. In the One who when Jesus walked this earth, left imprints in the terrain we call Palestine.  I believe in this One who prayed to his heavenly Father, who walked alongside twelve disciples, teaching them the mysteries of life; teaching in parables, ministering to the sick. I believe in the One had no patience with the dead rituals of stale religion, and even less patience with those who would use religion to control and dehumanize others.  I believe in this One who knew sadness and sorrow, who grew weary in well doing, who was no stranger to the letdown of friends and family, who suffered and died, was buried and yet lives.  I believe in the mystery of Jesus who walked alongside us.

I believe also in the mystery of the God within me.  In the One formless and shapeless.  Who inspires and enlivens.  Who gives rhyme to poets and rhythm to dancers and rationality to scientists.  I believe in the Spirit that soothes the grieving heart, who strengthens the tired legs, who satisfies the hungry and thirsty with good things.  I believe in the Spirit who lived within Nelson Mandela while he spent 28 years under house arrest.  I believe in the Spirit who moved within the marchers in 1963 as they crossed the line of racial segregation of Birmingham only to the face the fangs of Bull Conner’s police dogs. I believe in the mystery of the Spirit who abides within.

What I’m saying in ways not totally orthodox, is that I believe in the multiple ways, the multiple personae, the multiple faces that God chooses to make God’s self known to all our senses. That to me is the truth of the Trinity.  

If you sense those ways in any way this week, give thanks and know that                                            God’s love is great,                                                                                                                            God’s will is good,                                                                                                                            God’s grip is sure.