TRINITY SUNDAY, YEAR A

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

18 MAY 2008

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Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Canticle 13; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

“Go and make disciples of all nations…..”  (Matthew 28:19a)

My colleague and friend, Brendan Harnett from St. Catherine’s, told me a story that, when he heard it, caused him to redo the sermon he had just prepared. A friend phoned Brendan last Saturday night and said, “I just have to tell you what happened at Mass tonight! The priest called the children up and asked them to look around and name what they thought were the most important things in the church.  The Altar, the lecturn, the cross…..Answers kept coming. Suddenly a little boy piped up, “I know the most important thing! It’s the Exit sign!”

The Exit sign. Go in peace….Go out into the world….Go….Go, said Jesus, and make disciples.”

That little boy is right. When our worship has ended, we are charged week after week to go out. To love and serve the lord, to go in peace, to go in Christ’s name, to rejoice in the name of the Spirit, to make disciples. It’s our charge, our commission, our job. Our life’s work.

“Go and make disciples,” Jesus told his friends that day. And for awhile they did. But their work got harder and harder to do.  Because as the decades passed by, opponents increasingly attacked the early Christians on all sides. What are you doing? people wanted to know. Who was this Jesus you keep talking about? What’s his connection to God? And as for the Holy Spirit, you must be mad!! Are you worshiping one God or three gods? Is Jesus God, or is he somehow less than God? And how does the Holy Spirit fit into this scheme of things? Furthermore, aren’t you cannibals—“eating” Jesus every time you share in this thing called “Eucharist?” Explain yourselves!!

So the Christians tried to explain themselves. They spent centuries sorting it all out, putting down in print what it was they believed, how God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit fit together. They developed the doctrine of the Trinity---God in three persons, separate but one at the same time. They explained, they defined their faith. They turned themselves inside out trying to get it all straight. Some even died in the cause. They came together, various ones of them, to write it all down: the creeds, or “credos,” statements of belief. The Apostles’ Creed, our baptismal creed, to this day; the Nicene Creed, which we say each Sunday, still. The Creed of St. Athanasius (BCP 864) spelled it all out in excruciating detail: “…the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords, but one Lord…There is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts… the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. So that in all things…the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.

So it’s good to pause and think about God in this way. As the early Christians did. God in three persons, Holy Trinity. Doing our theological work, as Christian learners.

But we mustn’t get stuck in the idea, the words, the doctrine. We must go beyond the head stuff. Because we are meant to experience God, not simply study God.

My children and our dogs and I all experience David in various ways: David as my husband, one aspect of who he is. David as a parent, our children’s father. David as a fellow pack leader of our dogs, who know him as a giver of biscuits and as the stern voice of reprimand when yet another shoe is demolished. We all live together in relationship, David, our children, the dogs and I; we experience David in many ways at various times.

We experience him; we don’t study the idea of him, words about him, a doctr+ine of David. Our life with him has to do with our relationship with him.

And fun as it is to try to picture the idea of God on Trinity Sunday, or to explain God, we don’t worship the doctrine of God, either. Because the Trinity is about relationship—the eternal dance of God—who creates out of love, who saves us because of love and who sustains us all in love. And we are part of the living, breathing relationship, too.  We belong to the dance of the Trinity. It is ours to join.

Who knows how the dancing works, or what makes it tick, beyond the beating heart of God. We can’t possibly understand the mystery, otherwise it wouldn’t BE a mystery. “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted,” says Matthew’s gospel. Worship and doubt go together. Our faith is sure and certain at times, perhaps; and at other times, it may quiver and stumble. But even when our faith IS sure and certain, it’s well nigh impossible to explain the mystery of faith, otherwise it wouldn’t be faith! We are called, not to understand the Trinity, but to be disciples of it. The word “disciple” means learner, pupil, student. We can do that much, surely. That much we can do. We can agree to be students of the living God, students of the mystery, learning our and growing our faith as we go.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” said Jesus.  We can agree to be pupils. That is Jesus’ call to us. And we can reach out to give the invitation to others, that they join us as disciples, as learners, seeking, growing, evolving. Not assaulting people with creeds, but simply inviting them to join us in the journey we are making. Entering with us into the dynamic relationship with God: God, who once upon a time, says the first book of the Bible, made the light and the dark, the day and the night, the sky, the earth and the seas, plants, fruit, seeds, sun, stars, moon, living creatures, birds, sea monsters, cattle, creeping things, wild animals, humans, us—and who blessed the whole lot of it because it was very good; God who dwelt among us to show us the way and who died for us that we might be saved through him; God the Holy Spirit, who breathes life in us and gives us strength to breathe God’s life into others.   

The little boy was absolutely right. The Exit sign is a hugely important part of our worship, the going forth part, to go out to invite the world to make the journey with us, learning with us, living with us in relationship with God, experiencing God with us, becoming disciples with us in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.