Trinity Sunday (A): John 3: 16-18
From the Jewish people, our ancestors in faith, we inherited the belief in one God, in contrast to what many peoples (including our own ethnic ancestors) believed – a universe with many gods and goddesses. This faith in the one God who revealed himself to Abraham and Moses (among others) was summed up in the prayer that every Israelite repeated daily:
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
This faith in one and only one God is shared by Jews, Christians, Muslims and some others. For most religions who profess faith on one and only one God, it stops there. There is one God. It’s as simple as that.
However, Christians do not leave it there. We profess that although there is only one God, yet we can distinguish three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – all equally God, all sharing in the same divine substance, so to speak, yet somehow distinct persons. God is simultaneously one and three. It took Christian leaders centuries to work out a way to express this. We know that our words cannot capture the fullness of who and what God is. Still, we believe that we speak accurately of God by using the language of Trinity.
Why Trinity? Why introduce what seems to be, at first glance, a paradoxical if not contradictory statement? How can anything be one and three at the same time? Isn’t this merely a word game which means nothing in our daily lives? It can seem impossibly abstract and distant from our experience. Then again, who would make up something like this? If someone wanted to promote a religion or an idea of some kind, they would normally want to make it as appealing and understandable as possible. If you are making up a story and want others to believe you, you want your story to make sense and to be as convincing as possible. So, why would Christians “make up” an idea like the Trinity, and then try to “sell” that idea to others?
As it turns out, early Christians began to use the language of Trinity precisely because it was the best way they could find to express their experience of what God had done for the world in Christ. It was the best way to express what God himself revealed to us through the Scriptures and through Christian life as it was lived and experienced.
It began with Jesus himself. Jesus spoke of God as his Father – but not in the sense that any human being could call God a Father. God was the Father of Jesus in an utterly unique way, just as Jesus spoke of himself as the Son in an utterly unique way. Jesus claimed the authority to do what only God could do in Israelite faith. His words and miracles were also signs, hints, that pointed beyond themselves and made people ask “Who can this be?” Jesus lived a life totally given over to the Father’s will, without sin or calculation or self-interest of any kind.
Moreover, Jesus spoke of a Spirit that he would send; a Spirit that would remind his disciples of all he taught them, and who would be their advocate, counselor and guide throughout their lives. This Spirit would also do many things that only God could do in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first Christians experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, a presence that enabled them to gradually come to understand Jesus’ words and deeds and to proclaim their faith with love and courage. These first Christians could see that all three, Father, Son and Spirit, were God, and yet God is one.
How can we begin to understand the meaning and significance of faith in the Trinity in our own lives? The New Testament tells us that God is love. That’s a good place to begin. Now, true love always implies some kind of self-gift. If you love some activity or some kind of food or some other object, you will give yourself over to it in some way. You will make time and space for it in your life. You will speak well of it to others. In the same way, when you love another person, you want to somehow give yourself to that person. You will devote time and energy to that person. You will try to convey to that person – in words, in actions, in your very presence – some sign that you have given your heart to that person. However, since we are limited as human beings, every gift is incomplete. We always keep on trying.
However, God does not have that limitation. If God is love, then self-gift is God’s very nature. Moreover, being God, that gift is eternal – without beginning or end – and complete. So complete, that the gift is itself God, so to speak: the Son, the perfect image of the Father. Moreover, when two people truly love one another, no gift is ever one-sided. Each is trying to love the other as best he or she can. Each is trying to express love and also to build up and enhance love. Each is limited because both are human, so each keeps working at it and learning how to live love. Once again, God does not have that kind of limitation. The love between the Father and the Son is complete and perfect, from all eternity. So complete, that this union of love is itself God – the Holy Spirit. As the perfect image of the love of Father and Son, this gift of the Spirit overflows, so to speak, from God, giving existence and life to all created things and sustaining them in existence. God is thus perfect gift and perfect community, all at the same time.
Now let’s take this to the human level. The Scriptures tell us that we are made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, what we believe about the Trinity tells us something about who we are called to be as human beings. If the root of Trinity is self-giving love, then we humans are made to live the same way. Our own lives are meant to be a gift of self for God and for others. When Jesus emptied himself for us by giving his life on the cross, that very act also revealed to us who God is, as self-giving love, and who we are meant to be.
This is not only true for us as individuals. Indeed, it can’t be. God is both gift and community. To be in God’s image, therefore, we need to acknowledge our own connectedness to others. This begins in our families. The love of husband and wife, which by the very nature of self-giving love overflows in the bringing of new life into the world, is itself an image of the Trinity, and the Trinity is a revelation of what every family is meant to be. This is also true of our parishes and any human community of any kind. Every community we belong to is intended to be a place where self-giving love is experienced and fostered. Every Christian community is also a place where we encounter the life of the Trinity in some form. In fact, by the death and resurrection of Christ, the Trinity has, so to speak, opened itself up to include us, so that we might be cleansed and lifted up by the very life of God himself.
I hope that these few words will give you some hint of the power, the depth, and the richness of our faith in the Trinity. It is not some impossibly abstract idea. It is the very source of life for all that is. It is the expression of all that we are called to be. It is the working out of the meaning of the words “God is love”.