TRINITY SUNDAY

June 7, 2020

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

On the occasion of this wonderful celebration, it seems well to begin by saying what the Holy Trinity is not. It’s not an intellectual puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be adored. So my goal this morning is not to “explain the Trinity” as if that were possible.

Nor is the Holy Trinity what some of us clergy so often seem to want to make it: a doctrinal tightrope to be trod gingerly, carefully maintaining our balance so as not to plunge headlong into the abyss of this heresy on one side, or that heresy on the other. The study of the classical trinitarian heresies has a legitimate and necessary place in theology, but it’s not our primary concern in the celebration of today’s feast.

A good clue as to what we’re really about comes in the Collect of the Day. If we listen carefully, we’ll hear four words repeated, each being said not once but twice: faith, worship, eternal, and glory …

“Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine Majesty to worship the unity: we beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see thee in thy one and eternal glory …”

So, today’s feast calls us to faith, worship, and eternal glory! We praise God for having revealed himself as one God in three Persons, and we ask him to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, so that we may be brought to share in his eternal glory.

Looking to the past, today’s Scripture readings highlight the Holy Trinity’s presence and activity in our beginnings. In the reading from Genesis, God brings creation into being by speaking. The Christian tradition understands the speaker to be the Father, the Word spoken to be the Son, and the truth of that Word to be the Holy Spirit.

Saint Athanasius writes in today’s selection from the Office of Readings:

‘The Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit … Accordingly, in the Church, one God is preached who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Spirit.”

The Genesis reading affirms that as human beings we’ve been created in the trinitarian image and likeness. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness … So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Notice how the text shifts back and forth between the singular and the plural in describing both God and humanity. God does not say, “Let me make man in my image,” but “Let us make man in our image.” Here Christian tradition understands the “us” and the “our” to refer to the three divine Persons. And the human race created in God’s image is likewise both singular and plural: In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. We human beings are simultaneously one and many. We’re many separate persons; and yet we’re one in our shared humanity, our shared human nature.

This teaching has radical implications. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are as human beings created in God’s image. The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are traditionally described as having three attributes: co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial. (Consubstantial simply means that they share the same divine essence or nature.)

In an analogous way, we human beings are likewise co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial. We’re consubstantial in our shared human nature. We’re co-eternal in the sense that we’re all called to eternal life (even though unlike the three divine Persons we each have a beginning in time). And we’re co-equal in our shared human dignity as bearers of the divine image.

It follows that racism and all other ideologies promoting human inequality and domination are not merely sinful but blasphemous. For Christians, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a uniquely powerful weapon in the struggle against injustice and oppression. And this vision of human dignity and equality in the divine image may be one unique contribution we have to make as Christians at this difficult time in our history.

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that having been created in the image of the Trinity, in Holy Baptism we’ve also be re‑created in the name of the Trinity. The risen Lord appears to the eleven in Galilee and commissions them: “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

And so we live confidently in the present and look with hope to the future. As baptized members of Christ’s Body the Church, we have his promise that he will be with us “always, even unto the end of the world.” In today’s Epistle from Second Corinthians, Saint Paul bids us, “agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

A basic tenet of Christian faith is that God is the God of love and peace, or more simply, God is love, precisely as the Holy Trinity. The love that the three divine Persons eternally exchange among themselves, in total mutuality and total self‑giving, is the very same love with which God loves us, and which he invites us to share, with him and with one another, now and for ever.

The Holy Trinity is both our beginning and our end. Created in the trinitarian image, re-created and regenerated in the trinitarian Name, we look forward to our fulfillment in all joy and happiness by sharing eternally in the trinitarian life.

And so, to end where we began, we pray God to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, that in the end we may see him face-to-face in the fullness of his glory as one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom be all worship, praise, dominion, and power, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION

Monday 1 June 2019

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

From the Collect for today’s Feast: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word…”

This Collect gives us two reasons why the Virgin Mary is called the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was blessed in bearing the incarnate Son of God the Father. But she was still more blessed in keeping God’s Word. And both blessings, the Collect reminds us, came by the grace or gift of our Father in heaven.

The Collect mirrors the double blessing that Elisabeth pronounces in the Gospel that we’ve just heard. When Mary enters the house, Elisabeth cries out, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” That’s Mary’s first blessing: to be the Mother of the incarnate Lord. But then Elisabeth adds a second blessing: “And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things that were told her from the Lord.”

Saint Luke records Jesus himself repeating a similar double blessing later in his Gospel. In Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” The language is a bit more anatomically graphic that we might feel comfortable with today; but it’s clearly a blessing on the Lord’s mother. In response, he does not deny what she has said, but adds the second part, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”

Part of the genius of the Collects and other liturgical texts in our Prayer Book tradition is that they’re able to weave such a rich web of biblical allusions in so few words: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

Then comes the second part of the Collect, where we ask God for some specific gift or grace related to the day’s liturgical theme: “Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to thy will …”

So the question that the Collect places before us is how we can become more attentive to God’s Word and deepen our devotion to following God’s will. Let’s think about that question.

Many of us, I know, are deeply distressed by what’s happening in our country and the world. What is the safest and most responsible way out of the pandemic? How do we come out of the lockdown and restart the economy so that people have the opportunity to regain their livelihoods while at the same time minimizing new outbreaks of the disease? How do we begin dismantling systemically racist structures that result in people of color fearing death at the hands of the very forces we employ to protect and serve all citizens? And how do we respond to the rage that we’ve seen boiling over into rioting, looting, and arson across our country?

I don’t pretend to have any new or original answers to these difficult and painful questions. But I will say that as Christians the one unique contribution we can make is to attend to God’s Word. We can listen to what God is saying to his people in the Scriptures. In reading, meditation, and prayer we can begin to seek God’s will—for us, for our nation, and for the world.

The Church commends many kinds of practices to help us read and meditate on Scripture, from the Divine Office, to lectio divina, to spiritual exercises in the Ignatian tradition, to daily devotional commentaries like Forward Day-by-Day. Different methods suit different individuals; there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. But today’s Feast invites us to consider what practical steps we might take to strengthen our engagement with God’s Word and deepen our devotion to doing God’s will.

By following Mary’s example, we not only receive God’s blessing, but we also become a blessing to others. The beauty of the Visitation story is this quality of mutual blessing. Mary’s arrival bearing the unborn Jesus is a blessing to both Elisabeth and the unborn John the Baptist who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb; Elisabeth in turn blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. All these blessings originate in Mary’s simple attentiveness and obedience to God’s Word announced by the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”

But they don’t end there. In the song we know as the Magnificat, Mary sings the radical vision of a world transformed: “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

So, when I suggest that our first response to the challenges of our time needs to be hearing and keeping God’s Word, I’m not proposing anything safe, timid, or escapist. On the contrary, Mary points us in a way that is full of excitement, creativity, risk, and promise.

The Blessed Virgin Mary alone is the bearer of the Word-made-flesh, the Mother of God. That is her unique vocation, her unique place in the economy of salvation.

But as baptized Christians we all have the vocation to be bearers of God’s Word: to one another and to the world. That mission begins when we who honor the exaltation of Mary’s lowliness learn to follow her example of devotion to God’s will. Then we shall be blessed as those who hear the Word of God and keep it.