So here it is another Trinity Sunday, another Sunday that preachers. throughout Christendom attempt to explain the mystery of the Trinity:

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Kathlyn Richardson
5 years ago
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1 The Reverend Deon Johnson Preached at St. Paul s Episcopal Church June 3, 2007 John 16:(5-11)12-15 Jesus said to his disciples "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." So here it is another Trinity Sunday, another Sunday that preachers throughout Christendom attempt to explain the mystery of the Trinity: three in one and one in three. This Sunday traditionally the one reserved for guest preachers. But there is another tradition that goes along with Trinity Sunday this is the Sunday that not only do the people not know what the preacher is talking about but in most cases neither does the preacher. So in an attempt to keep tradition alive the umpteenth million attempt to explain the paradox of the Trinity. Too often, on Trinity Sunday, preachers feel the need to explain the Holy Trinity. Men and women who normally wouldn't be caught dead with props in the pulpit suddenly show up on Trinity Sunday with all kinds of strange things. They show up with an egg - shell, white and yoke - or an orange to represent tree, fruit and seed. Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 1

2 If the preacher has just finished seminary there may be a review of church councils and the development of the creeds. (Have no fear I promise not to bore you with all that) But as important as it is to have sound theology, sometimes trying to explain the Trinity just gets in the way. Imagine with me for a moment if you will that Jesus in his many sermons at one point said the cat sat on the mat. How would the Church explain that statement? Well a church fight would of course start out over The Doctrine of the Sedation of the Blessed Cat. The liberal theologians would point out that such a passage did not of course mean that the cat literally sat on the mat. Cat and mat had different meanings in those days from today. And anyway the text should be interpreted according to the customs and practices of the period. This would lead to an immediate backlash by the evangelicals. They would make it an essential condition of faith that a real, physical, living cat being a domestic pet of the Felix Domesticus species, and having a whiskered head and furry body, four legs and a tail, did physically place its whole body on a floor covering, designed for that Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 2

3 purpose, which is on the floor but not of the floor. The expression, 'On the floor but not of the floor' would be explained in neatly written leaflet. Meanwhile the Anglo-Catholics would develop the 'Festival of the Sedentation of the Blessed Cat.' This would teach that the cat was ginger and majestically reclined on a mat of gold thread before its assumption to the Great Cat Basket of Heaven. It would be commemorated by singing of the Magnificat, lighting three candles, and ringing a bell five times. This of course would cause a schism with the Orthodox who teach that tradition indicates that two candles be lit and the bell be rung four times. Eventually the matter would become so grave that the House of Bishops would issue a statement on the Doctrine of Feline Sedentation. It would explain that traditionally the text described a domestic feline quadruped, super adjacent to an unattached covering on a fundamental surface. For determining its salvific and eschatological significance, the doctrine would follow the heuristic analytical principles adopted in dealing with the Canine Fenestration Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 3

4 Question (for those unfamiliar with House of Bishop jargon that translates into How much is that doggie in the Window? ) And so on and so on for another 210 pages. General Convention would then commend this report as a helpful resource for clergy in explaining to the person in the pew about the Doctrine of 'The Cat Sat on the Mat.' Humorous though this may be it is exactly what we have done with the doctrine of the Trinity; we bore it to death by trying to explain every minute detail of it. If you have any doubt of this turn to page 864 in the Prayer Book. Could someone read the first few lines for us of the Athanatian Creed. This is the creed appointed to be read in church s at least once a year generally on Trinity Sunday. As I said earlier we sometimes manage to bore the life out of an experience of God. The doctrine of the Trinity began as an experience. It began when some everyday people - fisher folk, tax collectors, even women of the evening who encountered a man named Jesus. Gradually they experienced Jesus as acting like God - teaching with authority, healing, raising the dead, changing people and transforming lives. Yet they heard him speaking to the One he Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 4

5 called "Abba" - the one they had always known as the God of Israel. Finally, they experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It would take the church 400 years to hammer out the details of this experience. But it began with their relationship to Jesus. The truth of the Holy Trinity is a truth that every generation must finally experience for themselves. And like the first experience it begins with Jesus. How do we experience the Presence of the Trinity today? We experience God's Presence in creation - when we stand in awe before a mountain range, the graceful flight of birds or the face of a newborn child. We experience God's Presence as "Abba" when we are accepted just as we are and welcomed home from our prodigal wonderings. We experience God's Presence in Christ when our dead lives are resurrected - when we ourselves are so healed and transformed that we can only speak of having been "saved." We experience God's Presence as Holy Spirit when total strangers, having nothing in common and no reason to be together worship as one - united in love and filled with joy. We experience God's Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 5

6 Presence in the church when the work we are given to do is filled with a power greater than our own. One of my favorite theologians, Fredrick Buechner, comments that if you truly want to experience the Trinity, you need not look in books of theology or years of Ecclesiastical doctrine, you simply need to look in the mirror. So if you are not thoroughly confused yet maybe I am not as traditional as you may think. But if you remember nothing else today, if you remember nothing about the Trinity remember this Our God is both a mystery to most of us and at the same time as close as our own breath. As we pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit may those words wrap themselves around our hearts. May they dwell, not only in our heads, but in our daily lives. May we know that Trinitarian Presence from personal experience. May we join in that circle - that dance, that perfect community of Love. And may "the grace of our lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit" be with us all. AMEN. Lectionary Year C Trinity Sunday Page 6

June 2012 STURMINSTER NEWTON. from the churches of Sturminster Newton CHURCH SERVICES

June 2012 STURMINSTER NEWTON. from the churches of Sturminster Newton CHURCH SERVICES CHURCH SERVICES PARISH CHURCH OF ST. MARY, Church St., Sturminster Newton Revd. David Seymour, The Vicarage, Church St., S.N. Tel: 471276 Daily exc.sunday 8.00am MORNING OFFICE 1st,2nd,3rd,4th 8.00am HOLY