First Sunday after Pentecost (Sunday June 3, 2012)

Full Transcript of Father Swann's Homily:

Here we are at Trinity Sunday in the Church year, following the celebration of Spirit and Light that was the Day of Pentecost. This is a Sunday when the “focus” is NOT an event in the life or teaching of Jesus. It is about the doctrine of The Holy Trinity which is nowhere explicitly described in Scripture, but is supported by “interpretation” of Scripture.

Trinity Sunday was popularized by St. Thomas a Becket centuries ago. The feast of the Trinity became so important that until recently Anglicans ‘numbered’ the long Summer Sundays as “Sundays after Trinity.” Since 1979 we count Sundays as being after Pentecost.

AS we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity, we confess the three persons of one God: God the Father, Creator and sustainer of the Universe; God the Son who lived a human life among us; and God the Holy Spirit, the Voice of God within us to inspire and guide.

Belief in the Trinity as the full revelation of God is a mystery and a paradox. The Holy Trinity as a doctrine, is expressed in the historic creeds, the concept is drawn out of the revelation underlying our experience of God as Creator, Redeemer, and sanctifier.

The strongest explicit use of the Trinitarian formula occurs in Matthew’s Gospel in the Great Commission given to all who follow Jesus-- “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Church of England – “from whence we sprang”- until recent years required the saying of the Athanasian Creed- always on Trinity Sunday. That creed is contained in the “Historical Documents” of the current 1979 Prayer Book. The American Episcopal Church had the same requirement for many years. That creed begins; “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith”—and it goes on from there.

Now- to that part I want to focus on- THE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT THE “Catholic Faith” is: the creed now says , - “The Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.”

What then follows in the Athanasian Creed is a series of “tongue tangling statements.” So, lets shift a bit.

The lesson today from Isaiah tells a tale of the prophet having a vision, in which he sees God and shouts, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”

In the face of the majesty of God, Isaiah recoils in fear, conscious of his unworthiness. God showed himself to Isaiah, not to frighten him, but to send him out to tell others about God.

IN the Gospel today, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. Both Isaiah and Nicodemus sought something they lacked. Jesus tells Nicodemus that if he wants to know what God is doing, he has to “start from scratch,” -- to be born anew.

Nicodemus can’t understand the “mystery” of this statement . How can this be?

Jesus then uses some familiar words. Here they are in the language of an Anglican Bishop and great New Testament scholar; N. T. Wright; “So, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so in the same way the son of man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may share in the life of God’s new age. This you see, is how much God loved the world; enough to give his only special son, so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age. After all, God didn’t send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world could be saved by him.”

The doctrine of the Trinity is a confusing doctrine. Even the finest theologians find themselves at a loss to explain it satisfactorily. Some use the analogy of the masks worn by actors in the old Greek tragedies. One actor ‘wearing many masks’ can play many parts. But it is still just one actor.

Others have used the analogy of water. Under normal conditions of temperature and pressure, water, H2O, is a liquid, but freeze it and it becomes a solid. Heat it and it becomes steam. It is still H2O, whatever form it takes, but it can have three radically different ‘forms.’

Still others have used the analogy of roles and relationships. A man can be at the same time a father, a son, a husband, a nephew, etc. One man but different roles. Those are not perfect analogies, but they are probably the best we can do with the minds God has given us.

The Holy Trinity is one of those many things about life and faith that you and I will never fully understand.

There is much that none of us can understand. Having established that, however, there is a second thing to be said: THE SECRET OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE IS NOT UNDERSTANDING BUT TRUST.

We can either spend our lives making ourselves miserable about ‘what does not make sense to us’-- or we can live joyful lives based on trust in God.

If we wander outside at night on a crystal clear evening and look up, we see the marvelous night sky. And what we see is only a very small fraction of what is actually there. But what about the part we cannot see?

The heavens are like God. We look up to the “lights of heaven” and in them we see God, but --in the part we cannot see, there is God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit,--- Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, ---Energy, Wisdom, Light, ---Justice, Hope, Perfection. In what we cannot see in life, there is God, hidden, yet eternal.

There, in the mystery, is the goodness of God. Who cannot be captured. AMEN