Holy Trinity (C)
Today is Trinity Sunday, the only day of the church year when we turn away from our usual immersion in the stories of our faith and focus on a particular doctrine of the Church. It may seem a little strange that we do it for this one specific article of faith, among all the other things we profess to believe in. Why the Trinity–a doctrine that we do not, cannot possibly begin to understand. Any attempts to do so fall short, and the best we can do is grasp at inadequate metaphor. Even our greatest theologians, with all of their understanding and language, have said that we cannot plumb even the surface of the meaning of the Trinity. So why have this festival? Why focus on something we can’t know? Why make it a point of faith?
Naming God as Father, Son, and Spirit is more than just language. For the earliest Christians, it was a way to stand firm against some of the theological problems that arose in the first few centuries of the faith. And so, at the risk of turning my sermon into a teaching lecture, I’d like to tell you a little bit about some of the heresies that the church fought against in its earliest days. They’re interesting traps that we all can fall into, so I think they’re worth examining this morning.
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The first was founded by a man named Marcion. He was struck by something that many of us notice when we dig into our scriptures. Marcion noticed that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a God who is angry and warlike. This was the God who drowned Pharoah and his armies in the Red Sea, who commanded His people to destroy the Canaanites and take over their land, who threw His own people into exile when they displeased Him. And when we hold this God up next to the Father of Jesus Christ, the God of love and mercy, we notice a disconnect.
There are parts of the Old Testament that make us uncomfortable. That make us wonder how the same God can be the loving God who desires to save the world and at the same time the jealous God who wipes out armies. And rightly so. These parts of scripture, these “Texts of Terror,” don’t fit with what we thing God should be doing.
Marcion fixed this problem in an easy way. He said that there were two different gods: The vengeful God who created the world and destroys those who stand against Him, and the loving God who saves the world through Jesus Christ. He threw out the Old Testament and focused entirely on the Gospel. As Marcion’s followers grew and his theology matured, people began to believe there was a good God and an evil God, two separate entities, only one worthy of our worship.
It’s a tempting solution, but it causes a lot of problems. The most obvious is that Jesus and his followers were Jewish, believers in and worshipers of the God of the Old Testament. The Gospels, Paul and all the other letters reach back into the Hebrew scriptures to understand who God is. Cutting off God in the Old Testament means breaking the continuity that exists between Christianity and the entire Jewish tradition. Certainly today we exist as two separate peoples, two entirely different religions. Centuries of animosity keep Judaism and Christianity apart. And yet, we do worship the same God, and we do share in one community of faith. To drive a wedge between us would be to discount what God is doing in the Other.
No, Marcion was wrong, and the Church stood up against him and proclaimed that there is only one God. The Father that Jesus proclaimed is both redeemer and creator. We may have difficulty understanding that God is driven both by His justice and by His mercy; we may forget sometimes that the scriptures were written by the Hebrews and reflect their side of history. But we cannot forget that we are in communion with the ancient faith of the Hebrews when we recognize that God the Father is indeed God.
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The second heresy in the early church was that of the Gnostics, a word that simply means “Those who know.” The Gnostics weren’t just one cult, but many in the ancient world, and there were Gnostics who were Pagan or Jewish in addition to those who were of the Christian variety.
The many different forms of Christian Gnosticism are complicated, but the basic idea is that Christ was unique not because of his divinity but because of his knowledge. They said that Christ was a superior being, created by God but higher than the angels in authority and splendor. He knew how to be saved, and in order to help humans attain salvation, he poured himself into the form of a man, one Jesus, whereupon he told his followers the information they needed to save themselves. At the crucifixion, he departed from Jesus, returning to his place on high where he would receive his followers who carried out his instructions.
At first glance, this sounds a little silly. Secret passwords, instructions, and rituals passed on to the apostles; special knowledge that would allow some to be saved while others were condemned in their ignorance. We tend to roll our eyes at similar groups today, like, say, the Scientologists who promise salvation via liberation from “body thetans” and so forth. We forget how popular Scientology is–and Gnosticism was equally popular in its day.
But the biggest problem with this religious system is obvious. It creates a religious elite, those who hold the “knowledge” of salvation, and excludes the rest. Perhaps this is one of its greatest draws–the idea that if you’re “in on it,” you’re somehow special, favored, extra-loved. It’s clear, though, that the Jesus we know from the Gospels is not one to hold back secret knowledge from certain people. He preached to the crowds and his message spread far and wide. He sent his disciples out to proclaim the good news to everyone and “make disciples of all nations. And ultimately, he died on the cross for the salvation of not just a few people, but of all. Driving a wedge between the elite in the know and the ignorant masses breaks down the full community of the apostolic Church that Christ built up around him.
No, the Gnostics were wrong, and the Church stood up against them and proclaimed that there is only one God. Jesus really was God, fully divine and fully human, all wrapped up in one. We may be totally unable to understand how this is possible. But we cannot forget that even without special knowledge, Jesus Christ’s death is enough to save us when we recognize that God the Son is indeed God.
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And then there’s the church of Montanus. Montanus was the first of what we might today call “Pentecostals.” At a time when the more dramatic gifts of the Spirit–prophecy, speaking in tongues, and so forth–were starting to wane in the mainstream Church, Montanus and some of his followers found themselves filled with the Spirit and speaking ecstatically in the midst of worship.
Most of us–not all, but most–in the traditional churches are a bit uncomfortable with this sort of spiritual behavior. But whether that discomfort is out of unfamiliarity with spiritual ecstasy or out of jealousy that our gifts are harder to identify, that discomfort is perhaps unwarranted. Strange as they seem to some of us, these are real gifts of the Spirit, and God uses them for the communication of His Gospel and for the uplift of His Church.
But like any other gifts, they can be misused. Montanus began prophesying things that didn’t jive with the rest of Christianity. In his fervor, he proclaimed the life and practices of the rest of the church inadequate, and called his followers to a higher standard of living. He wanted Christians to be worthy of their salvation–when our unworthiness is exactly the reason Jesus came in the first place. His prophecies drove a wedge between him and the rest of the Church. Within a generation or two, Montanus’s followers were calling him the incarnation of the Holy Spirit– And the Church said he was filled with a demonic spirit instead.
As with the other heresies of the first centuries, the prophecies of Montanus tore a rift in the community. He may have been speaking in the true Holy Spirit at first. But that Holy Spirit was promised by Jesus to all of his followers, not just a privileged few. In our creation by God, in our baptism into Christ, in our life together, we are each filled with the Holy Spirit. When one person claimed to be the sole spokesperson for the Spirit, it was clear he had gone astray.
No, the Montanists were wrong, and the Church stood up against them and proclaimed that there is only one God. The Holy Spirit was the advocate for all of God’s people, dwelling fully in the entirety of the Church community. We may commit the error of quieting some of the Spirit’s gifts, of seeing our own as less valuable than others or even failing to recognize the way the Spirit moves in us and our community. But we cannot forget that God comes to us and to our neighbors too when we recognize that God the Spirit is indeed God.
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Every year just before Confirmation, our ninth graders gather together for a four-hour retreat here at the church, during which they spend some time journalling about their faith. This year’s group was large, and in its own way, something special. Their journals are private; I promised that I would be the only person to read them, and I’m sticking to that promise. But there was a commonality that showed up in so much of their writing that I don’t fear breaking a confidence in saying it. So many of our young people described this congregation as a second family–a community that is valuable, special to them. It is that community that makes their faith meaningful.
And those whose faith wavers a bit–there are always a few in each class–noted that while they appreciate me and my pastoral friendship with them, they don’t feel connected to the community at large. The connection between faith and community is clear.
And it’s a community that is far bigger than any of our youth know. Because that second family isn’t just here in this congregation. It exists in every country, in every land; in every corner of the earth there are Christians. It reaches back at least four thousand years to the faith of Abraham, and will continue to exist for all eternity. Wherever we go, the Church is there, our family of faith, of hope, of love.
We cannot begin to understand or explain what the Trinity is all about. The character of God, three in one and one in three, is and will always remain a mystery. But when we proclaim God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are proclaiming our refusal to allow anything to drive a wedge into the community of faith. Or rather, God’s refusal to allow it. Our triune God made us to be in community with one another, and constantly ties us together with the Spirit poured out on us through Jesus Christ. We are made one–whenever we gather around the Word, whenever we share in the Sacrament, whenever we incline ourselves toward each other in compassion and care, we are drawn ever more deeply into God’s community of faith.
We may not understand the Trinity. But we live the Trinity together. “Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Amen.