Adoption by/in the Trinity

Good morning good people of St. Paul’s, Coffeyville (KS).  [personal introduction]

We’ve just come through major seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter) in which we’ve focused on the divine Word made flesh.  And, we’ve just celebrated the birth of the church with the coming of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost).  After today’s celebration of God as Trinity, we’ll begin a long stretch of our church year, considered ‘ordinary time’, in which the liturgical color returns to green and we’ll be focusing on creation, growth, and discipleship, which includes focusing on how we nurture relationship with God and each other.

A representation of the Christian Trinity, by Spanish artist Jerónimo Cosida, from Cistercian Monastery of Tulebras, Navarra, Spain, c. 1570

Many preachers this morning will be quick to point out that this Trinity Sunday is the only principle feast based on a doctrinal dogma of our church rather than the celebration of an event in the life of Jesus.  And, we could spend at least all of today delving deeply in discussion of the Trinity – there’s much to explore here.  And, it’s also common wisdom among theologians that if you talk about the Trinity more than just a few minutes, you’re bound to slip into any number of heresies that have gotten people into all kinds of trouble.

In the triune spirit, let’s say that we’ll touch on three things briefly this morning: 1)

some context for our Trinitarian belief and practice, 2) reflection on what our assigned lectionary readings invite us to consider, and 3) what all this might mean to us personally regarding our relationship to God and to each other.

First, some context regarding the Trinity and Trinity Sunday.

Let’s not take contemporary contentions about the Holy Trinity for granted as a merely academic debate.  Since the time of Jesus on the earth, many believers have struggled rigorously, and at points in history to the point of their own martyrdom, to make sense of and profess a coherent belief about the nature of God, Christ, and the Spirit.  How shall we reconcile a fundamentally monotheistic belief (inherited from later Judaism) with beliefs about the divinity of Jesus and/or the Spirit?  How do we order the ‘persons’ of the Trinity? Was Jesus begotten or made?  Is Christ one being with God? Does the Spirit proceed from God or from God’s offspring?  What does any of this matter to our fundamental relationship as mortals to the ineffable creator of everything?  We’ve been debating biblical evidence (e.g., baptismal formula in Matt 28:19 or greeting/blessing in 2 Cor 13:13) and formulations about the triune nature of God for ages.  While the stakes of this debate today might be simply academic or social acceptance within denominational identity, let’s be clear that people in the past sometimes staked their very lives on the truth of a triune understanding of God. At the heart of Trinitarian debates, perhaps not so ironically, are the issues of identity, belonging, and relationship. 

The earliest known depiction of the Trinity, Dogmatic Sarcophagus, 350 AD

Although Trinitarian language emerged in earlier centuries, it wasn’t until the early 4^th Century (325) that a specific Trinitarian doctrine was proclaimed as orthodoxy coming out of the Council of Nicaea – this particular formulation becoming the foundation of the creeds that we recite today at baptisms and during regular worship and therefore influencing how many of us perceive and understand the nature of God as coming to us manifested as Jesus Christ (forever reconnecting the creator with creation) and remaining with us through the Holy Spirit.  There remain today, however, divisions between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Christian thinking about the ordering of the part of the Trinity and therefore the particular wording of the creeds.  And, there are some Christian traditions that have dropped the Trinity from their common language as an outdated, erroneous, idolatrous distraction.  Again, it’s ironic that talk of the Trinity stirs up potential contention and division among what we hope is a unified family in common relationship under God.

As Episcopalians, we’ve inherited the tradition of Trinity Sunday from our Roman Catholic roots.  In earlier times, there both post-Pentecost as well pre-Advent dates set aside for special observance of the Trinity to celebrate the source of all creation and relationship.

Eventually, in the early 14^th Century (1334), Pope John XXII declared the Sunday after Pentecost as the feast day for observance of the Trinity by the Western/Latin church, a practice that remains normative for Anglicans and for us. 

Of course, the traditional Trinitarian doxology (glory-saying) language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is familiar to many of us from our worship services (E.g., the Gloria Patri / “Glory to the Father…” as well as the 17^th Century hymn lines “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…”).  And, as communities of faith have sought to use more inclusive language, you also might have heard of “parent, child, and familial love”; “creator, redeemer, and sustainer”; “Creator, Christ, and Spirit one”; “source, wellspring, and living water”, or “love, the beloved, and mutual love”. In all cases, these formulations are symbolic of an active relationship between the three ‘persons’ or aspects of God with which we have experience in Scripture, history, and our own experience  – God as source of creation, provider of sustenance, order, and provision, and desiring of our redemption and preservation.

If the concept of a single God being three-in-one is still perplexing you, you might ‘get it’ through metaphor or analogy.  God is like a divine chord that is heard through the harmonious dance of several distinct notes. God is like the ‘fire triangle’ we’ve learned about in science class – for the creative force to exist there needs to be an interplay between heat (intention), fuel (incarnate substance), and oxygen (breath).  Or, if you imagine the different roles that you play in the lives of others and how they perceive you differently in each relationships (you are simultaneously parent, child, lover, friend), you might get a sense of how God can be three in one…. and how, again, at the heart the language we use to describe God is about relationship.

Next, let’s consider some of what the Spirit it saying to us through this morning’s lectionary readings.

Our lessons today, while not explicitly highlighting Trinity, call us to consider the nature of God fundamentally relational, intimately interested in relationship us and our relationship with each other.  We need to hear what is being said not just intellectually with our minds, but also emotionally through our heart and gut.

In the reading from Isaiah (6:1-8), we are awakened to the sheer awesomeness of God, our own feelings of unworthiness and shame, and God’s initiative to cleanse us and transform us and to send us into out to our neighbors with good news.

The Psalmist describes an awesome God who gives us strength and blessings of peace to share with each other.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul both warns us that if we live only focused on our flesh (selfish, earthly desires) we are destined for slavery, fear, and death while also assuring us that if we are moved by the Spirit into relationship with Christ that we are, by God, adopted again as God’s own children and reunited with the family of God (not through our own actions, but by the grace of our heavenly parent).  E.g., “all who are led by the Spirit are children of God” (v 14); “you have received a spirit of adoption.... Abba!” (v 15) [note: abba is Aramaic form of ‘daddy’ / how a child would address male parent at home / intimacy and trust]; “it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (v 16); and we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (v 17).

And in John (3:1-17), we’re shown that it’s possible to be ‘saved’ and born anew if we embrace life in Christ (looking up to the one who has come down from heaven, just as early followers with Moses were saved from earthly venomous death when they looked up the bronze serpent that God told Moses to raise before them – Num 21:4-9) and we’re assured that we’re in good company even when our curiosity about Christ begins even under the cover of darkness, away from the potential persecution of others who don’t believe.  Nicodemus, a legally minded member of the ruling religious council, is invited to consider the words of the living Word in new ways and we’re told later that he defends Jesus before the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-51) and is honors Jesus by brining spices for his burial (John 19:38-40).  The lesson concludes with the comforting statement that God so loved creation that God came to us– sent us his Son (his loving Word incarnate) – to redeem and save us; to reunite us to God’s family.

Now, what does all this mean to you and me?

[question 1 for congregational response] What hope do you find in the Trinity?

[question 2 for congregational response]  What ‘good news’ have you heard in today’s lectionary readings?


From our lessons today and from even a brief re-consideration of the history of our quest for meaning through the Trinitarian doctrine I am called again to the truth that God speaks to each of us in ways that we can understand – using both literal and figurative language – in order to draw us back into relationship with God and with each other.

God is our creator, our divine parent and yearns for us to be family through redemption and adoption.

God is united to us through manifestation of real physical presence – becoming like us in shape and form in order to ensure that we’re connected to God.

God is with us each and every day through the realization of self-sacrificing, charitable love shared between us.

Even if we begin under the cover of darkness, out of the sight of others initially, Christ honors our curiosity and speaks to us in language rich with meaning for the mind and the soul. 

We are therefore invited to come forward out of shadows, perhaps initially with some shame and/or awe, and to be restored (through fire that burns away what separates us and water that cleanses us) to our rightful place in the light as daughters and sons of God, heirs with Christ of an eternal, holy relationship with God.

AMEN.