Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday. Today is an interesting and a bit odd day within the church calendar. The Episcopal Church celebrates seven principal feast days during the course of the church year. Seven. Within the 365 days of every year, we single out seven days as focal points for our celebration of who we are as God’s people. Although you might be hard pressed to name all seven, I expect you could come up with most of them… Christmas Day, Easter Day, The Day of Pentecost, Ascension Day, All Saints’ Day, The Epiphany, and Trinity Sunday.

The reason most of the days are significant is clear. They commemorate events, very important events in the history of the church that were crucial to the foundation or growth of Christianity. Christmas celebrates the event of Christ’s birth; Easter, the event of Christ’s resurrection; Epiphany recalls the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The theology underlying these feast days is important, too, of course, but it is the stories we remember, the stories of those glorious events from our past history.

And then we have Trinity Sunday. On Trinity Sunday we celebrate a doctrine. And not just any doctrine—probably the most difficult and mysterious of the church’s theological doctrines. (Later, in this morning’s proper preface, we will celebrate the one and equal glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Difficult and mysterious, indeed.) The existence of God as Trinity has no foundation in any historical event of the past. It is also worth noting that it has no authority as prophetic utterance; neither Jesus or any of the church’s early prophets described God in clearly Trinitarian terms. Nor is there any clear definition of the Trinity in Scripture. The Trinity is not explicitly or literally mentioned in the Bible, although there are piecemeal allusions, of course, to the complex nature of God’s being.

The doctrine of the Trinitarian nature of God was developed by the church, and not until the fourth century. For the first three hundred-plus years of the church, the Trinity was not part of the church’s teaching.

So where does this leave us? Let’s take a step back and look again at Trinity Sunday. Is this day really just about a doctrine, a very difficult theological construct? Or is it actually, like the other feast days, about an event? Or more accurately, about a series of events? Perhaps what we should remember on this day is that great long series of events, spanning thousands of years, through which the church has sought to shape itself into what God would have us be. As we celebrate Youth Sunday today and give thanks for the presence of ministry of the young people in our congregation, surely we cherish and wonder at the process by which they mature and grow in self-understanding and become more and more, we pray, the people God is calling them to be. Trinity Sunday is an opportunity to cherish and celebrate that same process at work in the church.

One important event in the church’s process of maturation and growth was the Council of Nicea. The nature of God was the main agenda item at the Council of Nicea, held in the year 325. The Trinitiarians were but one perspective voiced at Nicea. The early church historian Eusebius was there and describes the event:

The Council of Nicea was quite an event—a formative, creative event in the life of the church, an event worth remembering.

You may have noticed that Eusebius’ account of the Council of Nicea almost reads like an echo of the Pentecost story we heard read from Acts last week. Certainly, the census of those gathered from nations far and wide sounds remarkably similar. But over three hundred years have passed. The people assembled from far and wide are no longer just visitors to Jerusalem as they were in the Pentecost story… Jews and proselytes who happened to be in Jerusalem. Now, at the Council of Nicea, these people are the church, the Christian church. And in this one event—the Council of Nicea—we see something of what it means to be the church. The church is a group, "enlarged by God" as Eusebius says, which gathers, comes together, assembles for prayer and communication. And an important purpose for the church’s gathering is to seek, through prayer and communication, to grow, to mature, more fully into that which God would wish the church to be. The church was not born on Pentecost fully mature and complete. Pentecost began a process, a series of events, through which the church seeks to grow into our identity as the Body of Christ.

At the Council of Nicea those men gathered—that Scythian, the man of great fame from Spain, the presbyters from Rome, and the outstanding bishops from Cappadocia—struggled, not without significant controversy to settle very significant theological issues about the nature of God. Very different viewpoints were aired. And in the end, that community gathered at the Council of Nicea discerned the Triune nature of God, an understanding we now consider fundamental beyond debate and articulate every Sunday as we say the Nicene Creed.

To be a part of the church is to be a part of this process of growth, maturation and creation. It is a process, a series of events, by which a people seeks best to become the Body of Christ. It is a process empowered and directed by God, yet it is also a process in which we, the church participate. We have the responsibility and the privilege to participate in the events which mature the church.

Part of the nature of this process is that we as individuals do not know exactly what shape and form the final creation will take. But we do know something about the nature of the events, the sometimes small, sometimes not-so-small, creative increments by which the church matures into what we are called to be.

For one thing, we know that these events take place within community. The church is a community gathered. To be the church, to become the church, we must come together—for communion, for conversation, and for common prayer.

Secondly, we know that this process of formation, of maturation, leads to growth and to change. The high school graduates who are among us this morning would probably tell us that the process of maturation involves some trepidation, but mostly a great deal of excitement and anticipation. Those of us who graduated from high school many years ago generally are resistant to change. But maturation necessarily involves change. The Council of Nicea did not resolve all of the issues of the church, neither did the council of Chalcedon, nor the Council of Constantinople. The events that shape the church as the Body of Christ continue. And they are not restricted to the great historical councils of the church. The process continues every time the church gathers—when the American Episcopal Church gathers in General Convention, when the St. Patrick’s vestry meets to shape the future of this parish, in ecumenical and community dialogues, whenever two or three are gathered in prayer, and whenever we gather for Sunday worship ad then gather around the coffee pot for conversation. We are formed, as the church, by what we share. This morning, Dan has spoken of how this church has helped to form him. And we are formed by his words to us today.

Trinity Sunday is an odd day, a day on which we commemorate a difficult and nearly incomprehensible doctrine of the church. And yet, our more important celebration this day is the celebration of those events… those events—past, present, and future—through which we will shape the church into the Body of Christ.

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