Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31              Psalm 8                        Romans 5:1-5                          John 16:12-15

I have a coffee cup that was given to me by a friend.  On it are the top ten reasons for being an Episcopalian.  You might have heard them, but just in case you haven’t I share them with you:

The Top 10 Reasons for Being Episcopalian are:

       10.    No snake handling.

9.    You can believe in dinosaurs.

8.    Male and female, God created them; male and female,     we ordain them.

7.    You don’t have to check your brain at the door.

6.    Pew aerobics.

5.    Church year is color-coded.

4.    Free wine on Sunday.

3.    All the pageantry – none of the guilt.

2.    You don’t have to know how to swim to get baptized.

And the number one reason to be Episcopalian:

1.       No matter what you believe, there’s bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you.

Now, with this as an introduction to my sermon, you are bound to wonder how I might relate this to the scriptures – what twisted train of thought did our priest board to get there?  Well, I invite you to get aboard with me, and I’ll take you down the winding tracks that lead me here.

            Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is considered one of the major feast days in our church; it is a principle feast day, sometimes referred to as a high holy day.  It is listed with Easter, Christmas, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Epiphany and All Saint’s Day.  You get the picture; Trinity Sunday is a big deal in our church calendar (which by the way I will be talking about in our next Adult Forum Series, “Planning a Service.”).   Trinity Sunday is about one of the principle doctrines of our church.  Countless theological books and papers have been written on the Trinity, and yet in our Book of Common Prayer, in the Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism (which begins on page 845) there are 18 topics discussed and the Trinity is not among them.  Instead the term Trinity is defined under the section on Creeds (on page 852) simply as “The Trinity is one God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  That’s it, “The Trinity is one God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  There are sections devoted to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  There is a section on The Christian Hope, there are sections on the sacraments, but the only explanation of the Trinity is “The Trinity is one God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” 

            I would suggestion to you that the reason for this is quite simple – the notion of the Trinity is one that is beyond our ability to comprehend.  We can come up with analogies to attempt to explain the concept of one God in three persons, but many such attempts have been deemed heretical by the church at some point in history.  I used to think of it this way:  I am a father, a son, and I share my love with others.  There – one person, but represented in three distinct ways.  I learned in seminary that this understanding of the Trinity was a heresy.  The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are – according to church doctrine, truly distinct not just the different roles God has in history.  So, as I was preparing for today, I read a commentary that said it is a good thing, beneficial for us to have a doctrine that cannot be explained.  The Rev. Rebecca Wright (who, by the way, is one of the authors of much of what is written for EFM) said it this way:

I think it does us a service – especially those of us who live more by our heads than our hands – to admit there are things beyond our understanding. And if it is beyond our understanding, then it must also be beyond our control.  This not-understanding is not of any miscellaneous matter, but it a not-understanding the essential nature of God.  Probably one of the hardest heresies we face is thinking we are in control of our lives, including our spiritual/religious lives.  We can say the big words; we can sing all five verses of “The Church is One Foundation” without looking at the hymnal; we can look down our precise noses at the literalists and the snake-handlers.  Poor things:  they just aren’t as smart as we are, are they?

So this is what reminded me of the coffee mug – the number 10 reason for being an Episcopalian – “no snake handling.”  Dr. Wright’s point, however, hit home – we, as Episcopalians, do something think, smugly that, unlike some other churches, “we don’t have to leave our brains at the door.”  Yet, we do not – cannot – understand the essential nature of God.  We live too much in our heads and not enough in our hearts.

Let’s look at what Jesus was telling the disciples in today’s passage from John:

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.

The Trinity is never mentioned in the Bible.  Verses such as this may be the closest we get to an explanation of the Trinity:  Note it begins with Jesus telling them he has much more to teach them, but they are not yet ready to bear – to understand what Jesus wishes to share with them.  He then says the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit will come and guide them into all truth and that the Holy Spirit will not speak to them on his own – but will speak what he hears – from Jesus – Jesus who declares what belongs him is all that the Father has.  Last week, we heard Jesus tell the disciples that what Jesus says is from the Father – that the Father is in him and that he is in the Father. 

Although it is in our human nature to seek to understand, to explain the unknown, we speak of the mystery of faith for a reason.  There comes a time when each of us realizes there is more to God that we don’t understand, than we do understand.  Whereas, as Episcopalians, we can believe in dinosaurs, we understand that scientific discoveries raise at least as many questions and they provide answers.  Science addresses the material, but faith addresses the spiritual.  We can believe in dinosaurs (which is another way of saying evolution) and we can believe that God is the creator, because scientific discoveries about creation do not contradict the nature of God.

            When we speak of God as the Trinity, we are speaking about the nature of God.  We hear something of the nature of God from Jesus in this passage – “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you to the truth.” The reference to the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of Truth,” reminds me of a theologian who relates knowledge to the experience of the Divine.  To seek the truth, he suggests, is to seek God.  I like this, it represents a convergence of science and religion – both seek the truth and knowledge.  In the blessing I like to use at the end of the service, I say, “May the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”  We seek knowledge and the love of God with our hearts and our minds – yet it is always beyond our earthly understanding.  God is the Spirit of truth that opens our hearts to Christ and our minds to God.  God in the person of the Holy Spirit guides us to experience what we cannot comprehend – God’s all consuming love for us.  We cannot fully understand God, but we can know God, as limited as our knowledge may be.  We can know God through the love of Christ, the healing presence of his love – of his grace, that frees us from sin and death.

In the name of one God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.