BATCHELOR (NORTHERN TERRITORY)
TRINITY SUNDAY (26th MAY) 2013
Psalm 8
Romans 5.1-5
John 16.12-15
I was for a few years a priest in the NSW diocese of Bathurst. Still in many ways a wet-behind-the-ears young priest, I was proud to be under the nurture of three or four senior priests, including the bishop of that diocese. A few years after leaving, though, I was sadly and deeply stunned when one of the finest of those priests, with whom I was having a nostalgic drink or two, announced with solemnity that if Christianity was to survive in the 21st Century it was going to have to ditch what he called “the nonsense of the Trinity”. He argued – though I was too jaw-dropped to contribute anything but spluttered gasps to the conversation – that this was no more than a fourth century pseudo-doctrine designed to appease a secular emperor and his political support base. I wanted to beg to demur, but my jaw was under the bar stool, and I’ve never been good at arguing anyway.
Yet someplace deep within my spirit (within my wairua) I heard my own voice mumbling “over
my dead body”. It was very deep within – I never spoke the words, but they
remain with me still. The Christian faith, in my books, stands or falls by the
doctrine of the Trinity. Anne had a Muslim friend who used to chide her “if you
Christians rid yourselves of the doctrines of the virgin birth, the divinity of
Jesus, and the Trinity, you’d have a great religion.” We would indeed: we’d
have either Judaism or Islam. I have great respect for our Muslim and Jewish
cousins, but I would passionately argue that Islam and Judaism and Christianity
are not one and the same. We may well share a God, but that, believe it or not,
is another matter. And it is enough of a different matter to believe that my
Bathurst mentor was deeply, deeply misguided. Perhaps that’s when we learn to
fly, when our mentors let us down?
Can I explain the Trinity? No. And not “no” in
the way I cannot explain quantum physics, either. I cannot explain quantum physics,
but there are some who can. I have a friend whose life has been spent measuring
the weight of quarks. I have no idea
what he is even talking about, but he is engaging in an activity that is at
least in theory humanly possible. I do not believe we can or should ever place
the doctrine of the Trinity in the same folder as potentially possible human
knowledge.I too have sat through sermons attempting to describe this mystery of God in terms of ice, steam and water, fleur de lyse, or three leafed clovers, in terms of love, lover and beloved, and a thousand more. They are bound to fail. My favourite will always be Rublev’s Icon of the Trinity: three humanesque figures gathered around the chalice and paten of the eucharist. But such an icon will always fail until we understand that eastern orthodox iconography is never meant to be a representation but a deliberately flawed visual metaphor, a darkened window through which the light of faith can illuminate, teach, but never close a book of factual information.
To speak of the Trinity is to stand on holy
ground. The language I will inadequately
use, if I dare to use any, will always ever only be the language of poetry, and
will be the language of experience, perhaps even of ecstasy, not the language
of description, much less analysis. We should not be afraid of that. The obsession of western
society with enlightenment rationality may have its place when building literal
bridges, skyscrapers, or balancing balance sheets (all of which are practices
at which I am woefully inadequate) but not when we engage in the language of
love. And, similarly, the language of love can never be reduced to physics, as
those who have read a scientific description of the human art of kissing may
recall. “Osculation” sounds so prosaic in any poem!
It is no accident that the words “poem” and “poet”
are intrinsically related to ancient languages’ attempts to render the idea of “creator”,
related to making, creating and composing. “God, the poet” is not a common idea
in western Christianity, yet it is I believe one of our profoundest truths: “in
the beginning was the word”, the fourth evangelist tells us. In the beginning
was the poet, and we became the poem. Our puny post-enlightenment attempts to
reduce the mysteries of God to language that we can understand are bound to
fail. But to speak, especially in praise, in the language of poetry, in imagery
and metaphor of the mysteries of God is to open ourselves up to God’s healing
and redeeming energies: “consubstantial, co-eternal, while unending ages run.”
All in the end I will suggest, and the reason I
will stand distinct from my Muslim and Jewish cousins in faith, is that, as the
earliest Christians tried to formulate a language of the Trinitarian God, they
were driving to the heart of the mysteries of Good Friday and Easter. In the
event of the Cross of the Son every moment of pain in all creation is drawn
into the heart of God, and every cry of dereliction, every “my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me” is pierced with Easter light. And every moment in time,
not just a Friday afternoon in Palestine two thousand years ago, is imbued with
resurrection hope and resurrection light. Neither more nor less than that is
the doctrine of the Trinity as best as I can stutter it.
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