Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero
Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
Click here for an audio of the sermon
It is Holy Trinity Sunday.
Time to dust off the Dogmatics.
Speak of God as H-2-0:
water with three parts –
mist, liquid, ice.
Or a three-leaf clover will do
to disclose the Three-In-One.
Why do we bother with
images, icons, projections of God
worthy to be shattered
by the mystery unsolved?
How dare we define the Divine,
Domesticate the Godhead?
Go ahead: Draw your pictures,
Color your triangles,
Speak of the Three-In-One,
And the One-In-Three.
Use the Athanasian Creed litmus test
Of Father / Son / Spirit.
But all the while do not trust
The limit of language,
The confinement of metaphor,
The simplicity of simile.
The Ancients knew
One could not be
In the presence of the living God
And live.
Moses beholds God’s backside,
Jeremiah – God’s fingers in his mouth,
Isaiah God’s robe and a hot coal.
The Christ confined in flesh,
Spirit unmanageable,
Cosmic-Creator.
Expand do not contract God
For God is the Great Iconoclast.
And we at last
With Job
Stand in the Divine Presence
Jaws dropping
In muted wonder.
Kenn Storck / May 25, 2015
Used with permisssion copyright @apoemasunday by Pr. Kenn Storck.
That poem by Lutheran Pastor Kenn Storck best expresses my sentiment about having to preach on this day. It’s not that I don’t like the Trinity, on the contrary, I find it most important and fundamental to the Christian faith, even if baffling. It’s a feast different from other Principal Feasts of the Church’s Calendar because it celebrates, not a Biblical dramatic event like Jesus’s birth, the Resurrection, or the coming of the Holy Spirit, but a doctrine- an approved theological idea.
This theological idea explains the mystery that is God, and the Christ, and the Holy Spirit and the relationship of the three in a clear, organized, and neat way. As a “J” on the MBTI, I love clarity and organization and neatness. At the same time, I’m mindful that we can’t have a completely authentic experience of God if we stay with the clear, organized and neat formulas. As the great 4th century Egyptian Desert monk Evagrius Ponticus (344-399) observed: “"God cannot be grasped by the mind. If [God] could be grasped, [God] would not be God." Similarly, the Syrian monk and bishop John of Damascus (676–749) wrote in his Exposition of the Christian Faith (I.4): "It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what [God] is in [God’s] essence and nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable. God then is infinite and incomprehensible; and all that is comprehensible about [God] is [God’s] incomprehensibility." And the 13th century German Dominican friar, theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, dared to pray: “I pray God, rid me of God.” His point being that, not until we rid ourselves of our assured ideas about God do we begin to actually experience God.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was ‘created’ to describe, define, and safeguard the human experience of God, as the source of life beyond any limit we can imagine, God coming to us uniquely through the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and God as the ultimate depth of life. For early disciples, encountering Jesus was encountering God directly. At the same time, Jesus spoke of God as both distinct from him (as when he prayed to God or spoke of God as the One who sent him) and “one” with him. Likewise, they experienced encounters with the Spirit as encounters with God directly. At the same time, Jesus spoke of the Spirit as a guiding, challenging presence distinct both from him and from the One to whom he prayed. So Christians sought out ways to express this mystery that God is properly conceived as both Three and One.
What’s interesting is that, Science, once considered the enemy of religion, is now helping us realize that we are in the midst of awesome mystery, and mystery is that which cannot be apprehended by reason, but once apprehended, is not contrary to reason. This Mystery of the relatedness of God’s very being, the multiple-ness of God’s very unity invites us to be at peace in the unknowing. Quantum physics, and cosmology are now helping us look at this Mystery of the Triune God with a new level of understanding. Reality is relational. The Holy Trinity is about relationship, indwelling, and interrelatedness. It is about God within God, mutually depending and dwelling together in a holy unity. And we are invited to be a part of this Mystery through which God relates to us. Rather than an esoteric picture of God “up there”, God is right here with us, creating, redeeming, and sustaining us; a God “in whom we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
God is always relating, within God’s self, and beyond God’s self, a love and joy so unimaginable that it cannot be contained. And we are invited to participate in that love and joy of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit. It is an invitation into relationship. It is Jesus who teaches us through his ministry of love and healing, to live our interrelatedness with God, and with one another. His teaching leads us to a God whose very essence is structured around loving relationship.
In his Commencement Address for Oberlin College in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “… all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”
In his short essay, ‘Ubuntu: On the Nature of Human Community’, the late Desmond Mpilo Tutu (1931-2021), who was a Nobel Prize winner, anti-apartheid activist, former archbishop of Cape Town, and good friend of our Order, wrote: In our African…worldview, we have something called ubuntu. In Xhosa, we say, “Umntu ngumtu ngabantu.” This expression is very difficult to render in English, but we could translate it by saying, “A person is a person through other persons.” We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.
Ubuntu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. It says, not as Descartes did, “I think, therefore I am” but rather, “I am because I belong.” I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for we are made for togetherness, for family. We are made for complementarity. We are created for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.
I have gifts that you don’t have, and you have gifts that I don’t have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent.”
On the Vow of Obedience in his Rule for the Order, Father Huntington wrote: “We are to die to our isolation and separateness as individuals, that we may live in the energies of a mystical body wherein the life is one, and that the life of Jesus, our Head. The community is thus our means of entrance into union with our ascended Lord.” For Father Huntington, monastic life is characterized by the interdependence of its members. That means that we support one another in times of need, encourage each other to flourish, and are even willing to challenge one another when necessary. Our common welfare depends on the spiritual health of each member. There is no room in a Spirit-led community for domination, manipulation, controlling others, competition, resentment, envy, or revenge.
Living as related beings means that we seek out the voices in our midst that are not heard. It means we work through all of the barriers that seem to divide us, dismantling power systems based on hatred and domination. It means we treat the Earth, not as a reservoir of food and fuel, but as a dynamic and living organism to treasure and nurture. It means we learn to love the complexity within ourselves, having patience with the parts of ourselves that still need conversion. It means we give thanks for having been created as a part of a web of life and love that pours out of God’s own inner web of love, connectivity and relatedness.
In the midst of all manner of brokenness may we join the joyful dance of unknowing because where it comes to God no creed or doctrine will suffice. All that can really adequately be offered up is silence in the presence of the, One who is, was, and evermore shall be, in the words of Saint Augustine: Lover, Beloved and Love itself. May the Spirit of truth guide us until all will be revealed in the fullness of time. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
