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Sermon: Trinity Sunday (C) - 30th May 2010
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 & 10am
Readings: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Trinity is a nebulous concept and difficult to pontificate upon: so I wont! So, this Trinity Sunday I will read to you some reflections on the subject that have been posted on the Sermon Preparation web page of Sojourners, www.sojo.net.
The first is by Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Scholar and professor emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He writes,
“The transition in the church year from Easter to Pentecost culminates with Trinity Sunday. This transition lets us focus on both the (distinctiveness) of the Risen Christ, who gives life in the church and the continuing force of the spirit of Christ that is alive and at work in the world. The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s … attempt to witness to the linkage between the risen historical person and the worldwide force of God’s presence known in him.
Proverbs 8 meditates on the mystery of God that indwells the world. The Christian notion of the “Trinity” is (unclear) here, but the text provides materials for us to think toward “the Trinity”. In verses 22-31, “wisdom” speaks (imagined as a woman with a voice) as the sensible, coherent meaning that God the creator has ordained in the world. This poetry lines out three lyrical claims for “wisdom”:
*Wisdom has been there in creation since the outset. There never was a time when God’s world was not ordered according to coherent wellbeing.
*Wisdom is an agent in accomplishing creation, a “grand artisan” who contributes decisively to the project.
*The relation of the creator and wisdom is one of deep and endless joy; both together rejoice in the world and in the humanity that is known to be “good”.
In Christian tradition, and most especially in John Chapter 1 concerning the “Word”, it is asserted that this feminine “wisdom” came into the world specifically in Jesus of Nazareth, so that Jesus is the peculiar carrier of God’s good intention.
This claim for God’s wisdom refuses the notion that the world is a tale told by an idiot or that the world depends upon our (ability to make sense). The rule of this three-person God is an elemental contradiction of the anxiety that besets a world that seems to be insane, disordered, and on its own. We know better!”
The second reflection is by Walter Wink, one time professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City.
“Sophia (“Wisdom”) is the feminine aspect of Yahweh, the immanent presence of God in all things, a mild and incomplete compensation for the over-masculinisation of God. She is the architect or (skilled worker) of creation, working beside God and delighting in each thing made. She was the first of God’s creative acts, the principle of creativity. She is called sister, wife, mother, beloved and teacher. Sophia … was identified with the Logos, or masculine reason, in John Chapter 1 and then, because Jesus was male, she was squeezed out altogether. With her went a large component of the female and feminine in Christianity.
Where do you locate the feminine side of reality? Is there a lesson for the church in the revival of goddess worship? Is it possible to regard God as (genderless) , or do we need a variety of God images: God as Father, God as Mother, God as Lover, as Wisdom, as Friend?
The earliest Christologies depicted Jesus as Wisdom’s child (Luke 7:35) or Wisdom incarnate (Matthew 11:19). Just as Jewish wisdom theology used elements of goddess language to speak of the gracious goodness of Israel’s God, so Jesus and the early church drew on female imagery to describe the tender compassion of God toward her children (Matthew 11:28-30,)
It is characteristic of Wisdom, however, that her voice is not heard (Proverbs 1:20-33). Ignored, Sophia causes us to bait a trap into which we ourselves will fall, and to lay an ambush that takes our own lives (Proverbs 1:17-18). Perhaps some of the folly that threatens our survival is itself fostered by our over masculinised images of God. How have we made God the ultimate Dominator? What doctrines and beliefs depict God as an abuser, a torturer, a sadist, a murderer? How might Sophia help us clean up our God images?” 
The third reflection is by Joyce Hollyday, an associate editor of the Sojourners magazine.
“Ah, wisdom. Little did she know at the founding of the world what trouble she would create for (modern day) churches. Wisdom is the feminine face of God, the daughter who was “the first of God’s acts of long ago” (Proverbs 8:22). She is the one who was present when God established the heavens, spread the skies, marked out the seas, a “master worker” and daily a “delight” to God (8:30).
In the Greek, she is named Sophia. In the New Testament, she appears as the Holy Spirit. She represents strength and creativity, truth and life.
She is a problem for patriarchal Christianity. She is helping to spread the radical idea that women, too, are created in the image of God; that we are all children of a wise and loving Creator; that humankind is infused with the Spirit of a God who is both masculine and feminine and more.
Throughout faith history, the Bible has been quoted all too often to uphold evil. The Inquisition, the Crusades, slavery, apartheid, homophobia, the subjugation of women; these and much more have been justified by drawing a tight circle that shuts out humanity deemed “other,” based on a narrow and self-serving interpretation of scripture.
Always the Spirit of wisdom and truth has found a way to break through, to convert hearts and change minds. She who was present at the birth of the universe is still alive and well, inviting us always to inclusion and equality.
The task of proclaiming justice is never an easy one. However, the promise remains sure: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:1-5).”
The fourth reflection is by Michaela Bruzzese, a freelance writer.
“At Pentecost, God revealed God’s third “person”: Spirit. According to Proverbs, this Spirit was present from the beginning of creation. According to Paul, the Spirit is the reason that we can afford to have hope. For John, the Spirit is the instrument of truth: “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”. (John 16:13)
Trinity Sunday celebrates the belief in the incomprehensible mystery of God, not only as Spirit, but also as God creator and God incarnate. One being that is three equal, non-hierarchical persons, God reaches out to humanity in three different ways. We cannot hope to intellectually embrace the concept, which has been debated, probed and studied for centuries without scratching the surface of what the Trinity really means. Our only real beginning point is the assurance that God has chosen three different ways to love us, not in thought or abstraction but in the tangibleness of history. As theologian Elizabeth Johnson explains: “Far from being literally descriptive, the Trinitarian symbol…is shorthand for the dynamic, inexpressible Sophia God of compassionate, liberating love who is involved in history in multifaceted ways.”
We are never, and have never been, alone, since the beginning of time. Through the ages God has sought to embrace us, as Yahweh, as the incarnate God walking with us and as Spirit, moving among us and still inviting us to relationship. Our belief that God seeks us out, in human form, as creator, and as spirit, amidst the pains and joys of our humanity, gives us the courage and hope to pursue truth in our world. We need not understand the mystery of God’s Trinitarian existence to believe in it; we need not see it to act through it.
As the Creed of Saint Athanasius says:
“… And the Catholick Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, of the Son: and of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. …”