NewCreation

Homily for Trinity Sunday, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for Trinity Sunday. The Church gives us on this Sunday the reading from the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, just the last four verses, where we get very clear reference to "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." What I'd like to do with you is explore a little bit about this, the reality of the Trinity. We all know that it's a mystery, which means that it's a way of talking about something that is so clear, so huge, so alive, that it's difficult for us with our limited vision to see. It doesn't mean that it is in itself something that is unclear. It means that its clarity is such that it's rather beyond our capacity to get things clear. And that's what I want to bring out: just some little hints of why and how this is such a wonderful doctrine — or dogma, if you like — something that opens up rather than closes down discussion, that makes all talk about God not something nonsensical, because it contains within it some very important hints for the opening up of reality for us. That's why I think that it's good that Trinity Sunday comes immediately after Pentecost Sunday. So at the end of the whole cycle of salvation, started in Advent, concluding with the Ascension and then finally brought to life in our midst with Pentecost, we then have Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is the wrap-up, if you like. It's the narrative condensed into its briefest form, but it is a narrative, and I want to bring that out. Okay, so here's my — how would you say — nutshell, thumbnail way of talking about the Holy Trinity. You have God, the creator of everything that is, one God. So far that's easy, if you like. Either you believe in God or you don't. If you do, one God is not really a problem. One — not in the sense of numerical one, but one in the sense of there are no more than this — utterly unmentionable other, who is beyond any of our numerical sense of being, because so much more than any of we can only think of as a number. There's a God of whom we are small symptoms; we, and everything that is, is a small symptom. Okay, well, so far so good. But that doesn't actually help us have a handle on anything much. God may be a spaghetti monster, or more like a piece of basalt rock, or Lord alone knows. If you just say "God," just like that, the question arises: what criterion on earth do we have for talking about God? What's our criterion for talking about God? And how on earth do we know whether we're right? When we talk about Jesus, and we say Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, or the Logos, we're saying that Jesus is God's criterion for God. The patristic fathers would use words like "God's Word," "God's self-understanding," something like that. Why do I use the word "criterion"? Well, because I think that it actually helps us not only think of this in a psychological sense, as though God was some sort of mind, but actually in an interactive sense. If you wish to conduct a trade negotiation with someone, you send an ambassador; you give that ambassador powers. That ambassador effectively becomes your criterion for dealing with the group that is being negotiated with. And the more authority you give to that ambassador or that person, the more that person has your total confidence, the more that ambassador is free to exercise his or her discretion in the negotiating process. He can say, "I'm trying to represent the criterion of my boss, the country that has sent me, the government that has sent me, whoever. I am the discerning principle as to what is in my country's interests and what is not. If you like, I am increasingly not only the representative but I am the criterion. You deal with me, you are dealing with my country." And of course, if the negotiating country doesn't really like the country which you're negotiating with, doesn't really like your way of dealing with it, you may try to reach behind you, might try to send other messengers back to home base, and say, "We don't really like your ambassador; we think you have other interests that maybe are more closely aligned with ours." And you would have to say, "Actually, no, I'm not receiving any other ambassadors. This person represents me completely. He is my criterion for who I am. It's exactly how I understand myself to be, and how he exercises that role — it's me exercising that role." And in that case the other country probably, if it's halfway sensible, gives up trying backhand negotiations — like dragging bits of what it imagines the real interests of the country are — and says, "Okay, we understand there are no back interests; you represent fully the whole of whom we're negotiating with; you are the criterion." That's what we're saying Jesus is: the criterion of God, who is God. There are no other bits of God — there aren't any bits of God anyhow; God doesn't come in bits. The criterion for God is God. So the claim that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity is that Jesus is God's criterion for God. Who is God? And what we have in all the Gospels, in one way or another, is a way of pointing out this is exactly who Jesus is. In today's Gospel, as you will have noticed, it's again done narratively, with Jesus saying, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." That was what he had achieved in his lifetime, in his life leading up to and into his death. He had become the criterion for God. That was the whole purpose of his coming amongst us as a human being: to establish forever the criterion for God, which is God amongst us, and then breathing that into us so that we, from his authority, from the criterion, are able to take something forth. And this is the thing about the criterion: God has a criterion who is God, but the criterion can be difficult to understand. We might, in any relationship with the criterion, think that the criterion who has come amongst us is a hard taskmaster, a judge. We can misinterpret any number of things in ways that screw up our relationship with the criterion. We can fail to understand the criterion. That's the thing about humans and criterion: literally everything, ever since we became symbolic animals, is capable of being interpreted one way or another. Things can stand for other things. We become capable of telling lies in ways that our nearest animal cousins can't. We became capable of fooling ourselves in ways that they can't. We become capable of learning an immense amount more. So we have God's criterion for God, and then we have God's interpretation of God's criterion for God, which is what we call the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. He is the one who comes amongst us and interprets who the criterion is for us — always for us. That's the term "advocate," the defense counselor, which we looked at a bit last week. It's the interpretation of God's criterion for God, for us, so as to enable us to become sons and daughters, children of God. Beware that problem of translation in the Pauline text we have as a second reading, which here is translated — the first reference is translated — "for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God," and it puts that so as to avoid the word "son," because it's a sexist word for us. That's not how it's meant by St. Paul. Sonship referred to equality rather than to gender at the time. It means that you're on equal footing with. That's the purpose of the word "son." So our adoption as, quote-unquote, "sons" is not our adoption into a patriarchal, masculinist form of being — that's often represented as that. It's our transformation into equality. That's the key sense that's going on there. Our adoption into actually becoming equal — that's the purpose. That's why the interpreter who is God, God's interpretation of God, who is God, is equal with God; and because that one moves us from within and transforms us from within, that one is making us son, equal — we would say son or daughter. "Children" is not such a helpful term, because "children" always implies a minority for us. It's the word by which we refer to minors, and the whole purpose of this is that it's not being a minor in the presence of God — it's being an equal. And that's something very important. The words which he then goes on: our spirits bearing witness that we are tekna, tekna, offspring — that is the word. Children is the appropriate word, that's the appropriate translation: tekna, offspring, children. The key thing is that the Spirit is one who is making us equal. So God, God's criterion for God, and God's interpretation of God's criterion for God, each one of which is God, each one of which is equal, and on the inside of which we are being brought to life. And this is, if you like, this is the interpretative reality. The interpretation of God's criterion for God is love. The Holy Spirit is building us up, interpreting us into being. And why do I say interpreting us? Because we are narrative beings. It's because we are both capable of telling lies and telling the truth that the Spirit, who is able to work through, get through every single crevice of our capacity for honesty, dishonesty, fooling ourselves, telling the truth, telling lies, presenting ourselves falsely, etc. etc., get through the cut between the quick and the marrow — that's one of those translations, one of those wonderful translations — says the Holy Spirit is able to narrate us into being. It's the in-between God that enables the I, that is "I am" of Jesus, to be reproduced in us so that we become the Son, literally the Son. That's our I, the I of each one of us, different, diverse, born in different countries, times, with a whole lot of different qualities, being narrated into being by the one incredibly rich interpreter who is the wisdom of God, who is able to explain, orchestrate, make symphonic everything to be. Us being taken out of the spirit of servility of slaves and turned into those friends who share this wonderful adventure that we're on. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.