Holy Trinity Sunday... A doctrine of challenge!

Holy Trinity Sunday

These past few years, I used to end my Trinity Sunday sermon with… “pick a heresy and move on”.   Almost all the examples we’d been taught as kids about the Trinity are heretical in the technical sense.  Have you heard this one –   

“The Trinity is like an egg, there are three parts to it; the shell, the white and the yoke.”     Or...    

“The Trinity is like H2O, it can show up in the form of a solid (ice) a liquid (water), or a gas (steam).”       Or...     

 – I heard someone say, that me for example – I’m a son, a husband, and a father.   Three things in one, right?     

Unfortunately all these examples are examples, not of the Trinity, but of various heresies (gasp!!).   Technically speaking, the Trinity is not a whole made up of three parts, or one God seen in different ways.   It’s technically three distinct and different “persons”, that, coming together... in relationship...  form the God-head. 

It’s more like three people coming together to form a family – a bonded, close, co-equal family.   They are a bonded, connected, close family, characterized by mutual respect, honor, and dignity.   This would be an example of the healthiest expression of what family could be… yet still they are like this without losing their individual identities.   THIS is much closer to what the doctrine actually states; a close (and healthiest) relationship… among individuals.

Brian McLaren, who was here last month, spoke in the afternoon session on being Christian in a multi-faith world.   He said we Christians have in our past engaged the world with an “us and them” mentality.  At it’s worst, this looked like wars of religion- for sure there were the crusades (designed to free the Holy Land from Muslim influence), then there were the on-going wars in Europe during the middle ages between various Protestant and Catholic factions based on the belief that their religion was right and the others religion was wrong.    At its best the “us and them” mentality may come across in the notion to convert others based on the belief that our religion is “better” than theirs.  

Brian called this oppositional identity.   Basically, the premise of “oppositional identity” is that while having a strong sense of theology and faith certainly does help us identify strongly to our religious “brand”, that same sense of strong religious brand-identity has shaped our corporate historical tendency to identify our faith and what we believe as the standard, and, by default, making differing beliefs and faiths in error or wrong.   One of his points was that this has led to war and intolerance.   We have some challenges ahead of us…      how can we stay strong in our identity of faith and beliefs, while at the same time reduce the sense of “us” being right (or only right) and others being “wrong” or in error? 

One of the challenges he made note of is a theological one.   An example he gave is the doctrine of the Trinity.   In the past it has been used by religious leaders as a standard by which to judge a person’s orthodoxy – and as we have seen, most of us have learned through our well-meaning Sunday school teachers at least one Trinitarian heresy.   Were we to explain to the Grand Inquisitor our understanding of the Trinity… most of us would be condemned as heretics!   “But… my Sunday school teacher taught me that!”   Ooops. 

But Brian offered that our doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t have to be seen as a measure by which to judge the orthodoxy of others so much as a way for us to learn about healthy relational life.   He called this Social Trinitarianism.  The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are bound together in relationship… freely chosen… where one doesn’t control the others, where one doesn’t subsume the others, where one doesn’t incorporate the others… where one doesn’t bend the others to their will.  Brian used the phrase – “Where ‘Father-ness’ doesn’t colonize ‘Son-ness”.  He used the term colonize – I think he used this term to make the connection between the deep religious elements of the colonial mentality, and the violence it did, not only to the colonized, but the ones doing the colonizing. 

He used the term “Social Trinitarianism”.   Knowing how he used the phrase, what seems to make the point even more clears to me would be “Relational Trinitarianism”:  where within this unity of relationship, each identity is respected and honored and welcomed, where each one is cared for by the other two in the relationship...  where each is wholly accepted by the others, where each is encouraged to grow into the fullness of their own respective identities!

This is such a hard example for us!   What if THIS were the model for us of healthy relationship and identity?  What if this were the challenge for us?    It would be hard work for us to model this kind of relationship… to accept the “other” in uplifting ways, to wholeheartedly welcome the “other”.

  

The first time I saw Sonny was at Roxbury Correctional Institution, outside Hagerstown, MD, was a Wednesday night, around 7:30PM.  At the time I was the pastor of the Community of St. Dysmas, a Lutheran prison ministry.  Although he was verbally quiet, he wasn’t unnoticeable.  He stood about 6 feet tall, about 220 pounds, with a full head of black hair, sideburns coming down to the jawline, and a “Fu Manchu” mustache.   The styles in prison sometimes are older than the ones I still hang on to.  But the most striking think about him was that he had a tattoo on one of his cheeks… looked like a parrot or some bird like that.   It was of course really hard to miss.   We talked a little before the service, but not much more than some generalities on Lutheranism and the service, some introductions, that sort of thing.   

After the service was over, he pulled me aside – wanted to talk with me.  He said he’d been raised in a very White Supremist home.   He was raised to believe that not only where White people the better race, but that Whites ought to live separate from other races.   And any attempts to break these rules were to be met with hostility in order to protect the White Race.   He was raised with a lot of hate because of this – so much so that he had a body covered in Nazi, White Power tattoos...  and the parrot tattoo on his face somehow was a coded expression leadership in the KKK.  He wouldn’t even allow furniture made of dark wood in his house.   

But as time went on, he realized he couldn’t live like this that anymore.   He realized he would end up destroying himself because of all that hate… he recognized he didn’t want to live this way any more.    He’d prayed to God for guidance, to help him make the better choices.  He’d prayed about going to church, he said.   He’d somehow gotten information about our service – he knew nothing about it except that it was church.  He’d prayed about whether to go to the St. Dysmas service, and when he put in to come (in prison you have to put your name on a list to go anywhere… and it often can take weeks, and sometimes months, to get your name approved to be on a list) to our service, he was approved to come in a few days.   He made reference to service, and to something I’d said… he realized God had a hand in his choices.         

We’d talked often about what God was doing in his life, and how things were changing for him.  Then one day he came to church very troubled.  He’d received a new cell-mate, a black Muslim from Egypt.   He said this new cellee of his brought out in him all the stuff he’d been raised with.   Working out your stuff when there’s no one around that bothers you is one thing… but working out your stuff around the very people that bring out the stuff in the first place is another thing.   He was really troubled.   He say, “I know God wants me to work on this… but it really is very difficult to do this!”   I remember telling him he was a strong guy, he told me he’d been a Marine in his youth.  And he seemed very confident that God was leading him in a particular direction – one of Grace and wholeness.   So, I said, use your strength… use that discipline you learned in the Corps, use that desire to be a better man, a better person.    Trust in God’s guidance!   Trust that God is leading you in the right way.  

A few weeks later, he came back, and told me a tremendous story!   He told me it got to a point where he couldn’t hold it in any more.  He told me he and his cellee had a talk; “You see my tattoos… you know where I’m coming from.  You know my past - it's on my body.   But God has shown me that this is not a good path.  I’m working on making this my past.   But you – who you are, your religion, everything about you, it brings up this past.   I’m having a lot of trouble with this.  So I need you to help me work on this.   I’d like you to teach me about you, about Islam – and I’ll teach you about Christianity.”      And he said had really been a breakthrough for them both.  They could talk – really talk – they could share, with respect.  It was amazing to hear this.   Prison is usually NOT a place deep connections based on mutual respect and dignity usually happen.

This did sound to me like a miracle!   What a miracle of the power of God in relationship!      

Maybe the doctrine of the Trinity can be, not so much a test of orthodoxy… but an opportunity for us to witness the miracle of real relationship!