C. J. Knapp, Deacon

Trinity Sunday is the last of the major feasts of the church calendar. The other festivals reflect events in the experience of the salvific action of God towards us – the wayward children. These feast-days: Christmas, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Easter, and Pentecost – are all biblically based, and in some form have existed since the earliest days of the church. The observance of Trinity Sunday, however, is a much later institution. The celebration became widespread in England after the murder of Thomas A Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. Thomas A Becket had been invested and consecrated on the Sunday after Pentecost just 8 years earlier. Canonized a saint just two years and two months after his murder, the date of his investing became a special feast day called Trinity Sunday.

By 1334, Pope John the 22^nd enjoined the Feast for the entire Western Church. The festival grew out of the beliefs and various definitions about the inter-relationships of God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sanctifier.

The observance of Trinity Sunday spread throughout the Western world because it, like all good liturgy, spoke to and answered the needs of the people. We observe Trinity Sunday because the underlying dynamic relationship still involves our lives and our faith. It is not a museum piece that we recall, dust off occasionally and then return to its shelf. But it is the ongoing interaction of the one true God with humanity. It is the reflection of that interaction which should be found in the relationship of humanity with humanity.

And so in a sense we are talking about words. Words used by human beings to attempt to explain the Divine. Whenever we do that our inadequacies are all too apparent. The great Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople produced what was to be the official statement of the Trinity – the Nicene Creed. Yet in as much as formulaes are devised by humans, they are all inadequate to the task of defining God – the great indefinable.

Our attempts to define the indefinable can lead us into strange interludes of misunderstandings. There is a small sect in Canada, the Doukhobors, who were exiled from Russia. For them the Trinity is manifested in the human soul. The Father is the memory, the Son is the reason, and the Holy Spirit is the will. The Church of the New Jerusalem, centered here in Eastern Pennsylvania, says that there was the time of God the Creator which was followed by the time of Jesus the Son of God and upon his ascension into heaven began the time of God the Spirit. Other groups finding the difficulty of the words and concepts too much to bother with gradually developed what would be Unitarianism. Sometimes this degenerated into a rationalistic ethical society rather than a religious faith.

But for us the Trinity is a dynamic active set of relationships of God with humanity. We, in turn, owe to our fellow beings the same loving caritas that God in the Trinity extends to us. Some authors are referring to this obligation as the role of the Servant Church in the world. That, as Christ came’ not to be served but to serve,’ so we, the Church, the Body of Christ, must also be servants to the world. As the Trinity embodies a loving God who created us; who redeemed us; who sanctifies us; so we are called in servant hood to take care of creation; to continue the work of salvation; and to seek the means to extend sanctification to humanity over all of the earth.

When we work to help conserve the natural resources of this earth, we are serving the actions of creation. When we work to help those in need; we are serving the actions of redemption. When we work to help each person to find the image of God that is in them we are serving the actions of sanctification.

That is the Trinity – not in words, not in creeds, not in dogma; but in action – loving action, and loving servant hood. All of this is but the reflection of the love of God.

Thus the Trinity reflects all aspects of our faith in action. In the library there is a stained glass depiction of the typical triangular representation of the Trinity. It is nice to glance at but it remains a dull, dry meaningless set of images and words until we activate it by our love – the reflections of God’s love. This we will find through servant hood. We meet God the Creator when we care for nature and protect the environment by things like recycling, and reducing our consumption of energy. We meet God the Redeemer when we care for our sisters and brothers who need to be up lifted from mental, moral and physical difficulties. We meet God the Sanctifier when we care for and seek to reach the image of God implanted in each of us.

There is no denying that at times we shall turn away; discouraged by the destruction of this earth – our island home; offended by the look or the smell of the poor; the decay of the chronically ill; the language of the imprisoned; the hatred of the oppressed. But at these times of turning away, we can call upon the image of the Trinity – Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier – to bring us back to face the situation and to be able to deal with it. For the Creator loves all the creatures of creation.

The Creator’s love of all of creation can help us to also love those who may seem repulsive. Pope John the 22^nd who extended Trinity Sunday was elected Pope after two years of inability to agree on a candidate. He was elected because he was expected to die after a short reign. He lasted 16 years of a very active papacy. Every contemporary writer commented upon his uncommonly gruesome appearance. But he carried forth the work of the Holy Spirit. We must try to remember that the image of God is present in everyone. The Redeemer came to redeem all and can help us to accept all as bearers of the image of Christ even though that image may be well hidden under a gruesome appearance. The Sanctifier reaches out to all and can help us to make contact with the kindred spark which is to be found in others – no matter how distorted it is by hatreds, or fears.

The Trinity then is the dynamic means by which we can obey the words of the Gospel. Let us accept the challenge: pick up the burden and; as Paul tells us: “…live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”