Cycle C -- Homily -- Trinity Sunday -- 12 June 2022

Cycle C – Homily – Trinity Sunday – 12 June 2022

Lectionary I                                           Lectionary II

Proverbs 8:22-31                                   Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9                             Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5                                        Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15                                       John 16:12-15

Welcome to Trinity Sunday – especially to those of you who celebrate Trinity Sunday today.  That’s right; not everyone celebrates Trinity Sunday.  That makes for some interesting “behind the scenes” theology.  It is fair to say that Christianity celebrates the Trinity.  Belief in the Trinity is one of the cornerstones of Christianity.  Trinity Sunday does not celebrate an event (like Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost).  Rather Trinity Sunday celebrates a theological statement, a belief.

Trinity Sunday celebrates the doctrine of the Trinity – the three persons of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Beyond that, the waters become a bit murky as throughout Christian history – including today – there are various interpretations and traditions regarding the Trinity.

The early church recognized the Trinity (in some form or another) but the Trinity was not defined until the late third and early fourth centuries.  The Council of Nicaea (325 AD) finalized a Trinitarian definition (sort of).  One of the goals of the Council of Nicaea was to counter the Arian heresy.  Simply stated, Arianism deals with interpretations of Jesus’ divinity.  How human was Jesus; how divine was Jesus; how did these ideas mesh?  Nicaea stated that Jesus was human and divine and that the Father, Son, and Spirit were co-equal and co-eternal persons of one God.  Wikipedia maintains that all Trinitarian heresies are variations of the Arian heresy.

Anyway, it was the discussion over Arianism and the subsequent formulation of the Trinitarian definition that led the early church to decide that there ought to be a feast to celebrate the Trinity.  At first there was no particular date set aside for the celebration, though a Sunday was assumed.  Different geographic sections of the church established different days.  Finally in the early 1300s (and that is 1000 years after Nicaea!), Pope John XXII decreed that Trinity Sunday would be celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost.  So, the mainline Christian churches – as well as many of the non-mainline churches – all celebrate the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost.  The liturgical color is usually white signifying the completion of the Easter/Pentecost cycle.

Oh wait!!  That is just the Western Church!  What about the Eastern Church?  Well, neither the Eastern Church nor the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrate Trinity Sunday as a separate feast.  The Eastern Christians consider the celebration of the Trinity to be a fulfillment or completion of Pentecost.  Thus, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday are celebrated together on Pentecost.  And since the Eastern Church is one week behind the Western Church, the combined Pentecost/Trinity feast this year is 12 June 2022 – the same day as the Western Church’s Trinity Sunday.  The liturgical color is usually green in the East because the old season is complete and we are entering into the new post-Pentecostal season – also known as Ordinary Time.

Both the Western and the Eastern Churches consider celebrating the Trinity as a completion of the whole Pentecost (or Church) cycle – meaning that the meaning of the coming of Jesus was complete and explained and the fullness of the Trinity in salvation was established.  (I realize that that is a total over-simplification, but you get the picture.)

All that begs the question of what exactly we mean by Trinity.  Most of us Christians, regardless of denomination or whether we are Eastern or Western Christians can probably recite what we learned and what we hear in countless places.  The Trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – three persons, one God.  But, what else do we know?  If we’ve been paying attention to what is being said in church and religious education sessions, we can probably account for the basic roles of the three Trinitarian persons in our quest for salvation.  But, that is about as far as most of us can go.

If we asked every believer in the Trinity to define Trinity, I would venture that aside from repeating doctrinal definitions of Trinity, no two people would come up with the same response.

This is just my personal opinion, but I believe that nobody really understands Trinity and we are all going to be completely (and pleasantly!) surprised when we get to the Pearly Gates.

Trinitarian studies and disagreements throughout the centuries have been our feeble human attempts to understand God.  Humans have a fundamental desire, a fundamental longing, to understand the source of our creation.  The various branches of Christianity all acknowledge that the Trinity is a mystery, but we all still try to define Trinity.

You may know that major fights and disagreements over the mystery of the Trinity have changed the course of history.  Probably one of the most famous “disagreements” resulted in the Great Schism (or the East-West Schism) of 1054.  That was just shy of 1000 years ago and people are only now beginning to dialogue about this.  There were numerous causes of the Great Schism but one of those causes came down to a doctrinal difference in how the Trinity should be represented – a triangle or a straight line.  The result was that both Rome and Constantinople claimed dominion and each excommunicated the other.  And that was the Eastern / Western split – the origin of the Eastern Church and the Western Church.  (Again, scholars, this is an over-simplification!  However, if you would like to boggle your mind, just Google Trinity Sunday and Arianism and East-West Schism.)

Personally, I think we should let the theologians fight these things out and if there are major (or even minor) theological differences, let’s let the theologians keep fighting.  Let’s let the rest of us concentrate on being the People of God.  Remember that although we are all welcome to dig into the depths of Trinitarian theology (and hopefully no one will ever be discouraged from any theological delving!), our purpose as the People of God should be to understand the basic concept of God in our lives and to go forth living the concept of an all-encompassing God watching over us so that we can be likewise Trinitarian and watch over those around us surrounding everyone with God’s love.

Dr Roberta M Meehan