“I am with you always, to the end of the age!”
Trinity Sunday. As per AI and Wikipedia: “Trinity Sunday is
the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar,
and the Sunday of Pentecost in Eastern Christianity. Trinity Sunday celebrates
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” This remains baffling to many who cannot get
their heads around a monotheistic faith speaking of “three Persons of God.” We
even sing, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Yet, our tendency is to
think of a “person” as an individual, and yet, the Church does not see the
Trinity as three discreet individuals.
Trinity became the way in which the Church understands and
talks about God. Yes, it is a doctrine, but it is used more like a metaphor. We
all know that God’s inscrutable nature defies any full and complete
understanding on our part. But scripture and early Church leaders experienced
the God Jesus refers to most often as Father, as having what in Latin of the
day describes as three personas – where persona refers to a
theatrical mask: as the mask (per)
through which the voice (sonare) of the actor represents a character. With
various masks one actor can represent several different characters. Thus,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Notably, all three are mentioned in Matthew 28:16-20 as part
of a Baptismal formula: “…baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And way back at the beginning of Matthew, all three
are on the stage at the same time at Jesus’s baptism by John: the Holy Spirit
descends “like a dove,” alighting on Jesus as the Father’s voice from above
declares, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
It would be later in the 4th century that any
doctrine of the Trinitarian nature of God is formulated in discussions that led
up to the Nicene Creed. The first part of the creed concerns the nature of the
Father, the second section the Son, and the third section the Holy Spirit. Yet,
as Saint Athanasius proclaims in his own famous creed, the three are one: “For
there is one person of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost…The
Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet, they are not
three eternals but one eternal…” etc (BCP 864)
The Father sends the Son, who bears the very nature of God’s
Love or Charity, and, as Jesus proclaims in his final instructions to the
eleven remaining disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me.” Matthew represents that Jesus does not do away with the 613
commandments in Torah, but rather has been authorized by the Father to
interpret them once and for all. And as detailed in the Farewell Discourse in
John (John 13-17), the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to the Christian
Community that would become the Church. This Holy Spirit empowers and equips
The Eleven to baptize Gentiles in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. And to teach the Gentiles (ie nations, ethnos) everything
Jesus has taught them. A daunting task, if it were not for the gift of the Holy
Spirit, and Jesus’s final promise: “And remember, I am with you always to
the end of the age.” [Matthew 28:20]
As Thomas Long in his commentary on Matthew notes: “The task
is staggering, and this great commission must have seemed ludicrous to the
little band of disciples… being sent on a world-wide mission across perilous
boundaries. These Jews would have to learn how to phrase the gospel in thought
patterns of Gentiles; …learn how to put out the welcome mat for women; these
grown men would need to become humble like children; these Hebrew and Aramaic
speakers would have to master the confusing polyglot of the nations.” (Westminster/John
Knox Bible Companion)
Only one word could strengthen their resolve, and ours, to
carry out the mission we all promise to continue in our own baptism, and that
was the final word Jesus spoke: “And remember, I am with you always, to the
end of the age.” That not only means that he is with us, always,
everywhere, but that there is no way that we can get rid of him! As Douglas
R.S. Hare observes, “The continued existence of the church despite its myriad
sins of commission and omission provides the surest evidence that the promise
has been kept.” (Matthew – Interpretation)
Although a line-by-line study of the Nicene Creed can be
insightful in gaining a deeper understanding of our relationship to the three personas
of our God, the final two lines serve to amplify Jesus’s final promise to us
all. “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to
come.” Or, as Evelyn Underhill in her little book, The School of Charity
(1934), writes: “Or, more literally, ‘I expect the life of the age that is
drawing near.’ I expect eternity as the very meaning and goal of all human
life, and especially of the Christian art of living. I expect it because I have
already experienced it; if not in my own person, then by my share in the
experience of the Saints…the closing phrases of the Creed call us to ascend in
heart and mind to the world of the Eternal Perfect, the Thought of God, the
Country of Everlasting Clearness, and find the meaning of existence
there!... So, since the Christian life
of prayer looks through and beyond Time, and ever seeks to bring Eternity into
Time, the note that we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible
possibility and hope. Because we believe in the Eternal God, whose nature is
creative Charity, we believe in and expect the fulfillment of His Plan; the
hallowing of the whole Universe, seen and unseen.” (p.101-102)
Inexhaustible possibility and hope. The very nature of our
God, in whose image we are created, and whom Jesus embodied and personified, is
Divine Charity, or Divine Self-Giving Love. In sending Christ God gives us
everything; God gives us God’s very Self. The Body of Christ, Christ’s Church,
exists to work for the transformation of the world, not our own
self-preservation. However adverse conditions may seem to be, Christians must
never give up from this commission whether through weariness, or religious self-indulgence.
We must never doubt, writes Underhill, its Ultimate achievement: “The cynical
or pessimistic attitude, silent acquiescence in second-rate standards of
thought or action, selfish politics tending to war or hatred, incomes drawn
from dubious industries, all public or private manifestations of pride, anger,
envy, greed – these things are impossible for Christians; they are betrayals of
trust. In one or other of these departments every human life, however humble,
can do something to hasten or retard the triumph of the Eternal Charity. The
New, more Real Life that we expect must penetrate every level of existence, and
every relationship – politics, industry, science, art, our attitude to each
other, our attitude to living nature – spiritualizing and unselfing all this;
subduing it to the transforming action of ‘the intellectual radiance full of
love.” (p 105)
All because we believe in One God, the Eternal Perfect, His
Love and Faithfulness and Beauty, so we believe in that world prepared for all
who love Him, three in One and One in three; where He shall be all, in all!
“Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be
our author if we were something worthless. You and I and all of us are worth
very much, because we are creatures of God,
and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every
person."
- September 4, 1977, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was
assassinated by government forces while celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital
chapel because he had called upon Christian soldiers to stop the violence
against the people of El Salvador, thus sharing in the martyrdom of his Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ.
Romero truly patterned his life and ministry upon the final
words of the Creed:
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of
the world to come” And upon Jesus’s final words to us, us, his disciples, “And
lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Our source of inexhaustible
possibility and hope. Amen.
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