Balancing Your Trinity

Sermon for May 26, 2024, written for Lakewood Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 6:1-8
In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about. They shouted to each other, saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory!”
The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke. I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lord of heavenly forces!”
Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”
Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?”
I said, “I’m here; send me.”

John 3:1-17
3:1 Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 3:2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." 3:3 Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." 3:4 Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" 3:5 Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 3:6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 3:7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' 3:8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." 3:9 Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" 3:10 Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 3:11 "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 3:12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 3:13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 3:17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God, you are hard to understand, but you give us so many ways to understand You. Let us ever be practicing getting to know You better. As we listen to your Word today, whatever builds up, may we remember. Whatever tears down, may we forget. Amen.

—

Today is Trinity Sunday! The trinitarian God is a core belief in the Presbyterian Church—that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are 3 in 1. No one is better or bigger than the other, and they are not separate, but the same. 

It’s a hard-to-understand idea, and it’s intentionally that way, because God is hard to understand. Impossible to understand, in fact. And so our believe in the Trinity is almost something that we have to practice. We have to practice believing in difficult things. 

There are several analogies for the Trinity that work better than others. Like the children sermon today, I like the comparison that’s sometimes made between our Trinity and H2O. Just as H2O can come in three distinct forms (liquid, solid, gas), so God appears as Parent, Child, Spirit. No one is more important than the other and all are equally H2O.

The mathematical analogy, "1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1" is also used to explain the Trinity. (Math people, any complaints?)

One of the things I do in my life outside of LPC is I’m on the planning committee for the Pride Parade in downtown Snohomish. My town has a varied political spectrum in the community, especially in the churches, so last year when I was working as an associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Snohomish, I convened a group called Progressive Churches Working Together,¹ and we sponsored the first ever Pride Parade in Snohomish in 2023. The parade was a huge success, and people consistently remarked that our little group of churches showing up was a healing thing to see in the town. 

Our second annual Snohomish Pride Parade is this week, June 1! I invite any of you to join me for the weekend. Progressive Churches Working Together is again showing up to the parade and this week we had a meeting to check in about our parade walk logistics. I was sitting there with a circle of pastors, so I asked them all about their plans for preaching on Trinity Sunday, and it was like a great council of churches gathered to share theology at the table in El Paraiso Mexican Grill this week in Snohomish. How did they talk about the Trinity to their flock?

One person quoted an old theologian saying the Trinity as a metaphor—is the “least, worst definition” of how to understand God.

The Episcopalian priest said the “Trinity is not supposed to be understood but to be adored.”

And the Lutheran pastor beside me leaned over and said quietly, the Trinity is an invitation to understand God, not an opportunity to commit heresy.

I like this pathway — the more you research the Trinity online, the more you’ll just find lists of heretical church figures getting it wrong, so let’s lean into what my Lutheran colleague told me this week. As we attempt to understand the Trinity, it is an invitation to understand God, not a minefield of heresy to avoid. (Though it is an interesting Google search to check out how the Trinity has been discussed across church history. Heresy abounds!)

So with the invitation to understand God, not commit heresy, let’s real talk about the Trinity this morning. One thing I’ve learned being around Christians all my life is that people often pick their favorite part of the Trinity. Have you done this? (It’s not allowed! Heresy!) I feel like I can pick out my Christian friends like a horoscope reading according to who they privilege in the Trinity. Dan is a God person. My mom is a Jesus person. Sagan is a Spirit person.

It’s probably human nature to pick favorites, but this is why the Trinity can be such a helpful theological tether—because when we practice believing in the Trinity, which might include less familiar names for God, we’re actually working to make sure we don’t turn God into ourselves.

Take a moment to ask yourself, “Where is your Trinity out of whack?”

Sometimes in the journey of my faith, I have fallen victim to thinking the Trinity is two guys and one ghost. It’s so easy to accidentally fall into this based on the limitations of language around God and the prevalence of male familial words like “father” and “son” used as metaphors for God. One counter that has helped me balance my Trinity in these cases where my Trinity has been out of whack has been to consider what pronouns I’m using for the different parts of the Trinity. Traditionally, the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible are gendered languages, so the texts carry with them that lineage. Biblical texts often used he/him pronouns for God and Jesus, and the Hebrew and Greek words for Spirit (sometimes breath or wind) are often feminine words in those original languages, so are traditionally translated into English using feminine forms and sometimes she/her pronouns.

If you’ve ever seen me at work on my laptop, you might have seen a bumper sticker I have that says “God, the original they/them.”² It’s a part of a sticker series from Illustrated Ministry, the ministry group that makes the bulletins for children we use every week! I LOVE this theological concept because it uses relevant cultural language of people’s lived experiences, and I love this idea of God using they/them pronouns because it is so Trinitarian. Three in one. The singular they. 1x1x1=1.

Laptop stickers are just middle school locker decor for adults.

Of course their have been non-gendered pronouns that also encompass ambiguous numbering used for God throughout history, and in even in every English translation we have today. 

We use the pronoun “You” for God all the time and that pronoun is similar to my bumper sticker claim in that is is a non-gendered pronoun in English and it can be used to describe both singular and plural nouns. It’s a great word to encompass God, we use it all the time. And when we use the pronoun “You,” it’s a completely Trinitarian pronoun—it is at once singular and plural, and encompasses all genders of language. “You” incorporates the full Trinity. “Thou, thee, and thy” is an older English versions of “you” and “yours.”

When we think of God as using they/them pronouns, we see before us a more abundant God. When we refer to God’s love as “Your love” we make ambiguous, and therefore more abundant, who we are referring to in the Trinity, and in doing so we balance our Trinity.

Balancing your Trinity — how is your trinity out of balance? Where might you look to the world around you to see God in more spaces that you previously did? Where are you privileging one metaphor for God over another? How is this limiting seeing God as alive and active in your life each day?

The Scriptures today show us different facets of who God is. They show us God through the monarch metaphor on a throne with angels surrounding God’s figure, they show us a teacher Jesus in a temple, and the hymns today talk of love that shines on us like the Spirit’s breezy presence in our lives. We need the magnificence of God in Isaiah, we need the quiet teachings of Jesus to Nicodemus, and we need the feelings we get when we sing songs to God’s Holy Spirit to get even a little bit close to understanding the abundance of God. All of these images of God show us the many corners of God’s identity in our lives. They fill in the gaps of where we made God small and allow us to see God with newness and fullness. With abundance.

Consider the abundance Nicodemus encountered meeting Jesus. What might Nicodemus have thought the night after meeting with Jesus…he meets this mystical teacher and all of his questions return to him in riddles. I bet Nicodemus was pondering that meeting for the rest of his life. We know that Nicodemus was a follower of Jesus—despite and maybe even because of the ways in which his teachings opened up the world to more curious abundance of curiosity and questions, rather than closing it down to narrow certainty.

It’s GOOD theology to think of God as more than one thing.

It’s a good thing to have more of God to relate to. Where is your Trinity out of whack? Who and what do you prioritize in your understanding of God that actually misses out on an abundant part of who God can be to you in the world? It’s time to balance out your Trinity. See if you can meet God, Jesus, the Spirit, in a new way this week. See this as is an invitation to know God more.

Amen.

A photo of Sagan, a local clergy colleague, and me blocking out some Pride Parade protestors (heresy!) with our more abundant theology at this year’s Pride Parade, June 2, 2024, Snohomish, WA.

1. https://linktr.ee/progressivechurchestogether

2. Sadly these were never available for sale! You can buy a version of it, along with other rad progressive church children’s ministry materials here though: https://store.illustratedministry.com/products/god-cosmically-they-them-stickers?_pos=1&_sid=6c835557f&_ss=r