But some doubted

“When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”

(Matthew 28:16-20)

A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Live broadcast at Sirach 26:10 on Facebook

June 7, 2020 

This is a sermon about doubt, which, I think, is exactly what this particular Trinity Sunday, at this particular moment in our lives, is about. Doubt.

Over the years I have landed in different places about the Doctrine of The Trinity. I’ve been apathetic. I mean, I’ve thought, seriously, at the end of the day, what does The Trinity matter? Except to the theologians?

At other times, I’ve been heretical, scoffing at those who insist that the only possible answer is that it is a “deep mystery”. Why can’t the Trinity be as St. Francis explained it, using the three-leaf shamrock to explain that while each of the leaves were separate they were all part of one shamrock?

That certainly sat well on the ears of the Irish for whom the Trinity Knot or triquetra was used to symbolic and honor the Mother, Maiden, and Crone of the neo-pagan triple goddess. But, the good Fathers of the church said that was a heresy known as “Partialism” or "Sabellianism". The Trinity, they said, is not about three distinctive persons of he Godhead but are different parts OF God, each composing 1/3 of the divine.

The Church Fathers also struck down Modalism (The Trinity was like the three different states of water: liquid, ice, and vapor), and Arianism (The sun is a star, light and heat – not creations of themselves but creatures of the star). 

The only acceptable answer for the institutional church is that The Trinity is such a deep mystery that it is a matter of faith.

And, if you don’t have faith, you obviously are not a true believer, for a true believer does not have doubt but, well, believes. 

Which means, of course, believing what you are told, even if it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of “the faith first received from thefathers”, about the absolutism of it, and how that sort of line-in-the-sand, my-way-or-the-highway kind of thinking infects so much of our lives. 

I don’t know if it creates tribalism or is a product of tribalism but of one thing I’m certain: It doesn’t have much to do with God.

So, here’s my heresy about the Trinity. 

I’m quite sure I don’t know what it is but I am certain of the message. The idea of Trinity is all about relationships. The notion of The Trinity is a pathway into a relationship with God by being in relationship with others.

Now, that’s not my heresy. I didn’t think that up by myself. There’s a brilliant theologian and Episcopal priest named Marilyn McCord Adams who wrote about it extensively. In her work as a theologian, she did not try to answer the question, ‘Why did God permit all the evils that we know about?’ Rather she asked, ‘What can God do to make our existence a great good to us, without trivializing the horrendous evils that we know about?’

Which lead her directly into the middle of the middle of the mystery of the Trinity as a model for a relationship with God as a relationship we have with each other in community. 

Or, as theologian Carter Heyward once wrote, our most intimate relationships are a reflection of our relationship WITH God, AND, our relationship with God is reflected IN our most intimate relationships with others.

This is why, when I have a couple in for marital counseling and they tell me that their marriage is in trouble, one of the first questions I ask is, “So, how’s your prayer life?” 

Ninety-percent of the time, I get a blank stare followed by a quizzical look. What makes sense to me is that if you are not in regular communication with God, why would you be surprised that your communication with your life partner is suffering? And, vise versa.

So, now I’ve probably thoroughly confused at least some of you, I hope I’ve established my credentials as a bone fide heretic. Let me just say that I said all of that to say this:

As I anticipated watching the 12^th consecutive night of protests and demonstrations, I’ve been thinking a lot about the words “us” and “we” – the pronouns of the first person plural – and “our”. 

I’ve been thinking about the violent deaths of the most recent Trinity of Deaths of Black People Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd – especially in this time of isolation required by the COVID pandemic.

And, I’ve been thinking about Christian Cooper, the Black man, a Harvard Graduate, who was out bird watching, who asked a White woman named Amy Cooper (no relation) to put her dog on a leash. In response, the woman said she would tell the police that “an African-American man is threatening my life” before dialing 911. 

She was actually quite maliciously brilliant. She knew exactly how to deal with an uppity Black man, telling her what to do with her dog, by using her assumed, unexamined privilege as a white person.

I’ve been questioning my own spiritual triquetra, the internal mysterious trinity of my soul. It’s been really hard work to question my “we,” my “us,” and the privilege and assumptions that are in those tiny two-letter words that encompass so much and assume so much more.  

Especially in racial terms, I’m thinking about what it means, just for starters, for me to inhabit a White body, as opposed to being in a Black body. 

I understand that race is not a biological but a social construct – a way to deal with the great diversity of people. Indeed, race, like racial identity can be fluid, especially in this multi-racial culture and society in which we live.  

What I don’t understand is the assignment of superiority or inferiority, goodness or evil, intelligence or ignorance, based on the color of one’s skin, or the origin of one’s birth, or the assignment of race.

And, I’ve been thinking that that act of distinguishing, that curiosity, that getting conscious of the “we” – especially in terms of what I’ve been taught or believe about my relationship with God and the Trinity – is the beginning of the work, the new but old, old, ancient work, the human race is being called to do – to try to make the “myth” of “us” into a reality.

We keep trying to put band-aids on something that is so fundamentally broken, from inception, that a band-aid is not going to do it. 

We have to be brave enough to reimagine what our lives would look like. We can’t underestimate the entrenched power of the structures and the systems that we’ve built to move us in a certain direction, a certain dehumanizing direction. 

We have to ask ourselves in bold ways, what does it mean for us to be community to each other? And if we’re going to be community, what should our neighborhood look like? How should our streets function?

So, I’ve been asking myself how it is I will – we will – emerge after the twin pandemics of COVID and racism? How will societal structures and institutions need to be rebuilt in order to gain the public trust? 

How will ‘church’ look after there’s a vaccine and we all feel relatively “safe” again, now that we know that once you move from first person singular to first-person plural, “safety” is pretty much just an illusion?

If safety is an illusion, how – if at all – does that change our relationship with God? And, if our relationship with God has changed, how will that change and transform our relationship with others?

In Matthew’s Gospel (28:16-20), we read: The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”

If some of the first disciples saw Jesus and still doubted, might we also be forgiven our doubt? Our uncertainty? Our reservation? Our skepticism? Especially after the safe, secure world we had once known, is now turned upside down? Especially since even the church – that bulwark of certainty and security and unchangeable reliability – seems to have been changed and transformed completely?

I will leave you with those questions in hopes you find answers – or, at least, some comfort – in these last words of Jesus:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Amen.