Holy, Holy, Holy

“Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee: Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty, God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!” What a grand old hymn – one of my favorites for this day. Lutherans sing it, as do Presbyterians and many others. It was written by English priest and missionary bishop Reginald Heber, who was born in 1783 and died in India in 1826. Heber actually wrote more than fifty hymns during his life, of which four others besides this one are in our hymnal, but this one is probably his best known.

But why are we singing this grand old hymn at all? What on earth are we celebrating today? We’re halfway through the church year. In the first half of the year, from Advent to Pentecost, our Sundays mark events in the life of Jesus: his birth, his discovery by gentiles, his baptism, his ministry, his death, his resurrection, and, finally, his gift of the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow we begin the second half of the church year. Episcopalians call this time, “Sundays after Pentecost.” Roman Catholics and others call this “ordinary time.” However we name it, this second half of the year is a time of spiritual growth, a time in which we support each other in strengthening our bonds to God and serving the world.

Today we stand poised between the two halves of our year, celebrating not an event, or even a holy person, but an idea. Today is the only day in the church year when we are asked to pay attention to a paradox, the “mystery of faith”: that the God whom we worship is a Trinity, one God in three “persons.” From the time that the framers of the Nicene Creed agreed on its wording in the fourth century – and maybe even before that – the church has been wrestling with this mystery. The number of treatises and books about the Trinity would fill this sanctuary. I myself spent a semester in seminary reading some of them, but I’m not going to treat you to a learned disquisition on the Trinity – or impress you with all the wonderful Greek words I learned to describe it. I will leave that to the theologians! Of course, even for the most learned theologians, God is still ultimately a mystery. Try as we might to find words to describe our experiences of God, God will always be, in Walter Brueggemann’s phrase, “One who is other than us.”

Even so, we still feel compelled to use this language of “trinity.” After the events of Jesus’ life, after his death and resurrection, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit, Christians began to try to put words to what they had discovered about God through these events. Since Greek was the common language of the early church, they used Greek words to express their new understanding. One of the words they used is translated into English as “person.” Hence, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Now the word “person” is problematic for us, since in modern English, “person” connotes a distinct individual. So, do we believe in three Gods, as some think? Barry Howard suggests that it might be helpful to think about the three ways of experiencing God as three divine roles, rather than distinct personalities.1 He turns to Marcus Borg, who reminds us that the word translated as “person” originally meant a mask, i.e., a mask worn by an actor in a Greek theater that identifies the character that the actor is playing. Thinking about God this way, we realize that we know God in three different ways: as God the Source of All Being, as God the Word made flesh in Jesus, and as God the abiding Spirit. Since God is one personality, one God behind the three masks, these three roles are in complete unity with each other and eternally interact with each other in complete love.

These roles are all analogies to be sure, but perhaps they are not totally incomprehensible to us. God the Source of All Being, is God the Creator, the unknowable origin of all that is, God beyond all gender, beyond all attributes that we can think of, God who gave birth to all creation. This is the God of Genesis and most of the rest of the Hebrew Bible. This is the God who spoke to Moses, whose name could only be rendered as “I Am Who I Am,” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be.” Every culture has a creation story, for we instinctively realize that some other power besides ourselves must be the source of all life. Even scientists, who relentlessly probe the origin of the universe, and who have given us the Big Bang as a plausible explanation, admit that ultimately the source of matter, the source of the laws of the cosmos, and the source of the principle of evolution by which the development of life on earth been guided, is still a mystery.

God the Incarnate Word, God the Word made Flesh, is a little more familiar to us, since, as Christians, our central claim is that God the Word deigned to take human form in Jesus of Nazareth. As all the Gospels assert, and especially the Gospel according to John, which we heard through Eastertide, Jesus is God with skin on. Indeed many of us are so aware of Jesus’ divinity that we often find it hard to reckon with Jesus’ humanity. Next week we return to readings from the Gospel according to Luke. As you hear them, try to remember that the Word made Flesh was truly both, Word and Flesh.

God the Holy Spirit is perhaps the least known to us. Unlike the Eastern Church, the Western Church scarcely mentions the Holy Spirit after the day of Pentecost itself. And yet in some ways it is God the Holy Spirit who is most central to our lives as followers of Jesus. For in essence the Holy Spirit is God within us, inspiring and empowering us in our attempts to live out our faith. The idea of God within us is not something that Christians invented. The Hebrew Bible is full of examples of God’s Spirit at work within either individuals or the community. Here’s just one example: in the midst of exile, the prophet Isaiah reminds his people that, “Though YHWH may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide from you anymore; your eyes will see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right and when you turn to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way – walk in it’” (30:20-21, The Inclusive Bible).

What Christians discovered after Jesus left them – and here is the really good news – is that Jesus did not leave them alone. They discovered that God the Spirit is now within us, within us as individual disciples of Jesus, and, what is more important, within the community of the followers of Jesus. As Jesus promised his friends after his last meal with them, and as his friends discovered, either on Easter Even or Pentecost, depending on whether you read John or Acts, God the Holy Spirit now resides within the church, within the community of believers. We do not flounder about on our own. Indeed, the Holy Spirit works within us just as Jesus would if he were still physically present to us. The Holy Spirit brings God’s care and compassion for us into our midst. Through the Holy Spirit we come, as individuals and as a body, to deeper understanding of who Jesus is and who we are called to be as his disciples. Sanctification, i.e., perfection in holiness, both for individuals and the church as a body, is still an ongoing process, is still unfinished. God still “has yet more truth to reveal.” It is God the Holy Spirit who continues to guide us, to teach us, to inspire us to do things we never thought possible, and to lead us into an ever-deepening relationship with God.

Are there ways to glimpse the Holy Spirit at work among us? Last week we exuberantly celebrated the Spirit’s power to upend us by wearing red, sporting fancy hats, singing “Happy Birthday” to the church, and being a little bit silly. Yes, the Spirit does call us to joy and energy, to singing, dancing, hugging, shouting, and proclaiming, as she did among Jesus’ first friends. But we can also begin to notice the Spirit at work among us in daily prayer, in being still, in silently listening for the Spirit’s faint notes. This week, take a few minutes in your own prayer to silently reflect on ways you have sensed the Spirit at work in your life. Take a few minutes in silence in church to reflect on how the Spirit has guided the life of this parish.

In the end, we run out of words in the face of the ineffable mystery of God. As we acknowledge our limited understanding of God’s true nature, of the reality and meaning of the Trinity, we can still join hands in the Spirit. We can still draw nearer to God together. We can still grow in our understanding of God’s purposes and strengthen our bonds with each other. We can still cry, “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea; Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty, God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!”

1. “Reflections on the Lectionary, Christian Century, 130, 10, May 15, 2013, p. 21.