Trinity Sunday

Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, the ineffable, mysterious experience of a triune God, three “persons” in one: God the Father, the Creator; Jesus the Son, the Christ; and the Holy Spirit.

I think that people tend to relate most strongly to one of the three. I am, of course, struck dumb by the majesty of God’s creation, and I am moved by the wisdom, compassion, and courage of Jesus. But I confess that each of them seems remote to me.  It is the Holy Spirit to whom I relate, whom I see with the eyes of my heart, whose presence is real to me.   

The Spirit is my girl!   Today’s reading from Proverbs uses feminine pronouns for Wisdom, one of the identities of the Spirit. Hebrew word for Spirit is ruach, which also can mean wind or breath. And as Della reminded us last week, the gender for ruach is feminine and that is what I use.

Last Sunday we celebrated the end of the Easter season with the Feast of Pentecost.  Pentecost commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ Ascension, to bless the entire company of the disciples and empower them to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. 

It was the transformative moment in our faith.    The Book of Acts tells the story.    In Jerusalem, faithful Jews from many peoples and tribes had gathered for the Jewish pilgrimage festival of Shavuot.  The Holy Spirit suddenly descended on them and miraculously enabled them to preach the good news of Jesus’ resurrection to the people present in their various native languages.

We often say that the Pentecost was the “birthday of the church”.  It was also the birthday of the Holy Trinity. It is the moment when the Holy Spirit fully entered the larger Christian community and consciousness, when she joined with the Father and the Son in the lived experience of the faithful.   Although the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was only formulated in 325 in the Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit had been active since Pentecost--creating the church, by visiting the faithful, blessing their lives.

Of course, the Holy Spirit had always been with God.  As she said in Proverbs, she was there quite literally in the beginning.

Genesis 1:2

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

The Spirit’s presence didn’t stop at the Creation.  In Hebrew scripture She spoke through the prophets. And She came again and again to empower such heroes of the faith as Moses, David, Saul, and Gideon.   Isaiah wrote that the Spirit imbued them all with wisdom and understanding, counsel, might and knowledge—just as She would Jesus at his baptism.

In the Hebrew scriptures the Spirit fell on individuals.  At least once, there was a group. You probably recall the story in the Book of Numbers.  Moses was at his wits end managing the restless, cranky people Israel on their endless journey to the Promised Land.  At God’s suggestion, Moses chose seventy elders to help lead.   God came down in a cloud and shared with the elders some of the Spirit that God had bestowed on Moses.

When the Spirit descended on all the disciples on Pentecost, it opened a new chapter in the Spirit’s action in in the world. 

The Holy Spirit became the prime mover in the development of the new Christian faith.

As the accounts in Acts and the Epistles tell us, the Holy Spirit lead the original disciples and Paul in their travels.  She fell on them, on ordinary individuals, and on whole groups of people to whom the disciples were speaking (Acts 8:15, 10:44).  And she has continued blessing the baptism of every single Christian for nearly two thousand years now.

John the Evangelist wrote that he was “in the Spirit” receiving the Book of Revelation.  In part he was the Spirit’s scribe, delivering Her messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor.  The messages ended “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”

All four gospels say that the Holy Spirit came in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism.  So that is how She is represented in Christian art.  Often She hovers in the center of a symmetrical composition flanked by the Father and the Son, who are standing or seated on thrones.

The most moving painting of the Trinity I ever saw was by El Greco, in the Prado in Madrid. It’s easy to find a picture on the web.

God the Father is seated, floating in heavenly clouds.  Depicted as an older man, he wears a High Priest’s white turban and satin garments: a white robe and a cape that is golden yellow on the outside, cerulean blue on the inside. Looking down with sorrow, God tenderly holds the lifeless body of the Crucified Christ in his lap.  The two are surrounded by a company of angels whose faces and bodies display their grief.  God’s head is tilted in mourning to one side and the outspread white wings of the Dove fill that space as She descends into the golden aura above them all.

My favorite image of the Trinity is the icon by the fifteenth century Russian master Rublev. It shows three angels seated around a small table.  The picture actually illustrates the episode in Genesis 18, when three angels in disguise visited Abraham and Sarah and foretold the birth of Isaac.  Housed in the Trinity Monastery outside of Moscow, the icon came to be interpreted as the Holy Trinity. The three angels are virtually interchangeable in appearance. That gives form to the theological idea that the three are co-equal and of the same substance. 

Apart from the beauty and grace of the picture, two things speak most deeply to me.  First, the three angels are seated in an arc around the small table facing the viewer. They have left an open place at the table for us to enter and join them.  Second, is their gentle unity in community. 

The Holy Spirit is all about community.

John’s Jesus repeatedly promised not to leave the community of disciples alone when he was gone. Nor did he. On Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to continue and expand the gospel community beyond the known world and down through the ages. She has remained present in an among us ever since and She always will.

When I can lift the eyes of my heart from the strife in the world news, I see the Holy Spirit in community everywhere. She brings people together.  She forms large or small groups of friends, family, strangers. She gathers them for short or long periods, animating and our complementary Spiritual gifts to create Bodies of Christ, doing God’s work for the common good.

The Spirit works across all boundaries, too—time, space, religion, class, culture, nationality.  Witness our Spirit-led ties with the Diocese of Western Tanganyika, which Della and Jere are celebrating in person today. 

The Holy Spirit never sleeps as She empowers people worldwide to be God’s hands and feet here below. She is modest to a fault. Bidden or not bidden, She works anonymously, never seeking to be acknowledged.  When we recognize Her presence and her action, however, we are even more blessed with the joy of knowing that She is here.

Yesterday in a broadcast to 30,000 people gathered for a Mass in the Red Sox stadium, Pope Leo made this invitation to “each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognize that God is present and perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you.” In my experience, God reaches out most often as the Holy Spirit.

So, dear friends, in closing let us pray to God, “open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world around us” and in our own lives. 

And let us rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.