Sermon preached 6 June 2004 by Richard E. Hurst
"On earth as it is in heaven," we repeat each week in the Lord's Prayer. That is, may the divine "will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." We might ask to what degree things heavenly, things celestial, in fact "correspond," or are even supposed to correspond, with things terrestrial, with things earthly. Our first "hint" of such a correspondence comes from Genesis itself; if indeed we are bearers of the image of the God, if we are made in the imago dei, our visions of who and what God is are thus reflected back on ourselves. That is, our own descriptions of the divine reality say something about how we conceive of the human reality; they say something about how we conceive of human nature, and say something about how we view the relationship between humanity and God. Thus how we describe affairs "in heaven" to a large extent betrays how we see things right here on earth. Do we view God as a lonely despot, or do we view God as working in community; is this a community of co-equal partners or of ranked members of differing importance? Do we see God as singular or multiple, divided or one?
Again, each week right here in this sanctuary, I remind you that we repeat the phrase "on earth, as it is in heaven."
This Sunday in the Christian calendar is Trinity Sunday; many in churches will today sing hymns of praise to the so-called "triune" God, or the three-in-one God. This is the God who is at once one undivided whole, and at the same time, three distinct separate persons, historically called Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit; now sometimes called Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. The Redeemer in this scheme, to complicate matters, is the member of this trinity who classically has been said to be dual in character, being both wholly human and wholly God; thus the Redeemer has historically been called the Son of Man and the Son of God. Unitarians have under various names since the beginning of Christendom rejected the concept, or at least have rejected the static creedal formulation of the concept, and have argued that God is one; Unitarians, particularly under the sway of John Locke and the exponents of Rationalist thought, and sometimes Universalists, have argued that the Eternal and the Infinite cannot be divided in this way.
But one must be sympathetic to the goals of the trinitarian project even if critical of its execution, remembering we are seeking to describe nothing less than God, the divine presence, that which is beyond reason by very definition. The impetus, such as it is, is to capture the idea of a God who is made known to Christians by Jesus Christ through the action of the holy spirit. Universalists, though largely sympathetic to unitarian perspectives of God, historically have made room for trinitarian thought. Nonetheless, even trinitarian Universalists have naturally rejected any particular creedal formulation of a triune or three-in-one God.
Capturing that living experience of God in the static formula of the trinitarian creed, however, was beyond the tolerance of the liberal wing of the Congregational Church in the 17th Century, and many before them and since; perhaps it is beyond our tolerance as well. The liberal wing believed that the creeds, in their substance, violated "Reason," reason with a capital R, and likewise that the creedal tests of the institutional Church, in their use, violated "Freedom" with a capital F and personal autonomy; thus the Unitarian controversy followed, as did the dividing of the church of our Puritan forbears. In more or less every New England town the legal and religious question was the same: who would retain the old majestic church on the town square, the plain church of white cappers and tall spire and clear windows, the Unitarians or the Congregationalists? True to our congregational polity, true to our form of church governance, a simple vote of the members of the congregation decided the question. Imagine how tense those parish meetings must have been. That today these churches belong respectively to either the UUA or the UCC, the United Church of Christ, which by any definition are both amongst the country's most progressive (some would say "radical") religious groups, is no small irony.
But that is not to say that the triune formula wholly failed to capture the experience of centuries of Christians as to how they understood the divine presence in their lives. Certainly the classic formulation of the trinity says something about the relationship between the Creator and the Christ sent into the world and about the spirit who "proceeds" from the two, using the language of the Nicene Creed of the Western Church. The Creator in the trinitarian arrangement is cast in the role as parent, source, the beginning and the end, while the Christ is the Word, the holy child, who is humanity's redeemer and mediator. In this sense, the Word becomes, in the trinitarian formula, a God as well. Certainly none of us can gainsay that Jesus Christ is experienced as a Deity by millions, even if we in this neck of the Church are much more reluctant to ascribe actual, separate "Godhood" to the Christ apart from God's own self, or even if we believe Jesus of Nazareth to be "merely" a prophet and ethical teacher, to be "merely" a messiah or messenger of God. Still we may nonetheless believe a wholly and uniquely human Jesus to be the means by which we come to know God in our lives.
The spirit too, as the "indwelling" God, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Sustainer, might be divine, worthy of every aspect of Godhood as God's own self, even if we are not sure what it might mean for the spirit to merit the status of separate "personhood" from God the Creator. Certainly as a spiritual people, we have felt the spirit move in us, through us and amongst us, and we may as well know its essence to be of God and from God.
So perhaps you may be like me in constructing this modified concept of the Trinity, what we might call a "low" trinitarianism, a UU Trinity: Jesus through whose life and teachings we gain knowledge of God, an indwelling spirit of God whom we experience as divine, and a Creator God who is the source of being. Or in the words of Ephesians, we might say "God above all, through all, and in all." Unlike the word "trinity," these are words that in fact occur in the text of the Bible. I cannot affirm in intimate detail the specific provisions of the trinitarian project, and thus I remain what some might call a Unitarian heretic, not to mention a Universalist heretic. But I can affirm the essential truth of the trinity along with hundreds of millions of other Christians this day, this Trinity Sunday: I seek to know God through Jesus Christ by the action of the holy spirit. If this is not the metaphysical core of the faith articulated in the New Testament, I don't know what is. I leave aside for the moment the important ethical obligations set forth in the Christian scriptures that we might also cite as central; most importantly, loving one's neighbor as one's self. I speak not at the moment of what our faith requires of us, but of our faith's vision of God.
Thus we may be, as religious liberals, unable to make the same verbal affirmations as other Christians, as matters of conscience. We may be unable for matters of personal integrity and honesty to say with conviction the creeds of the historic church. We may have found our way here from evangelical Protestantism, unable to declare that Jesus Christ is our "personal Lord and Savior," or we might be here as we can no longer share communion when the elements are imbued with some specific meaning to which we no longer subscribe, or when the communion table is closed to others. But still we may believe all that same that we have made Jesus our own, and that through the Annointed of God we are being restored to the divine image; we need no detailed verbal creed but merely the lived experience of our common life in the faith to know this to be true. Indeed ultimately it is alone and in silence that we come to know God, through the indwelling God who resides in our hearts, not merely by means of verbal affirmations. We can only point members of our congregation in the direction of God during worship services; the hard work of communion with the divine must be accomplished in prayerful solitude. Likewise we may have no richly developed theology regarding the bread and wine of the communion table, and yet we might be refreshed all the same in knowing in the deepest part of our truest selves that Jesus would have invited each and every one of our rag-tag team of believers and seekers to partake of the communion elements together at the Passover dinner that he celebrated. Such is the shared vision of community, the shared vision of our "larger hope" as Universalists, that transcend the bounds of any particular church or creed.
And so like "trinitarian" Christians, I too, a Unitarian Universalist Christian, know God to both one, and I know God to be plural. I too know God to be Father and Mother, Child and Parent, Wisdom and Word, Creator and Spirit; in this church we have felt God with us, and God beyond us; we believe in and sing praises to God Redeemer, Mediator, Sustainer, Creator; Source of All, Lord, Divine Love, Spirit of Life, Sophia, Paraclyte, Being itself, esse qua esse, esse ipsum. Like our monotheist forebears, like those of the contemplative Jewish tradition, we understand God in plurality and plurality in God. Like the Muslim mystics of the Whirling Dervish school, perhaps you, like I do, see spinning before you God in multiplicity, and multiplicity in God. Like those who study the Kabbala of contemplative Judaism, I see the best theology, the best vision of God, reflected in personhood. I know the miens and moods of people to be vast beyond definitive description, and to constitute an interactive and ever-changing complex. I know no static mathematical formula, no three-in-one accountant's ledger could ever sum up human nature, no creed could ever spell out the various states of humanity, or indeed spell out the states of even one human being. Likewise every effort to "nail down" who and what God is perforce must fail. Thus I know as well that creedal tests written by committee are equally unreliable and inadequate to describe the divine mystery that is the Eternal and Infinite God. Perhaps you share these views as well.
We are mysteries to ourselves. We are mysteries to each other. And God who is closer to us than our own souls is the deepest mystery of all.
Blessings upon you. Amen.
Proverbs 8: 1-12, 16-22
"Three is not Enough: Jewish Reflections on Trinitarian Thinking" by Dr. David R. Blumenthal, Professor of Judaic Studies, Emory University
Readings and other service elements are available at http://e4god.com/freeblogs/Universalist/archives/p/89/c/1