Reflection on the Readings
for Trinity Sunday
by John G. Gibbs, PhD
During the first
few decades of Christian existence the "threefold-ness" of God,
so to speak was a matter of experience rather than of philosophical
theology. They spoke of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because
they had experienced God in those three ways.
[2 Corinthians
13:(5-10)11-14] The experiential basis of Trinitarian language
is especially evident in the last verse of the epistle lesson:
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you."
Both the apostle
Paul and his Christian readers had experienced grace, love,
and communion. They also thought of the risen Lord as giving
especially grace (charis), and God the Father as giving
love (agape) from the first creation onward forever,
and the Holy Spirit as having permeated the Church and made
it into a real community (koinonia). Already in 1 Corinthians
12:4-7 the apostle had spoken in practical terms (gifts, services,
activities) about the Spirit, Lord, and God who is "the same"
in all those gifts, services, activities.
In short, any
near-Trinitarian language within the New Testament arises from
everyday practical Church experience.The New Oxford Annotated
Bible NRSV (NY: Oxford Univ., 1994) annotates 2 Corinthians
13:14: "The order is significant; the grace of Christ
expresses and leads one toward the love of God, and the
love of God when actualized through the Spirit, produces
communion with God and with one another." There is no
tyrannical God here, only the God of sovereign love (cf. also
1 John 4:13-21). If we see anything "Trinitarian" in the New
Testament, we see "the persons" of the Trinity at work for the
creation and for the People of God therein.
[Matthew
28:16-20] The first gospel concludes with what we call The
Great Commission. By so doing, Matthew serves the pastoral need
for closure in the wake of the Resurrection. Some of the 11
remaining disciples prostrated themselves in worship, something
they had not done prior to the crucifixion. Others in that small
group "doubted." To both groups Jesus makes the same statement
and gives the same charge, using the same language.
Matthew's Jesus
says in effect that the resurrection has established who is
in charge of the universe: "All authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me." (This echoes Daniel 7:13-14.) On the
basis of that sovereignty the Church makes disciples, baptizes,
teaches, and remembers. There are no boundaries after
the resurrection, unlike earlier (Matthew 10:5), against disciple
making. Mark 16:15, which may have been written after Matthew,
emphasizes this wide scope: "Go into all the world and proclaim
the good news to the whole creation." This closure brings new
beginning.
It is not individuals
alone, but whole groupings of peoples (ethne, nations)
that are made to be disciples. Communities are changed thereby.
Value-orientations are transformed so that the new community
(the Church) lives out the sovereignty of God in human experience.
They are baptized into the possession and protection of ("in
the name of") Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are taught beyond
thought "to obey" everything that Jesus commanded. Through all
the changes of their life together they remember: "I am with
you always, to the end of the age."
What a corrective
to the hyper-individualism of Western civilization in our time!
The center of attention is not the individual sinner who has
to be saved. True evangelism transforms whole communities between
heaven and earth. Here the whole Church is the evangelist, not
just one person. That People sees every today in view of"the
end of the age." Our lectionary quite rightly, therefore, includes
the first Creation Story.
[Genesis
1:1-2:3] Ecological consciousness was not an afterthought
among early Christians. From the very first their evangelism
(!) spoke of heaven and earth and the end of all time. "To the
mountain" chosen by Jesus (Matthew 28:16), and not to a house
or any man-made place of worship, those first eleven disciples
went to be commissioned. Jesus' choice of place sets the infant
Church out on the vast landscape of creation.
"In the beginning
when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a
formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while
a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." Just as
God spoke, and all was/is, so Jesus (the Word incarnate) spoke,
and the Church was/is. Just as "a wind from God" blew order
into chaos at the first, so the Holy Spirit creates the "communion"
that is Church.
New Creation
builds on, and partakes of, the first creation. Referring to
the creation of the universe, this story emphasizes by repetition:
"And God saw that it was good." That is to say, the creation
was fit to serve God's purpose. Not even the subsequent murders
and other catastrophes in human conduct could succeed, as it
were in a reverse anti-creation, to destroy or annul that "good"
creation. God's imprint remains on/in it.
Early Christians
later reaffirmed the creation of humanity in the image of God.
They found in Jesus Christ the Second Adam in whom all humanity
potentially can be restored to their original "goodness" (Romans
5:12-21). But that is not all, for there arose "hope that the
creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and
will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God"
(Romans. 8:21).
That is the
mood of this Trinity Sunday. It is the atmosphere, the ambience,
of exaltation to the God who has been made known to us in Creation,
in Redemption, and in Sanctification. The One God (Father, Son,
Holy Spirit) creates and re-creates.
[A short meditation
or even homily cannot very well be comprehensively systematic.
More to the point, no biblical text goes to the extent of Trinitarian
doctrine that the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine hammered
out in the fourth and fifth centuries CE.]
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