In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
For each of the last five years or so, I’ve somehow found myself preaching on this principal feast, the Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. And, without fail, I’ve done what most preachers are tempted to do on this most unenviable preachment of the Church Year. Using grand theological terms and lots of long quotes from our ancient formularies, I’ve fancied myself describing the indescribable and explaining the inexplicable adequately and effectively by simply conveying a super-abundance of information that, I suppose, was designed to cover everything we ever needed to know about the nature of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity but were afraid to ask.
And that approach, I confess to Almighty God and to you, has been absolutely and utterly disastrous.
In hindsight, it finally hit me this week what’s been wrong all along.
We live in an era that is often called the “Information Age” which, according to Princeton University’s website, “is a term for our very own age characterized by our ability to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously.”
If you want to know something – anything really – we live in an unprecedented age; we can access any information we desire. And we can do it instantly. And this ability to access information instantly – and lots of it – has changed the way we think. Educators now tell us that retaining information, which used to be the goal of information transfer, plays second fiddle to learning how to access and synthesize lots of the latest information all at once. You see, it’s not so much about acquiring knowledge or awareness as much as it about instantly accessing multiple sources and knowing where to go to get what we want. Welcome to life in the Information Age: information overload!
Now, don’t misunderstand; I’m not knocking the joys of Google. Where would we be without it? I’m only saying that you and I suffer terribly from information overload. We are simply bombarded with supposedly important information; every time we surf the web, log onto Facebook or even read the newspaper we . Don’t even get me started on the little sheet of side effects that comes with all prescription medication. Malacy won’t even let me read it for fear I’ll be too “informed” and end up getting all the side effects. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got more information in my life than I can handle.
Case and point: It’s one thing to Google “best peach pie recipes,” which I did this week, but it’s a whole different animal when you consider that my search yielded 3,060,000 recipes in less than half a second. And then came the ensuing modern existential angst as a result of having all that “information.” I mean what if the best recipe was number 3,060,001 and Google somehow missed it? Should I have used Bing as my search engine or should I have simply gone straight to Epicurious.com?
With all the information I encounter on a day to day basis, I sometimes feel a bit like one of Elliot’s greatest characters, J. Alfred Prufrock (do you remember him?). He was that quintessential modern man tortured by information overload when all he really wanted and needed was love. Eventually – and tune in here dads on this Father’s Day – when his life seemed like one big blur of information overload and his brain was basically goo, he’s left only to ask, “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”
And that nonsensical intellectual struggle is what eventually happens when we’re tortured by too much information in this the Information Age. Oh, and the confusion has tended to spill over into preaching, too. In the name of getting as much “information” about God that can possibly be spoken in ten or so minutes, we’ve somehow reduced the greatest, most life-giving and holiest mystery of the universe to the transference of yet more information.
I like how Anglican theologian Richard Baulkham puts it, “Trinity Sunday can be a difficult day for modern, informed preachers who feel they have to explain the idea of God as Trinity. But, remember, it’s sometimes an even more difficult day for congregations, who have to listen to preachers trying to explain the Trinity.”
And there’s the rub, my brothers and sisters!
We don’t need more information, my brothers and sisters – not even more information about God. What we need isn’t information; we need transformation!
Information never saved a single soul! Encountering the love of God the Father, poured out in God the Son and a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit has transformed and continues to transform countless souls from the inside out. Don’t miss it: God didn’t leave us an information manual; He gave us Himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Beloved, if Trinity Sunday is going to be anything more than just another day the Altar Guild changes out the frontals and vestments, then it has to be about the transformation that comes from encountering the Living God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – active and alive in our midst.
Do you know that great poem by Blessed John Henry Newman, “Firmly I Believe?” It is also a hymn in most provinces of the Communion. Well, here are a few lines:
Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son.
3. Simply to His grace and wholly
Light and life and strength belong,
And I love supremely, solely,
Him the holy, Him the strong.
Do you think Newman could write like that because he lots of information about God? Or do you think he may have experienced a transformative relationship with the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Lying on his deathbed, John Newton, the slave-trading infidel turned Anglican priest whom we most often associate with writing “Amazing Grace,” looked up with conviction and said, “I only know two things. I am a mighty sinner and I have an even mightier Saviour.” Do you think he said that because he finally had all the right information about God?
What about St. Paul or St. Peter or any number of the holy martyrs of the Church. Were they martyred for information or were they willing to give up themselves – “their souls and bodies to be reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice(s)” – because they knew and had received the love and light that only comes from a relationship with the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
So what about you, what about me: Are we busier searching for more information about how to find God while forgetting that God has found us?
Trinity Sunday is given to us so that we may encounter and experience the Living God.
The retired bishop of Durham, Bishop Jenkins, says it best: “The Holy Trinity symbolises, focuses and points to that glorious saving mystery of God, which is the sole source of our faith, the whole promise of our hope, and the full enticement of our love.”
So this Trinity Sunday, let us cast aside our quest for more information about God, my brothers and sisters, and instead be enticed by God – by the “love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Trinity Sunday
15 June 2014