Date: June 11, 2017
IT TAKES THREE
SCRIPTURE: ISAIAH 6: 1
–
8; MATTHEW 28: 16
–
20
GRACE COVENANT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ASHEVILLE, NC
June 11, 2017, Trinity Sunday
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop, Pastor
My
first introduction to the mystery, the divine trans
cendence of the numb
er 3
dazzled
my eyes
and sang its sweet melody into my ears
as a little girl
once a week
in Danville, KY
—
(Jeff play
tune from “Three is a magic number” from School House
Rock
)
Three is a magic number,
Yes it is, it’s a magic number.
Somewhere in ancien
t mystic trinity,
You get three as a magic number.
It
was the church of School House Rock,
at the altar of the almighty television on
cartoon day
—
Saturdays, in the 1970s
3 was special. 3 was mysterious. 3 could do all sorts of amazing things.
No joke
—
3 is pretty amazing.
We see its symmetry throughout nature
—
in
the ways bees build their hives, in
subatomic
particle
s,
in leaf patterns and dragon fly wings and flower petals
,
and
even in the bones of human fingers.
Three creates connection and str
uctu
re and
dimension.
Pythagoras was not just a
mathematician whose adherents discovered t
he code of
the right triangle,
the Pythagorean theorem. H
e was the founder of a
brotherhood in
the 5
00s BCE
whose use of m
ath and philosophy
profoundly
influenced West
ern
Philosophy
and
mathematics
—
Pythagoras saw how numbers showed up in the
objective world and in music to provide us with keys to metaphysical
mysteries of
how the cos
mos fits together and harmonize
s
.
Pythagoras’ legacy isn’t just about the symmetry of
triangles and way the three sides
of a right triangle will forever be related
in a predictable
mathematical equa
tion. His
movement was about
the
kinship of all beings.
3
creates stability
,
it creates efficiency, it creates strength.
3 has carried sacre
d meaning
since
human beings have been creating symbols,
counting, wondering, hoping, praying
—
trying to connect with something beyond
and within ourselves.
T
hree is about connection
. It is about relationship. Three speaks to us about how
connection and
relationship
can create
well
–
being.
It’s no wonder the number 3 takes up a promin
ent space in Christianity, too, in the
doctrine of the
Trinity
.
It’s always a good reminder on Trinity Sunday to re
call
some important things about
this cornerstone concep
t of our faith:
•
God is three in one
—
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer
•
The doctrine of the Trinity is not in the Bible
—
although this doctrine
draws
from biblical language and metaphor for its
3
rd
and 4
th
century
codification
.
•
The wor
d Trinity
was coined
by Tertullian, who was a part of an early
Christian movement that believed the Spirit
was important in
addition to God
the Father, and God the son
—
that sounds like something we can get behind.
o
Unfortunately Tertullian was a part of a
religious movement who may
have been pushing
for more
room for the Spirit because of a belief the
Spirit showed up in Montanus, the founder of their
spiritual
movement.
o
It’s hard to say from the primary sources that remain, but the first
impulses of Trin
itarian theology may have been born out a kind of cult
of personality.
o
The 3 was a hierarchical connection between Creator and the lesser
Son and then the still lesser Spirit that showed up in their teacher.
•
It wasn’t until the Council of Nicaea
(325 CE
)
that the Trinitarian formula
became chur
ch doctrine and the
equality of the three
in one was clearly
articulated. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were not in subordinate succession,
but were equally and interdependently revelatory of God’s relational natur
e
and God’s multifaceted way of lovingly reaching out into creation (Gregory of
Nazianzus, Cappadocian Father)
•
God is self
–
communicating, God is relational, and God’s very nature is
connection that reaches out into the world creating, redeeming, and
susta
ining.
The baptismal formula we get from the Gospel of Matthew communicates this
Trinitarian formula to us, but the Gospel writer did not have this theological formula
at his disposal when he wrote these words.
The divine nature of Jesus isn’t a clear
t
heme in Matthew for starters.
Perhaps the most important three that shows up in this passage is not the language
formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the mandate for our faith to be
something we share. The Christian faith is not a dyad between
Jesus and me; the
