WHY THREE PERSONS?

     Back in the early 1970s a singer-songwriter by the name of Don McLean described a musical apocalypse sub-titled The Day the Music Died. And he wove into that end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it story an account of the Holy Trinity: “And the Three that I admired most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast the day the music died…”

     “They were singing: Bye, bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. And them good ol’ boys drinking whiskey and rye, singing ‘This’ll be the day that I die. This’ll be the day that I die.’”

     “The Three that I admire most” may seem a little too cute to refer to the Holy Trinity but today is the day in the Christian calendar that we remind our selves of the mystery that God is three persons in one divinity. This day was put here, some say, to keep people from getting too carried away with the event of Pentecost---a kind of spiritual break to apply. Stop! Pause! Ponder…before you start running off in all directions speaking in unknown languages and paying no attention to religious authority.

     I propose that we do just the opposite. I propose that we take this occasion to reflect on the nature of God in such a way that the work of the Holy Spirit is recognized and amplified and we are energized to respond in faith.

     Why three persons? First, the texts. When you read in the Bible a reference to “The Lord,” it is generally a translation of the Hebrew word Yahweh. When you read in the Bible a reference simply to “God,” it is generally a translation of the Hebrew word El. When you read in the Bible a reference to spirit, wind, or breath, it is from the Hebrew Ruah or the Greek Pneuma, and can be either human or divine spirit, wind, or breath.

     And then we get all the references to Jesus as Son of God, and Jesus referring to himself as the Son of Man, that apocalyptic figure expected at the end of time. And Jesus referring to God as Father. And Jesus breathing on the disciples as they received the Holy Spirit. And Jesus saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And Paul referring to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus. It’s a mixed bag.

     There is only one place in the Bible that the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” occurs. We heard it today in our Gospel reading from the last chapter of Matthew.

     Given all this, it took the church 300 years of reflecting on its spiritual experience to begin to triangulate the notion of Trinity. Along the way, some people tested out some ideas that didn’t fly. Some argued that there were three Gods. Others argued that there was just one God and all this Trinity talk was just due to our limited human perception. Others responded, if God is simply One, to whom was the divine Jesus praying when he walked the earth?

     And at the end of that 300 years, the church did an amazing thing. It decided that the experience of the People of God encountering the Divine Creator and Lawgiver was real spiritual experience, not to be ignored or relegated to some secondary importance. And the church decided that the experience of the People of God encountering the fully human and fully divine Christ was real spiritual experience, not to be ignored or relegated to some secondary importance. And the church decided that the experience of the People of God encountering the Holy Spirit was real spiritual experience, not to be ignored or relegated to some secondary importance.

     So how do you honor each encounter with the divine and still hold to the Oneness of God?

     They began to use the metaphor of persona. It was a notion from the Greek and Roman tradition of dramatic productions. Plays were very powerful in the ancient world. Aristotle in the Poetics argued that dramatic poetry was far superior to the writings of history in telling the truth. Drama tells us what is; history only tells us what was.

     When some conspirators plotted to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, they contracted with Shakespeare to re-produce his Richard II, which explored the limitations to the divine right of the monarchy, and thus to set the mood and the discussion in London just before they were to strike. When the plot unraveled, Shakespeare had a lot of explaining to do, because the power of drama is very strong.

     When you attend a play or see a film, if it engages you, you half forget that you are looking at a stage or a screen. You see a big street in Manhattan or a mountain range or an ocean as if it’s right there in front of you. It’s called the “suspension of disbelief.” For the next two hours, you’re willing for what you see to be real. Then the story moves you, to laughter or to tears. It changes you. If you can’t do that (can’t suspend disbelief) or won’t, then you see the actor underneath the makeup, and compare her performance to previous ones, and it comes off a little flat.

     In ancient drama actors wore masks, and when you see the signs of faces with mouths turned up (comedy) and mouths turned down (tragedy) it references that ancient tradition. The characters represented by the actors with their masks were called persona.

     Because the face was covered, you could even have actors playing different characters: they simply wore different masks at different times. They played different roles. So that it was not the actor that moved the story of the drama to its conclusion, it was the persona.

     Just imagine for a moment that you decided to disrupt the drama by jumping on the stage and pulling off the mask of one of our very versatile actors. The audience would not see the other persona; they would just see the actor. And the dramatic effect would be ruined, and the story would not reach the conclusion it was designed to have.

     So persona is not something that can be simply discarded to get to what is real underneath. Persona is the only way to get to the truth that is being presented.

     The early church discerned that God shows to us the divine nature through the dramatic encounter with three personae, played by the same actor, and there is no getting around the way God has decided to do it. It is not as if we can stand back and say: I see the three masks but I am so smart that I know that is really George Burns or Jim Cary playing this or that part. If we do that, the story passes us by. It does not move us. It does not change us. It may tell us what was, but it can never tell us what is.

     Some of you are old enough to remember the TV show Dragnet and Sergeant Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” Some of you have read the obituary of a friend, and experienced the additional sadness that a few paragraphs could not begin to describe the richness of the person you knew. Some of you have brought a multitude of skills to the work place, but the person in charge was only interested in your lesser abilities.

     For that reason we do not reduce our sense of wonder at the abundance of the divine into some flat, simple description and then congratulate ourselves that we have diagramed the nature of God.

     The notion of Trinity allows us to live in the tension of God’s Justice and God’s compassion, of God’s eternal edicts and God’s changes, of God’s wrath and God’s love. And because we live in that tension, we are free to act, are called to act in mercy and in faith.

     You may remember back a few years a book by Hillary Clinton entitled It Takes a Village (To Raise a Child). She talked about the various roles that members of a community take in order to nurture young people and help them mature. It takes a Trinity to raise a creation.

     So when we hear a person give a religious justification for vengeance, they have lost track of the vital tension of the Trinity. When we find a person astonished that a gentle Jesus would hold powerful people accountable for the harm they caused, they have lost track of the vital tension of the Trinity. It takes a Trinity to raise a creation.

     So we read and wonder and meditate and ponder, and God remains a mystery in our lives, and we don’t know the end of the drama. But we know this: that at the end of the story, the “three that we admire most” will not have “caught the last train for the coast.” They’ll be with us.