Some of you have been at the Pride Festival all or most of the day. And many of us will be staffing the booth tomorrow and marching in the Parade. Though a lot of people pass by our booth without a glance, many stop to talk. Some are just curious but others have questions. Some have been hurt by the church they grew up in, while others are alienated from church and religion generally.
We play a vital role of welcome and solidarity, affirming everyone we meet as a beloved family member in the larger community of God. It doesn’t matter who they are, how they’re dressed, what their background is. We smile, hand out candy and brochures, invite them to sign the email list, and just try to let them know there are Catholics who stand with them in the fight for recognition and justice. Every year we do this on Father’s Day weekend. This year it is also Trinity Sunday, a feast most Christians meet with a hefty yawn!
Back in the early 4th century the Church was trying to combat the Arian heresy—the belief that Christ isn’t God. Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea in 325 to end the controversy. It condemned Arius as a heretic and formulated the Nicene Creed which states that Christ is “equal to or one in being with the Father.” But the controversy didn’t die. It continued into the 7th century. And though we don’t hear about Arianism anymore there are still individuals and groups who don’t believe Jesus is God, and many, like Unitarians, who don’t believe in the Trinity.
Actually, the whole idea of the Trinity leaves most Christians cold. We have some idea how to relate to a parent-God, and an even better idea how to relate to the man, Jesus, and the figure of Christ. Even the Holy Spirit we can understand as another word for “Mystery,” if nothing else. But Trinity? Most Christians accept the IDEA of Trinity on some level but it doesn’t matter whether the three Persons are really “persons”. And words like “consubstantial” are positively alienating!
What, then, would lead a renowned feminist theologian like Elizabeth Johnson to sing praises to the doctrine of the Trinity? Or inspire a young feminist theologian like Catherine LaCugna to write a whole book about it? Here is LaCugna’s first sentence in that book, God for Us: “The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine with radical consequences for Christian life.”
PRACTICAL? RADICAL consequences, we might ask? How can anything as obscure as the Trinity have an effect on OUR lives? Well, what the concept of Trinity says is that God’s very nature is COMMUNITY. God isn’t a singular being in some isolated command post unrelated to the world of creation. At God’s very core God is relational. God is a living, cosmic RELATIONSHIP! “The practical importance of this notion,” Johnson says, “lies in the way it exposes the perversion of patriarchy, racism (and I add sexism) and other sinful patterns….[The church] is to be a living symbol of divine communion turned toward the world in inclusive and compassionate love…Only such a church corresponds to the triune God it purports to serve.”
This is why we’re at Pride—we are living the image of the Triune God embracing God’s People…embracing the world. It’s the perfect thing for us to do on Trinity Sunday, both here—today—celebrating Eucharist and out there, tomorrow, sitting at the booth and walking in the parade.
The Nicene Creed solidified our faith in the divinity of Christ, and that was important but, says LaCugna, it also deprived ordinary Catholics of any understanding that they share God’s life, which is “exactly what Catholicism is supposed to be all about.” The purpose of religion is to draw us into a conscious communion of love—which is the life of God. “Far too often Christianity has been presented as obedience to divine law rather than communion in divine life,” she tells us. “The average Catholic has no sense of being in communion with God as Trinity.”
And Meghan Clark, professor of theology and religious studies at St. Johns University, puts it this way: “Catholics do not view themselves as individuals but members of a community, just as we view God as a Trinitarian being.” Since we believe in a Triune God, it follows that we are not only created in the image of God, but that we are created in the image of Trinity.”
Take that in for a moment. We are not just individuals, each created in God’s image and deserving the respect that image imparts. We are ONE PEOPLE and we image God most truthfully when we live in loving harmony with everyone. The Trinity is the iconic image of the Oneness of Humanity, the Oneness of all created reality. When we look at it this way, there can be no quibbling about who is in and who is out. All are in!
So, far from being an abstract, throwaway concept, the doctrine of the Trinity is, perhaps, the most dynamic theological concept of the modern age! In a world of instantaneous communication with a growing global awareness, a Communitarian God doesn’t allow for factions, exclusion or inequality. This is a way of seeing God that captures the very best in our understanding of what “church” is supposed to be. We are made in the image of Trinity. We are made in the image of a dynamically relational and loving Triune God.
And this is why we take the time and make the enormous effort to host a booth at Pride on Father’s Day weekend every year. It’s not just about walking in the Parade. It’s about being there at the booth for two days, opening our arms and saying, by our mere presence, to everyone walking by “you are us and we are you. God is dancing and weaving us all into One People right here and now. We’re here to see it, feel it, and know it more deeply ourselves. By our being here, we hope you can see it too.”
Happy Father’s Day. And Happy Pride.
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