As has been noted, today is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year. Traditionally preachers talk about the doctrine of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, pointing out that it is not a mathematical formula, but rather a symbolic way of depicting God as a unity with at least three expressions or manifestations, sometimes named Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
The three-year lectionary cycle of readings from the Bible uses New Testament texts that contain trinitarian language, even though a formal doctrine of a trinitarian God didn't come into being until at least a hundred years after Jesus' death and resurrection. The verses I just read speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the classic formulation of the Trinity. When I read those verses several days ago, what struck me was not the trinitarian formula, but the sentence about the first witnesses to the risen Christ, who was standing in front of them. "When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted."
I found my mind going to the many times I have met with people considering church membership. At some point I refer to the historic practice of the Presbyterian Church (and many other denominations) of asking prospective members the question "Who is your Lord and Savior?" with the expected answer "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior." For some people the question and the answer are something of a watershed, or even an insurmountable obstacle.
When I probe, as discretely as possible, I often discover that people think they have to assent to a specific doctrine about the nature of God in order to say "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior." They assume that Christian faith requires intellectual certainty. Believe me, it doesn't, or I wouldn't be standing here. For me, faith is willingness to trust, even without fully understanding what or who is being trusted. In my life I have seen enough of God's love in the history of the Christian Church at its best and in the lives of other people at their best to make me resonate with the African-American spiritual: Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart. But I still have lots of unanswered questions.
I don't think the disciples in Matthew's narrative fully understood how Jesus could be standing in front of them a couple of days after being put to death on a cross. Some who experienced his presence on that first Easter, whatever it was like, doubted, but all who experienced his risen presence assumed a posture of reverence. They worshiped him. That, for me, is faith. It isn't acting according to or against one's intellect. It is acting according to one's will, one's capacity for decision.
They worshiped him; but some doubted. For me, doubt is not the opposite of faith. I believe doubt is compatible with faith, or even stronger, necessary to faith. Without some healthy doubt, faith becomes the kind of narrow certainty I find unattractive in parts of the Christian Church. Easy answers to tough questions. Arrogance in the face of intellectual curiosity and rigidity in the presence of mystery. No wonder people with integrity repress their thirst for God and stay away from churches. More than a hundred years ago the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, "There is more faith in doubt, I believe, than in half the creeds." Faith and doubt can be good friends, especially when we understand the nature of each.
What do I say to people who want to become members of the church but who find it difficult or impossible to make a statement of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord?
The first thing I say is "Try to pay attention to your inner life, to your soul, or spirit, however you want to describe it." We live in a culture where the mind is admired and the body worshiped, but the soul or spirit is little understood. I never know whether to laugh or weep when I read a review of a book about our inner selves, and the reviewer, claiming to be an intellectual, dismisses the book as too "touch-feely." I suspect the reviewer is uncomfortable with some of his or her feelings and hides behind a façade of rationality. We are feeling creatures, we human beings, and we ignore our emotional and spiritual health at great peril.
Another English poet, Robert Browning, addresses people who try to live apart from their feelings.
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,—
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul.
In other words, pay attention to those moments or experiences when God may be trying to get our attention. Faith often comes when God nudges us. For Browning it might have been a sunset, a flower, or a death. For others it might be a well-sung aria, a powerful painting, great sex, or finding something that was lost. Be open to those times when something or someone knocks on the door of your heart. It just might be God, and faith can come alive.
The other thing I like to say to people who are struggling with faith and doubt is what the early disciples of Jesus said to a man who wondered if any good thing could come out of Nazareth, which was Jesus' hometown. "Come and see," they said. Since you and I can't invite spiritual seekers to come and see the historical Jesus, we can invite them to come and experience him in the life of the Church. Not just any church, but a church where God's unconditional love is talked about, celebrated, and lived out, a church where people are totally welcome without regard to race, marital status, sexual orientation, or economic condition. A church like this one—most of the time!
I try never to let a Sunday go by when I'm preaching without highlighting what for me is the centerpiece of Christian Faith—the good news that God loves the world, including all of us, unconditionally, inclusively, affirmingly. You don't have to be perfect or fit into society's idea of what is good and moral to be loved by God. God's love is for everyone. And when we experience God's love, it calls us to be loving, caring people in response, working for peace with justice and doing whatever we do with integrity and genuine kindness.
Doubt and faith. Trusting even in the midst of uncertainty. The last-page essay in today's New York Times Magazine is written by a man who is a medical doctor, a pediatrician—a man of science, we assume—Chris Adrian. The essay begins with his deciding to get a tattoo after the break-up of a relationship. He writes, "It was a partly impulsive decision. I'd thought of doing it for years, but I think of doing all sorts of relatively exciting and ostensibly transgressive things and never do them, either because I am too lazy or too cowardly or because I come to my senses in time to stop myself."
He continues, "...I had always had a particular self-improvement purpose in mind for my tattoo: that it should serve as a visible reminder to be a better person, a symbol that, every time I saw it, would remind me that I had made a commitment to myself to be good." (For him being good implied being less selfish, less insular, remembering promises, and considering other people's suffering-a concept of goodness I can endorse.) He considered a picture of John Calvin for his tattoo but rejected it as too obscure for most of his friends. He settled on a dragon, which, he rationalized, would bite him whenever he forgot his intention to be a good person.
Getting the tattoo was physically painful, and afterwards he vacillated between liking it and hating it. What I appreciate about the essay is the last paragraph.
The great regret lasted no longer than the euphoria, and what settled in me was a combination of the two. But the experience made me more distrustful of making such a covenant with myself [his intention to be good]. A covenant is about security, but if I am good it is probably because I am spiritually insecure. Maybe instead of trying to quiet my unease, I should learn to live creatively with the fact that I am almost never sure about the right thing to do.
Maybe he's not a good scientist. The tagline at the end of the essay says he is now a divinity student in Boston. He already knows about the ambiguity of doing good. I hope he will come to understand the compatibility of doubt and faith, about making a commitment while there are still uncertainties.
That's how it is for me. How is it for you?
Thanks be to God.