Today is Trinity Sunday. One of my Presbyterian ministerial colleagues wrote last week: “Yes, God is beyond the stars, enthroned in heaven. Yes, Jesus lived inhuman flesh on this earth. Yes, the Holy Spirit is Jesus still present with us and in us. Our beautiful Trinitarian God is in all three places — far above, beside and within us individually and communally.”

I, like many of us, grew up with this kind of, what I consider, trite and simplistic view. The writers of the Hebrew Bible, for example, talk about ‘God far above, beside and within.’ There is nothing uniquely Christian about that formulation.

What is uniquely Christian is that Jesus of Nazareth who, in Roman eyes, died the ugly death of a rebellious slave, is a window, the window, into the essence of the Christian God. A low-class loser, a criminal, is the face through which we look into God.

Bu tI’m not really interested in arguing about the Trinity. God, of whatever formulation, has a habit of slipping the moorings of our language and concepts, especially when the doctrine police want precision. God goes to sea, as Margaret Mahy would say, for “the weave and the wave of it, the fume and the foam of it,” and leaves exactitude to the ecclesial bureaucrats.

What I’m interested in is whether your belief in God, your images of God, support and inspire you to make justice, make love, and do the ‘hard yards’ (to coin an Americanism) of building a common good that is great news for the little, the least, the ‘nuisances and nobodies’, those who struggle, who don’t have big bank accounts or other resources, and those who run afoul of the law and accepted conventions. A common good where equality, equity, kindness, service, and generosity are affirmed and practiced.

Behaviour is more important than belief. Belief is only of value to the extent it gives rise to justice-love-goodness. And lots of different beliefs, within and outside of Christianity, many far different from my own, can give rise to justice-love-goodness. No one, and no one church, has a monopoly on the making of such.

My Presbyterian colleague, who is not overly conservative, goes on to summarize what’s called the social doctrine of the Trinity (popularized in the 90s). She writes, “The three persons of the Trinity exist in love for each other and invite us into that dance of care, support, admiration, and mutual submission.”

Again I personally don’t have much time for this theology. It pictures God as some sort of inward-looking mutual admiration and support group, into which we are invited. No thanks. Again this formulation might work well for my colleague, and luminaries like Moltmann, Volf, Boff, Zizioulas, and others who espouse this doctrine. It might inspire them to acts of justice-love and the building of a common good. As I said, I think one should judge a theology by the actions of its adherents.

Images of God are important though. I prefer ones that don’t pretend they are dogmatically biblical or orthodox (right), or end up in creeds, or the Westminster Confession. I like images of God that are explicitly and unapologetically poetic, imaginary, challenging, even inflammatory.

Consider Hildegard of Bingen’s reflection: “Who is the Trinity?” she writes, “You are music. You are life. You are alive in everything, and yet you are unknown to us… God says: I am the supreme fire; not deadly, but rather, enkindle every spark of life.”

By the way, you won’t find a scripture reference to God saying ‘I am the supreme fire’ or ‘enkindle every spark of life.’ Nor, for that matter, will you find the word Trinity, or that threesome ‘exist(ing) in love for each other’, in the Bible.

Eckhart once said, “God’s exit is her entrance.” In other words, sometimes to grow in faith we need to change our formulations of God, our images. We need to leave one version of God behind and welcome another.

But, like with my Presbyterian colleague’s summary, the question of behaviour is also relevant to Hildegard’s belief in God as music, life, and enkindler of sparks. Does such a belief lead to the making of justice-love and the building of the common good? And, even a brief reading of Hildegard biography would answer that question in the affirmative.

This priority I am expressing for behaviour as the test or plumb line for belief is not modern or a product of the progressive movement. The Hebrew prophets, like Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah, were provocatively clear. Like, for example, Isaiah 58:1-10 or Micah 6:1-8.

Our spiritual practices – our prayers, our singing, our giving (sacrifices) – are not just meaningless if acts of kindness, goodness, and justice are not happening, they are offensive. In most churches, as Robin Meyers writes, “justice work is optional (‘if you are into that sort of thing’). But for the prophets, justice is what makes you faithful, and the rest of it is not only optional but, in the absence of justice, offensive.”

Jesus followed in this prophetic direction, as did the writer of the Epistle of James. It is not right belief that matters, but right actions.

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Earlier I mentioned the uniqueness of what came to be Christianity was seen firstly in Jesus’ crucifixion by the Romans (which is historically undisputed). And then, secondly, the remarkable and unbelievable elevation of this crucified criminal to a status of divine, a son of God. This, in short, is called the scandal of the cross.

To understand the radical nature of what this meant in the ancient world I dived into Tom Holland’s weighty tome called Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. Tom is a historian specializing in the ancient classical world. His chapter ‘Mission’ is largely about the writings and influence of St Paul. And note Tom is following the current majority view that the seven authentic Pauline Epistles (Galatians, 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians, Philippians, Romans, I Thessalonians, and Philemon) give us the best insight into the thinking and actions of the early Jesus movements.

So ‘Mission’ begins with telling us who – in Roman terms – a son of God is. Namely an emperor. Caesar Augustus was the first divi filius, a title playing on the idea that he was ‘descended’ from Julius Caesar (who was deified after his death). An emperor was one who showed his merit via his ‘wealth, command, and swagger.’ A son of God embodied earthly greatness. A divi filius, in our modern world, would be a hybrid of a billionaire, a media celebrity, and the commander of the greatest army. It would also go without saying that he was male, a Roman, and of the upper or ruling class.

So to declare, as the early followers of Jesus did, that a man who died a death reserved for the lowest class (a man who St Paul said identified as a slave), who was tried, convicted, and punished for the crime of sedition, was the son of God was utter folly. The weak, the serving class, foreigners (like Jews), were not sons of God. This Galilean rebel had no wealth, no command, and no swagger. He was a nobody. It was a nonsense. It was also dangerous for his followers.

Holland lays out the implications of this criminal-to-son-of-God Pauline theology. Jesus by taking on the nature of a slave had plumbed the depths to which only the lowest, the poorest, the most persecuted and abused were confined. By ‘taking on this nature of a slave’ in an act of radical divine solidarity, and then being ‘raised up’ as a son of God, a far-reaching and distinctive egalitarianism was born.

For the early Christian communities Jesus was not the only ‘son of God.’ This divine status was open to anyone regardless of lineage, class, gender, and race. Anyone who followed Jesus was a member of God’s holy people, God’s family. They were adopted by God. Even the poorest, the pitiless, the slaves and servile. Even gentiles. Even women.

A word about ‘adopted by God.’ This is what emperors did when they wanted another relative or worthy to succeed them after death. Augustus was the adopted son of Julius. As was Tiberius (adopted by Augustus), Nero (adopted by Claudius),Hadrian (adopted by Trajan), and Marcus Aurelius (adopted by Antoninus Pius). They were adopted sons of God. Note, no daughters. Just sons. And no lower-class riff-raff either.

So for anyone attracted to the Jesus communities, the only thing that now was a prerequisite to be adopted as a son or daughter of God was, in St Paul’s words, “faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). So this God-in-Jesus understanding was of a deity that recognized no borders and no divisions. No privilege. In St Paul’s words, “God does not show favouritism” (Romans 2:11). But society, then and now, is based on favouritism!!

What this theology meant in practice is explained in part by one of the great leaders of the Church in the 2^nd century, Tertullian. Long before creeds came to be he writes about a follower being one who participated in a radical set of behaviours (rather than beliefs). Such as tending the sick for no charge. Such as supporting the desperately poor to give up begging. Such as building a common fund to support orphans, prisoners, and those in need. Such as buying coffins and digging graves to bury criminals. Such as not fleeing the towns when a plague struck but staying to care for the sick and dying. By their actions followers declared that their God loved the whole human race (unlike the gods Jupiter and Diana, Isis and Mithras who were understood to act like most human beings out of self-interest).

Holland in his chapter on Paul talks about other profound and influential theology that shaping Western ideas, like the sanctity of the human body, individual freedom, and primacy of love over law.  

Today though I want to focus on the offense of considering Jesus divine, of elevating him to be a ‘son of God,’ leading to enthroning him as the Church did in the4th century as part of the Holy Trinity. We need to hear such elevation as explicitly criticising all past and present imperial ‘sons of God,’ and the violence, patriarchy, and privilege that undergirded the Roman empire, and continues to undergird much of our world today.

Unlike those sons of God, Jesus exhibited no violence, no might, no wealth, no command, and no swagger. He did not favour his biological family. He did not sire or adopt an heir. He did not build up a system of patronage. And the crucifixion and resurrection stories when written down continued this egalitarian radicalism: hope from despair, reconciliation from betrayal, healing from trauma, empowerment from fear; whoever you were, whatever your circumstance, whether you were considered of worth or not.

Christianity was radically counter-cultural.

Trinity Sunday then, at its best, is simply a reminder of this Jesus egalitarian vision, how it shapes (or should shape) our understanding of God, and how it enjoins us to live and behave in such a way to bring it about.

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