May 30, 2010

Clay Nelson

Trinity Sunday


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In 1999 one of those films that has become part of the culture was released: The Sixth Sense. “I see dead people” became a line that immediately conjured up the story of Malcolm Crowe a child psychologist who receives an award on the same night that he is visited by a very unhappy ex-patient. After this encounter, Crowe takes on the task of curing a young boy with the same ills as the ex-patient. The boy’s mother is understandably concerned that he "sees dead people.” The story is supposedly about Crowe curing the child when in truth it was about the child opening the eyes of Crowe to his situation. Near the end of the film the boy tells Crowe that he too is dead, his ex-patient murdered him. The boy explains, "I see dead people. They don't know they're dead. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see."

Like the boy when I look around the church all too often I see dead people who don’t know they are dead. They don’t see each other and thanks to the lens of the Nicene Creed and its trinitarian theology see only what they want to see. They see the church as the sole authority on the nature of God, relieving them and us of needing to experience God for ourselves. Those who are dead in this way, cannot see that an institution the Creed helped established at some point lost its way, “The Way.”

I wonder if Jesus felt the same about Judaism. Did he see dead people that he wanted to bring back to life by challenging institutional requirements that blinded people to their situation?

It isn’t exactly a surprise to any of you who have listened to me for a while that I have a few issues with the Trinity we celebrate today. I confess that is partly due to my perverse nature that needs to challenge blind acceptance. It makes me a little bit of a stirrer. I blame my father who raised me in the Socratic method. There is always more than one truth to be argued. During my eight-year hiatus from Anglicanism when I worked for the Unitarians, I claimed to be their token Trinitarian. Now that I’m back in the trinitarian fold I sometimes choose to provoke with the Unitarian position.

But I am more than just stirring the pot today. I do strongly believe that the Nicene Creed – the formula the Church requires us to believe about God – has become an instrument of death for the church. I will outline some reasons in a moment. But first, that is not to say that Christianity is not trinitarian in its structure. In fact, I agree with Dominic Crossan who argues that not only is Christianity trinitarian, all religions are trinitarian.

Firstly, all religions have a supreme metaphor for the ultimate. It might be nature, goddess or god, nirvana or way. Secondly, all have a physical manifestation in some person, place or thing where the ultimate reality is met or experienced by at least one faithful believer to begin with and later more. Thirdly, since there are both believers and nonbelievers, there needs to be a force to explain why some accept belief and others refuse. He calls this the “trinitarian loop” that is found in all religions. [i] It is the nature of the beast.

My problem is not with Christianity’s trinitarian nature but with the codification of belief about that nature. I believe that the Nicene Creed locked the Godhead into a 4th century worldview box. It turned the mystery of the ultimate into something as prosaic as a recipe for pavlova. The result may taste and look good, but there is little substance to sustain us.

While the whole history of how the Creed became the Creed is intriguing, for our purposes this morning the upshot is this: Early followers of Jesus quickly began trying to understand him and his relationship to their ultimate reality, the Jewish god. It was a lively, vigorous and sometimes violent debate in the philosophical language and worldview of the time. Different schools of thought developed in different parts of the Empire. But all the questions came down to one: How is Jesus like God?

When Constantine decided Christianity was his answer for gluing back together a crumbling empire, he was surprised and disappointed to find that Christianity was just as fractured. He used his power to try to unify it for his political purposes. He called the Council of Nicea to do so. While an oversimplification, the outcome was the Creed. It became an instrument for defining who was in and who was out. Who could be empowered and who could be oppressed. Who is the “Other” to be legitimately feared, scapegoated and destroyed. It made Jesus a God-man like the emperor, when the historical Jesus, a Jew who would have found that blasphemous, saw himself as a counter-weight to oppressive human power. The Creed and how it was used obliterated his whole message that confronted the purity laws of his day. The Creed defined “The Other,” Jesus saw no “Other.” We are all one with his Abba, his metaphor for the ultimate reality. At this point the church lost its way, The Way.

It is a sad commentary that a definition of God formed at a time when people were certain the earth was at the center of the universe and all the stars and planets revolved around us in perfect circles, is still held as our ultimate definition and understanding of divine reality. We wouldn’t go to a doctor and demand he use leeches to cure us of cancer? But it is perfectly acceptable to use fourth century language and metaphors to define who can be a priest, who can be baptized, who can receive communion; what it means to be a Christian. It is like Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin and the Hubble telescope never happened. Saddest of all, it is like Jesus the man never existed. The church’s position on the Nicene Creed is as inexplicable to me as is the mystery of ultimate reality, unless one understands that just as in Constantine’s day it is still about earthly power and control. The result is a dying, if not already dead church blind to its situation.

But at our best, Christians are a resurrection people who are more resilient than our institutions. We can confront our denial and live. The antidote to the Creed for this generation is to stop debating how Jesus is like God. Better to ask how is God like Jesus? That leads to understanding that the more we live like Jesus the more we can recognize God in us. We will rediscover the truth Jesus exemplified, that all is one with the ultimate reality. We will no longer be dead but alive because we experience it – not because we believe it. Experiencing it will lead to living our lives in the way that reflects it. Then the test of our faith will not be reciting an ancient document asserting right belief, but by how compassionate, loving and peaceful are our lives.

No longer dead, we may also discover that we have more in common with other religions than the trinitarian loop. We may discover that all religions at their best seek to transform the world to reflect the trinity of compassion, love and peace.

[i] Crossan, John Dominic, Who Killed Jesus? (1995: p 215)