Trinity Sunday – Year C
Sermon Notes from the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People
RCL Readings – Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
ACNA Readings – Isaiah 6:1-7; Psalm 29; Revelation 4:1-11; John 16:5-15
Introduction. The Feast of the Holy Trinity, also called Trinity Sunday, is celebrated in the Western Church on the Sunday after Pentecost. Local observances of a feast honoring the Trinity began as early as the 9th century, and by the 10th century, the Sunday after Pentecost was observed as Trinity Sunday in some regions.[1] Thomas Becket, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on Trinity Sunday in 1162, is credited with promoting the observance of this feast throughout England. In 1334, Pope John XXII formally established Trinity Sunday as a feast of the universal Church.
Common Theme. The readings today not only speak of the Trinity, but focus on the unity of the Trinity and how God extends His love and grace to work with and through those He calls.
Hebraic Context. John 14-17 highlights something hinted at throughout the Scriptures: God doesn’t hoard His power, conceal His goodness, or conserve His love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit constantly share authority and power[2] and have loved one another for eternity.[3]
God is the Creator, but His collaborative nature is made clear through His creation. As creator, God made all things through the Word.[4] Without Jesus, “nothing was made that has been made.” Where the Spirit is sent, life is created.[5] This collaboration is how God has always worked, and it is how He continues to work—even in relation to humanity.
Genesis 1 opens with the creation of the world. The final thing God creates is man. But there is something different about man—God made him in His own image: “male and female He created them”. Then God gave mankind dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, livestock, and all creatures on the earth.
Even after we rebelled against God, the Scriptures continue to speak of Him giving us dominion over the earth. God continues to give individuals authority. And He continues to work through those He sends out into the world. Starting in the history of Adam and Noah the Jewish people continue to remember this astonishing allocation of authority given to man by God in their poetry—from Psalm 8:3-8, “You have…crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands,” to Sirach 17:1-4, The Lord who created humans out of the earth “granted them authority over everything on the earth,” and the Book of Wisdom 9:2, The Lord of mercy “by Your wisdom have formed humankind to have dominion over the creatures you have made and rule the world in holiness and righteousness.” This is not a detached sovereignty where we do whatever we wish—it is a responsibility rooted in love.
The end of Jesus’ prayer reflects on this theme, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.” Authority is not given to us that we might boast about how special we are. Counter to all that we so often believe, it is given so that we might live in unity. God loves us. If we listen to the words of Jesus, He “will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31. For Trinity Sunday, the inclusion of Proverbs 8 is a bold choice. Throughout history, this passage has been used to suggest the existence of a second being in Heaven besides God.[6] While this may sound like an argument for the Trinity, such interpretations have often been non-Orthodox, both in Jewish and Christian teachings. We know from Scripture and archaeology that the Israelites often worshipped idols. Arad, a city in southern Israel, had two altars in its ancient temple—one for God and one for his consort, Asherah.
Solomon often personifies wisdom as a noble woman. As such, Proverbs 8:1-11 starts by speaking of wisdom in the feminine. Proverbs 8:12-29 continues as if there is no break in the teaching, although it switches from the feminine to the first common singular, “I” or “me”. It isn’t until Proverbs 8:30 that suddenly the being, or concept, is described in the masculine, “I was beside him, like a master workman…” Even during the 2nd Temple period, when Greek and Roman historians note the oddity and even "atheistic" Jewish belief that there is only one God and he cannot be depicted in images, there were still a few Jews who argued that there is a god-mother in heaven and seemed to have used Proverbs 8 as a proof-text.
In the beginning of the 2nd century BC, Yeshua ben Sira wrote a counter-argument in Ecclesiasticus 24 regarding Proverbs 8 referencing a divine being. Rather than identifying wisdom in Proverbs 8 as a god-mother or a divine being, ben Sira argues that wisdom is Torah.[7] This fits with the theology that eventually developed in Judaism as Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 3.3-5 would eventually state, “Seven things were created before the world was created” the first of which is the Torah. It then cites Proverbs 8:22 as its prooftext. III Baruch 3 also echoes Ecclesiasticus, identifying Wisdom with the Torah, although he takes it a step further than ben Sira. Instead of wisdom simply “rejoicing in his inhabited world”[8], wisdom “appeared on earth and lived with humankind.”[9]
However, before III Baruch was written, another text wrote about someone who was in heaven, helped create the world, was equal to God, but descended to live among us: the Gospel of John. While the message of John 1 is radical, it is steeped in an incredibly deep understanding of Hebraic thought on Scripture. There was already a thought of the Messiah being eternal[10] and possibly even divine. Another doctrine that developed was the idea of the Memra (Logos in Greek) as a divine being.[11] While Logos as an expanded idea of “word” has its origins in Heraclitus’ philosophy, the Greek idea is very different from what is found in even Hellenistic Judaism, such as Philo. Often, in Greek gnostic philosophy, the flesh is evil. But in Hebraic thought God created all things good.
While it isn’t fully clear whether John 1 uses Proverbs 8 as part of its argument, nor if Proverbs 8 clearly speaks of wisdom as a simple personification, the law, or even the Messiah, Arius of Alexandria used Proverbs 8:22 to argue that Jesus is a created being. According to Arius, God is without beginning, but the Son has a beginning—he is neither eternal or co-eternal. He made this statement under the assumption that Proverbs 8:22-36 speaks about Jesus and also through a reading of the Septuagint text which clearly states that “The LORD created me at the beginning of His ways.” This argument became the catalyst that provoked the First Council of Nicaea. In this regard, Proverbs 8 became extremely important to the question of the Trinity. Arius’ argument was refuted and the Nicene Creed was developed and affirmed over the next 56 years.
Psalm 8. Though David was king over Israel, Psalm 8 shows that David remained humble—GOD is his Lord. David was a mighty lord, a warrior poet. God can, and does, proclaim His power and majesty through the most helpless of humans. David uses two words for child, one is תינוק (tinok) which comes from the verb לינוק (linok, to suckle). The second word for infant, עוֹלָל (olel, little ones) is most commonly used for children that are harmed by those who are stronger than they are. It is from the one that is completely dependent on the goodness of another that defeats God’s foes. This is amazing, given that His power and majesty are also displayed in the grandeur of the universe.
David understands that he, and all the sons of Adam, seem insignificant compared to all that God created. Yet he is not so proud as to ignore what God has declared: God remembers us and visits us. This isn’t simply God dwelling among His people, as important as that is. To visit (פקד, pakad) became synonymous with God healing the sick and visiting those in prison—thus the common translation “care for”.
This first appears in Genesis 21:1, where God visits Sarah and removes her shame by giving her a son. It continues through Scripture and is, perhaps, most clearly seen in Matthew 25:35-39, 43 where we are called to imitate what God has done and will be judged on our actions. This became known as the gemilut chasidim, (גְּמִילוּת חֲסָדִים) the acts of loving-kindness.
But God has done even more. Although He had no need, He raised humanity up and crowned us with glory and honour. This isn’t just about David as a king, it comes from Genesis 1:26. Even as a shepherd, David was crowned with the glory and honor God gave to humanity—dominion not only over sheep, but also over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea—just like all made in the image of God, both male and female.
The author of Hebrews took Psalm 8:5-8 and used a common Hebraic writing style (גזירה שוה, gezerah shavah, which links texts sharing key words of phrases to deepen their meaning) to declare that Jesus has been given all authority. Jesus identified Himself as the Son of Man from Daniel 7, fulfilling a long-standing messianic hope that is woven throughout the Gospels. This son of man, in Daniel 7:13-14, would be given an everlasting dominion and kingdom over all people, nations, and languages. This son of man comes on the clouds of heaven but the author of Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus’ suffering led to His authority, and so draws from Psalm 8 to speak of Jesus’ descent to earth to live as a man while the angels—who the author just argued to be much less than Jesus—are in heaven.
David completes his psalm as he began it. Having both declared that we should be humble and also declaring that we have dominion, glory, and honour, David turns straight back to his Lord, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all the earth!”
Romans 5:1-5. Our faith in God is always justifiable. We might see obstacles, like Abraham who was promised to be a father of many nations even as his body “was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old)”, but God is both faithful and capable of doing all that He promises. Jesus had complete faith that after dying for our trespasses, God would raise Him from the dead.
One of the truths that we can have faith in is that we can have peace with God. In most traditional liturgies, even within churches that don’t have a written liturgy, confession is an important part of the service—particularly leading up to the Eucharist.
But the Eucharist—the thanksgiving—would hardly be complete if it only recalled Jesus’ death, resurrection, and return. After confession we have the assurance of forgiveness—“we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We rejoice that we are no longer dead in our own trespasses but now live by—and in—the grace of God.
Like Abraham and the many saints who came before us, some of whom are martyrs, we will suffer. But our faith need not waver, for we stand in the grace of God. Paul starts by talking of our hope in the glory of God, expressed through His faithfulness towards and through Jesus our Lord. He continues with a rhetorical sequence[12] to conclude that our hope in God is justified by the love of God “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” As we turn to God, in suffering and in hope, we can do so through the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
John 16:12-15.[13] While God is the creator of the world, we also find that another partook in creation according to Isaiah 48:12-16 and Proverbs 8. Both John and Revelation state that this was Jesus. But Psalm 104:30 reminds us that the Spirit of God also participates in creation. We know that the Helper, or Advocate,[14] is the Holy Spirit in John 14:26, but Jesus is also our Helper, or Advocate, according to I John 2:1.
Jesus continuously speaks of the interaction and partnership between the Father, Son (Himself), and the Holy Spirit in John 14-17. Here, in John 16:8-11, the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement.” However, we already know that righteousness and judgment—or justice—are the work of GOD.[15] It is also the work of the Messiah. The work of the Holy Spirit described here is nothing new. Jesus upheld and continues to uphold the throne of David “with justice and with righteousness.”[16]
Unbelievably, God comes to us—not only in Jesus, as we see in John 1, but also through the Holy Spirit, as shown in John 14-17. We are sinful and afraid while God is full of truth, righteousness, and justice. But the one who convicts of sin is also the one who comforts. The one who judges is also our advocate.
The Holy Spirit will guide us into truth—a concept that is also frequently paired with justice and righteousness[17]—and we should desire justice and righteousness. Isaiah 1:27 states that “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.” The Greek terms, δικαιοσύνης (dikaiosynes, righteousness) and κρίσεως (kriseos, judgment), are not used exclusively in the Septuagint to translate צְדָקָה (tzadeka, righteousness) and מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, justice), as the Hebrew has a rich depth of meaning and other Greek words are useful in understanding the breadth of the Hebraic meanings,[18] but they are commonly used, such as in Genesis 18:19 and Isaiah 1:27.
John’s description of the Holy Spirit’s work must be understood in light of the long-standing association of justice and righteousness throughout Scripture. God desires that we, too, practice both righteousness and justice even as He does.[19] Throughout Scripture this is done in community, even as God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—practices them. In fact, through the work of Jesus, the church can “become the righteousness of God” as His ambassadors. The disciples were understandably full of sorrow (and some fear)[20] when Jesus told them He would leave them, but the Holy Spirit isn’t a consolation prize—God is God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[21]
Hebraic Perspective. We often understand God’s glory to be shown through light. When the glory of God is present, so is light, or fire—often accompanied by a cloud. Exodus 24:16-17 speaks of the glory of GOD on Mount Sinai: “the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a devouring fire”. In Exodus 33:18, Moses asked to see the glory of God. When he descended, Moses’ face shone because he had been talking with God. Isaiah 60:1-3 parallels light with the glory of the LORD. Revelation 22 declares that in the New Jerusalem, there will be no need of light from the son or moon, for “the Lord God will be their light.”
But the glory of God also reveals His presence with His people and goodness towards them. Whether we see God’s creation or His salvation, it displays His glory. Psalm 96:3 speaks of the glory of God even as it speaks of His salvific acts, His marvelous works, and that He is the creator. When Moses asked to see the glory of God, God replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”[22] God then passed His glory before Moses, declaring “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” Each time Exodus 33-34 speaks of God’s glory being present, God’s goodness is also present.
Isaiah 58:8 places the glory of God in the midst of a sequence of obedience as the people begin to emulate God: freeing the oppressed, sharing bread with the hungry, providing shelter to the homeless, and clothing the naked. God’s glory will guard those who follow in His goodness and will be in the midst of the people who cry out to Him—if they turn from their wickedness.
God’s glory—the fire and cloud that descended on Mount Sinai as He gave His guidance and instructions; His presence in the cloud by day and fire by night that led the people through the wilderness and dwelled in the tabernacle; the fire that consecrated the tabernacle and temple in Leviticus 9:23-24 and II Chronicles 7:1; the presence of God that will light the new Jerusalem—is not for everyone to witness. If the people do not turn from their wickedness and walk in the goodness of God then the glory of God is removed from them. II Corinthians 3:18-4:6 makes this clear. As we are transformed “from glory to glory,” we can behold the glory of the Lord. Paul, like David before him, declares that God crowns us with some measure of glory. How are we transformed? By leaving behind the disgraceful ways we once walked and entering the servant ministry according to the mercy of God.
ACNA Readings
Isaiah 6:1-7. Isaiah was an incredibly important prophet in Judah as his ministry stretched across the reign of four kings of Judah before, tradition states, he was murdered in the reign of a fifth king. Isaiah begins with 5 chapters of God’s message of condemnation against Judah and Jerusalem before finally showing Isaiah’s calling. This prophetic condemnation, even with Isaiah serving under good kings, such as Uzziah[23] and Hezekiah, doesn’t stand alone—it is accompanied by messianic expectation and great promises of comfort and salvation.
Isaiah had a vision experience in which he saw into the throne room of heaven and encountered the Lord. As we know from other passages of Scripture, no man has seen God. Tractate Yevamot 49.6-8, from the Babylonian Talmud, includes a tradition that is reinforced in the book of Hebrews. King Manasseh, a king renowned for his evil ways, confronted Isaiah by first quoting from Exodus 33:20, “Man shall not see Me and live” and then stating that Isaiah had declared that he “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne.” How could these two statements coexist? And so King Manasseh had Isaiah executed by sawing him in two.[24]
But what Isaiah actually describes is peripheral around the throne. Isaiah is able to describe the heavenly beings around God in some detail but not the Lord on the throne—on this he can only speak of the very hem of His robe. Before Isaiah is commissioned, John 12:41 states that he saw the glory of God. God revealed Himself in His majesty, where even the angelic hosts could only declare the holiness and glory of God throughout the whole earth.
Scholars have debated the tri-fold use of the term “holy, holy, holy” with some of the early church fathers declaring that the angels declared that each member of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was holy. Ambrose, in On the Holy Spirit 3.16.110, said,
“So everything which we esteem holy proclaims that Sole Holiness. Cherubim and Seraphim with unwearied voices praise Him and say: Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of Sabaoth. They say it, not once, lest you should believe that there is but one; not twice, lest you should exclude the Spirit; they say not holies [in the plural], lest you should imagine that there is plurality, but they repeat thrice and say the same word, that even in a hymn you may understand the distinction of Persons in the Trinity, and the oneness of the Godhead and while they say this they proclaim God.”
Other scholars point towards the Hebraic tendency to use a word twice to create emphasis, for instance, when God calls out to His servants, “Abraham, Abraham”, “Moses, Moses”, and “Samuel, Samuel”. Doubling the word can also become expansive, “שנה, שנה” (every year) or “דר, דר” (each generation). To use a word thrice is the ultimate emphasis and expansion. The Aramaic translation expands precisely so on Isaiah 6:3 by stating that “God is holy in the highest heavens, holy upon the earth, and holy forever—world without end.” Given the greatness of God, surely it is reasonable to believe both are true.
Isaiah responds to his vision in a way that too many of us don’t. Knowing God’s majesty and glory, he declared his own uncleanness. But Isaiah isn’t only humbled in seeing the glory and majesty of God. God restores Isaiah. Isaiah sees his position of lowliness and sinfulness and proclaims his own ruin yet the Lord has mercy. This is when God called for Isaiah to become His messenger to proclaim a hard message to a difficult people.
And the message is difficult but there is hope. God is called the “LORD of hosts” and Isaiah speaks of the seraphim he saw around the throne of God, just a few of the myriad of hosts that do all that God bids them to do. But God sent Isaiah, a man of unclean lips whose guilt was taken away and whose sin was atoned for, to proclaim a message of warning. While so many do not listen to God, there are always those who do. Jesus warned those he taught, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” There are always some who will hear and God atones for sin.
Psalm 29.[25] David boldly commanded the heavenly beings to give glory and honour to the LORD. How could David do this? Throughout the Psalm it should be made abundantly clear that all things (including us) should give God the glory and honour that is due Him.
David used the term the “voice of the Lord” 7 times in this psalm. Reflective of the opening lines in Genesis and the creation week. David also used God’s personal name “Yahweh” 18 times and His name would later be paired with His voice in the passage. When the Lord speaks He does so through a variety of ways. On occasion, God has spoken directly with people; at other times He communicates His desires in dreams and through the mouths of prophets. Angels have often been the messengers of the divine voice. Scripture continues to be the word of the Lord that can be heard every day. Even nature itself can be the vehicle for how God speaks. Sometimes the voice of the Lord is found in the quiet stillness and sometimes He is in the storm.
In this psalm, David described the strength and power of a storm and likened it to the voice of God. Both historical (the flood) and geographical (a mighty storm striking the northern levant) references are made within the Psalm to declare the power of God. Some of the language in the psalm echoed the Creation event of Genesis. “The voice of the Lord is over the waters” (verse 3) resonates with the Spirit of God hovering over the depths at the Beginning. The voice of the Lord is paralleled with the Lord Himself as “The Lord sits enthroned over the Flood” (verse 10). The Flood of Noah was a cataclysmic event of darkness and destruction, and yet, despite its violent nature, God ruled over it. Many of the most destructive forces experienced by those in antiquity were forces of nature; earthquakes, thunderstorms and raging seas. Just like our modern times, elemental nature was completely out of the control of humans. This Psalm is David’s reminder to us that it is the Lord, not us, who is in control of the might and power of the created world.
Revelation 4:1-11. The God who created and walked with Adam, who appeared before Moses and the Israelites, whom Isaiah saw worshiped by seraphim and heavenly hosts, and whom Ezekiel witnessed directing incomprehensible living creatures is the same God whom John saw seated on the throne in Revelation. Though each prophet struggled to describe what they saw—Daniel, for instance, heard but could not comprehend and was not told everything that would unfold—the conclusion is inevitably the same: God is on the throne. The Lord God Almighty is holy. He is the One “who was and is and is to come.”
According to Jewish tradition, the throne of God is one of the seven things created before the world was made.[26] Yet God Himself is eternal. The brilliant and precious things near His throne—no matter how dazzling—are still part of creation, like dust formed into beauty by the hands of the Creator.
But it is not just objects that are around the throne. The seven spirits of God, like much of Revelation, is likely a reference to Isaiah. While Revelation 4 speaks of God, Revelation 5 imitates Revelation 4 when speaking of Jesus. In Revelation 5:11-14, the elders and angels worship the Lamb with the same worship given to God Almighty on the throne. This description of the worthiness of Jesus starts by directly referencing Isaiah 11:1-10. The Spirit of the LORD, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of knowledge, and the spirit of the fear of the LORD rest upon the Messiah.[27]
The God on the throne of heaven is the creator and worthy to receive glory and honor and power. And, in Revelation 5:5-14, the Lamb is equally worthy to receive blessing and honor and glory and might for all eternity.
Endnotes
[1] The Eastern Orthodox church celebrated Pentecost itself as a Trinitarian celebration. The Father sends the Son, who ascends and sends the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. But they do not celebrate a separate Sunday as a celebration specifically on the doctrine of the Trinity.
[2] Daniel 7:13-14, Isaiah 9:6-7; Psalm 110:1-2; Matthew 9:6; John 5:22-27; John 17:2; Matthew 28:18; I Corinthians 15:24-28; Hebrews 2:6-9
[3] John 3:35; John 17:24
[4] John 1:3; Colossians 1:16
[5] Psalm 104:30
[6] Daniel 7:9 was also used to speak of another power in heaven centuries prior to the writing of the New Testament.
[7] Ecclesiasticus 24:1-9, 23
[8] Proverbs 8:31
[9] Baruch 3:38
[10] Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 3.3-4
[11] Starting in Genesis 3:8 through Isaiah 45:12, “I, by my Memra, made the earth, and man upon it.”
[12] Paul uses common rhetorical figures of speech—gradatio along with anadiplosis—to emphasize his argument: suffering → endurance → character → renewed hope.
[13] ACNA Readings may include John 16:5-11
[14] The term παράκλητος (parakletos) is almost exclusively found in Johannine writing and later Church Fathers who commented on the book of John. It is not a term used in contemporary (or classic) Greek literature. This can make the interpretation of the word difficult.
[15] Psalm 103:6; Jeremiah 9:24
[16] Isaiah 9:7
[17] Psalm 36:5-6; Psalm 85:10-11; Psalm 89:14; Psalm 96:13; Psalm 98:9; Isaiah 59:14-15. Truth with righteousness: Psalm 40:10; Psalm 45:4; Psalm 119:142; Proverbs 12:17; Isaiah 11:5; Zechariah 8:8. Truth with justice: Psalm 111:7-8; Zechariah 7:9.
[18] For instance, the Greek polytheist Strabo, in Geography 16.2.36, states that, in the religion of Moses, “those who practiced temperance and justice (δικαιοσυνης), and none else, might expect good, or some gift or sign from the God, from time to time.” But in more common Hebraic thought, righteousness as a form of charity was most often associated with justice.
[19] Genesis 18:19; Proverbs 21:3; Isaiah 1:21; Isaiah 5:7; Jeremiah 22:3; Amos 5:24; Micah 6:8; Matthew 23:23. God rewarded David for ruling with justice and righteousness: “So David reigned over all Israel. And David administered justice and equity to all his people.” (II Samuel 8:15; I Kings 3:6)
[20] John 14:25-27
[21] Just as Jesus can answer Philip in John 14:8 and say “whoever has seen me has seen the Father”.
[22] Exodus 33:18-4:7
[23] Isaiah 6 specifically occurs in the final year of the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah. His reign and history is found in 2 Chronicles 26. He began his rule aged 16 years following the murder of his father Amaziah in a coup. He is mostly renowned for being a good king with his reign spanning a lengthy 52 years. Uzziah was a man of faith, a seeker after the Lord, and was accompanied by the prophet Zechariah. However, he allowed sacrifice in the high places within the kingdom and suffered from pride in his later life as He tried to act as a priest. He finished his reign with leprosy because of his hubris. Uzziah was also known as Azariah in the earlier histories of the book of Kings. Uzziah means ‘God is my strength’ while Azariah means ‘God is my helper’.
[24] Hebrews 11:37 “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword.”
[25] A psalm of David.
[26] Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 3.3
[27] The Septuagint adds the spirit of godliness in Isaiah 11:2 and the spirit of the fear of God in Isaiah 11:3. The Spirit of the LORD may be seen in this interpretation and translation as the overarching presence rather than one among the seven other spirits.