Trinity Sunday - not for sissies

In his sermon yesterday, my pastor quoted from an official Methodist worship planning site:

"Trinity Sunday is not a Sunday for theological and spiritual "sissies"! There are few who are either so doctrinaire or so thick-skinned that the church's effort at inclusive language leaves them unaffected in "pre-1970s" exclusive language. Most leaders in the church have abandoned trinitarian language as they would abandon a field littered with land mines. Political correctness, combined with a desire to keep the Christian faith "accessible to seekers" (and to the faithful too), has led to an almost wholesale abandonment of liturgical reference to the triune God and to an avoidance of preaching the life of the triune God in whom we live and move and have our being."

He preached a good sermon on the Trinity, though it was a little light on the Holy Spirit.  I told him after the service how much I liked it, and he laughed and said, "I thought you'd like it."  Before he started preaching, I was a little nervous that the whole sermon would be a refutation of the formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  See, our male (senior) pastor is more "theologically liberal" than our female pastor, or however you want to phrase it.  

Anyway, he preached on the necessity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit language.  I was very surprised.  He said he knew he might offend some people, and I imagine he did.  He explained that the language is not patriarchal, that it does not claim God is male, and that it speaks of the essential nature of God as being-in-relation in a way that other formulations fail to do.  The rest of the sermon carried on the theme of God as a communion of love who calls us to be in communion with God and with our neighbors.  I'll link to it whenever the church gets around to posting it.

So why isn't it sexist?  I wrote about it last year in this post.  Reading it over again, I'm not sure I would use the phrase "mutual love, equality and cooperation."  Perhaps equality has too many confusing connotations in today's context.  And I need a deeper word than cooperation. 

But this year, I want to say that the way to deeper understanding of the Trinity for mainline Protestants is not through debates over inclusive language, but through good sermons and solid teaching on the Triune God.  When I was a teenager, I was absolutely against any kind of Father language.  When I'd argue with people about it, no one ever talked about the Trinity in a way that emphasized God's communion of love.  They either agreed with me that it was sexist, or used sexist arguments to refute me.  I didn't have a decent understanding of it until seminary.  I heard someone say that for mainline Protestants, seminary has become a place of catechesis.  And that's sad. 

Of course, women who've been abused by their fathers or father figures might not be convinced by sermons or teachings, which is where pastoral counseling and the caring support of the congregation are called for - not in order to convince them of the language, but in order to live the language.  "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love."  Or as Thomas says, "we are so tightly knit to the Son that the Father's love for his Son is his love for us, and the Son's responding love for his Father becomes our hymn of praise and thanksgiving.  This love is indeed the Holy Spirit himself, and thus when we hear the words of forgiveness, and when we pray in Christ to our Father, we are literally inspired." 

I don't know if hearing that would have been an "aha!" moment for my radical feminist, Christian teenage self, or if a woman who's been abused by her father could hear this without pain.  But this still-feminist, radical Christian wishes she would've had a chance, and hopes my sisters in Christ who heard heard my pastor's sermon heard a message of love and not of exclusion.