Today, we celebrate two occasions, two holidays. On the one hand, there is what some cynics might call a “commercial holiday,” the one known as “Fathers’ Day,” a day to buy dad another tie he won’t wear more than once, or another bottle of after-shave lotion he won’t use, even once.
Today, we also celebrate a liturgical holiday, a “feast day,” the feast day known as “Trinity Sunday.” Cynics, also, have a negative view of this theologically oriented feast day. They say no one can really understand, or even appreciate, what we mean by the Trinity, other than saying it’s a “mystery” and letting it go at that. So why even bother to celebrate “Trinity Sunday?”
This leads me, of course, to my question for today. You were wondering, weren’t you, when will I get around to my question? OK. Here it is. But actually, it’s several questions. And you need not answer out loud. First of all, how do you celebrate “Fathers’ Day?” And secondly, why celebrate Fathers’ Day at all? And finally, how does Fathers’ Day relate to the Trinity and our celebration of Trinity Sunday?
There are many ways to celebrate Fathers’ Day. A lot depends on how you view your own father, and how your father views you. If you don’t get along with him, the chances are, you’re not going to celebrate the day. And if your father is not around, the celebration may have to be confined to a telephone call or a short prayer to God on your dad’s behalf. If you’re a young kid, you might make a special card for him. Or you might go play catch in the yard or do something for him you think he will really like.
As for me, for the last few years, my grown sons have taken me out for buffalo wings and beer. Now, I have to admit: buffalo wings and beer are not really my all-time favorites. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy them, but they would not necessarily be on my life-time, top-ten list. So why do I do it? Why, indeed, do a lot of other dads smile with great appreciation when they receive a yellow tie with purple Barneys1 dancing across it; or another bottle of Old Spice?
We do it because of something called “male bonding.” Male bonding – that’s the name of the relationship fathers and sons desire. For dads and daughters, it’s OK to call it “love” or “affection.” But for men, it’s known as “male bonding,” even though it really is love. Love, after all, is another name for “bonding.” Love is joining people together in a special, permanent, un-breakable union. We sometimes speak of the special “bond” between a parent and a child, yet, we also call it “parental love.” We are, also, aware, especially in this month of June, of the “bond of matrimony,” the special union between husband and wife that makes “two into one flesh.” In all of these unions – between husband and wife, between parent and child – in these new unions, the two human beings continue to exist, but now there is something greater than what was there when they existed alone. This new “something” is now called “love,” thid new something is now a “bond.”
In this bonded-union, each person still exists. There is still an “I” and a “Thou.” There is still a “Me” and a “You.” But in this bonded-union, there is no longer a “mine” and a “yours.” In their marriage vows, the husband and wife pledge themselves to one another: “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.” In a good marriage, the “mine” and the “yours” become “ours” – a spiritual “oneness.” And in a family, as a result of the bond between parent and child, what the parent possesses, the child is heir to. What the parent has, the child will receive. And be assured, whatever the child has, the parent will also get, including every germ found in kindergarten.
This relationship, this bonding, this love is what we mean when we speak of family “ties,” of family bonds. A family exists whenever two people join together in a special way, in a bond where they continue as “me” and as “you,” but no longer as “mine” and as “yours.”
And that is what some theologians say about the Trinity, about our one God who exists as three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These scholars point out the Father remains the “father;” the Son remains the “son;” and the Holy Spirit remains the holy spirit. At the same time, there is a bonding – a particular love that unites them in a special way.
To quote one of those theologians, Father Walter J. Burghardt of Georgetown University: “What makes God God – we call it the divine nature – [what makes God God] … the Father has it completely, the Son has it completely, the Spirit has it completely. No one has anything the other does not have. The Father gives to the Son literally all that he himself has, all that makes him God, all that makes him love. And the Son is the perfect son, because he is the perfect image of his father.” Burghardt goes on to say: “The incredible thing is that the love with which the Son loves the Father is the selfsame infinite love with which the Father loves the Son. And this love of Father and Son, this love is the Holy Spirit.”
And so, the bonding of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. The love of the Father and of the Son is the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit who is sent to us, shared with us. Saint Paul speaks of this sharing in his Letter to the Romans we heard a few minutes ago, when he wrote: “…you received a spirit of adoption through whom we cry, ‘Abba, father!’ The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ …”
“Heirs with Christ.” We have been told, once again, we are brothers and sisters of Christ, we are, indeed, the children of God, we are bonded members of the family of God. But we are not to be an exclusive family, not a limited family, not if we heard and follow the instructions given to us in our gospel reading, when Jesus, in the words of the community of Matthew, said: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Go: Make disciples. Go: Gather more friends, more heirs of the kingdom, other brothers and sisters. Join them together in the perfect union of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do this, not only by baptism, not only by the pouring on of water, but by teaching them to do what I have commanded – by loving one another, by feeding the poor, by helping those in need, by knowing that in all you do for them, you do for me; and realizing: “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
And, so, now is the time to celebrate the day when we call God, Abba, to celebrate that we are the one family of God bonded together with love. Today, is the day to celebrate not merely a commercialized Fathers’ Day, but rather, to celebrate the day of Abba, the day of Trinity when there is no longer “mine” and “yours,” but instead the day when there is only “our Father” and our enduring love for one another, for all of “us” joined together through (†) Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Trinity Sunday, June 18, 2000
Deut 4:32-34, 39-40; Rom 8:14-17; Mt 28:16-20
- Barney was, and for some, still is a purple, dancing and singing children’s creature roughly looking like a dinosaur.