Trinity Sunday is not a good day for preachers. To speak about the Holy Trinity is to speak about that which is mostly unspeakable, to reflect on a deep truth about God that is apparent to us, but mostly beyond our knowing. A preacher like me is looking for a story, but Trinity stories are hard to find. You don’t run into the holy and undivided unity of the Trinity every day on the street - at least not in too many obvious ways. Almost everything that you can try to say about the Trinity to make the mystery a little less mysterious ends up flirting with heresy, or sounds just plain dumb, unhelpful, or beside the point.
The historian of religion, Karen Armstrong points out part of what makes it so hard for us to train our attention on this mystery of God’s transcendent being. These days, she says, “we concentrate so much on defining what we're transcending to - God - whereas in the past they concentrated more what we're transcending from: selfishness, greed, hatred, all of which springs from ego.” Her assessment sounds right to me, especially when she reminds us that in the doctrine of the Trinity “ancient theologians were trying to remind Christians that it was impossible to think about God as a simple personality.” The three persons of the Trinity, she says - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - “these are the external, like my gestures and my clothes and my words are me. But they don't exactly define what "me" is. We know God's external qualities, but we can never know his ousia or inner nature.”*
Fair enough. But what help is that to the preacher?
I’m With Her
Then I hear music. Recently, in the form of three women standing around a single microphone. Each woman holds an instrument. They are bluegrass musicians, so one holds a guitar, another a mandolin, and the third carries a fiddle. And they are singing in the twangy, tight harmony of bluegrass. In their set, they segue from song to song, trading places in the center, all leaning in to balance their voices at the microphone. One takes the lead in one song, then they change positions and another is in the lead. It is hard to say who is in charge. No one of the three is more important that the others. Their bodies are swaying gently together with the rhythm of the music. The singers are present to the audience, and providing much enjoyment to us, but clearly their attention is mostly on one another. They are listening to each other, and singing to and with each other. Sometimes only one is singing, or playing. Sometimes they stand a little farther apart, sometimes closer, but always the three are together.**
It’s a useful icon of the Trinity, if you ask me. Probably as informative as the classic Russian icon of the Trinity that shows the three angels visiting Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre. And a lot better than a shamrock. The performance of these three women echoes many of the classic descriptions of the Trinity.
Then they start to sing a song I have never heard before, but I guess it’s an old folk song or spiritual:
Well I got a home on the other shore
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan
I know I’ll live there for evermore
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan,
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
Thank God there’s a Heaven
and a ringin’ in my soul
and my soul set free
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
At one point they stop playing their instruments, and first one voice takes up the melody, then the second, and then the third, in the beautiful and simple imitative polyphony of a round. You can hear the melody intertwining with itself. And the second or third time around, you can hear the voices embellish the melody further, each voice sharing the embellishment in turn, as the song becomes more intense, more plaintive, and more beautiful. And the audience is rapturous; you hear them calling out as this simple music carries them away. You could feel the excitement building as these three women weave their three voices and this pleading song together. And finally the three women bring the round to a conclusion, not by singing the melody together in unison, but in thrilling and commanding harmony that still knits all three voices together.
I was driving as I heard the three women sing, and I nearly had to stop the car at this point. All they were doing was singing this one melody (that I had never heard before) over and over as a round, in simple imitation. And it was stunning. When I got home, I found the recording of the performance on line, so I could see and hear it again. And I listened to them sing this round over and over again. Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan? Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan? I feel as though I want to hear it again right now. And I want you to hear it, too!
And I wonder if it might be easier to know what the scriptures mean when they say that God created us in his own image and likeness, when three women stand up at a microphone with a guitar, a mandolin, and a fiddle, and sing.
As it happens, older versions of the song, Hear Jerusalem Moan, make fun of preachers of various denominations. One verse goes like this:
Presbyterian preacher don’t never take the blues,
He chews his own tobacco and he drinks his own booze.
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
There is, fortunately, no verse about Episcopalian preachers.
But it’s a fitting song for Trinity Sunday, when a preacher might easily make Jerusalem (or Philadelphia) moan.
Thank God there’s a Heaven
and a ringin’ in my soul
and my soul set free.
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
If three woman singing bluegrass can stir the soul, what could a triune God do to us, and for us, and with us? And why wouldn’t we want to believe in such a God?
Karen Armstrong thinks that the reason we struggle to reflect on the transcendent and triune God is because of what she calls our “preening, prancing” egos. “You won't get transcendence,” she says, “unless you are compassionate. To be compassionate is to dethrone yourself from the center of your world and put another there, to transcend yourself. You go beyond the selfishness and hatred that imprisons us and limits our vision."
Dethrone yourself from the center of the world, and put another there. Is this what God is constantly doing within God’s own self? De-throning himself from the center, to put another there? Such is the majesty of the true and living God that he excels even in humility, as one person of the Trinity says repeatedly to another, “Friend, go up higher”?
Trinity Sunday is not a good day for preachers. It’s a better day for singers.
Thank God there’s a Heaven
and a ringin’ in my soul
and my soul set free.
Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.
Up there in heaven, I suppose it is entirely possible that there are three women standing around a microphone singing. One of them might be holding a guitar, another a mandolin, and another a heavenly fiddle. They might be changing places at the microphone, as they trade places leading the song, and as they repeat to one another in a glorious, imitative, and intertwining round, “Friend, go up higher!” And they might be looking down on us, listening to this sermon, and singing to one another, “Don’t you hear Jerusalem moan.”
I really can’t say. But I am fairly certain that if there are, then the three of them are trading places in the center, all leaning in to balance their voices. One takes the lead, then they change positions and another is in the lead. It is hard to say who is in charge. No one of the three is more important that the others. Their bodies are swaying gently together with the rhythm of the music. They are present to the world, and providing much enjoyment to us, but clearly their attention is mostly on one another. They are listening to each other, and singing to and with each other. Sometimes only one is singing, or playing. Sometimes they stand a little farther apart, sometimes closer, but always the three are together. Their song has an intertwining melody, that they sometimes sing in a round of beautiful imitative polyphony. As they sing on, their voices embellish the melody further, each voice sharing the embellishment in turn, as the song becomes more intense, more plaintive, and more beautiful.
And some day, the singing will build to a climax of thrilling and commanding harmony that knits the three voices together in unsurpassed beauty, that no one will be able to mistake for anything other than the voice of God.
And then, at last, no more will we hear Jerusalem moan. No more will we hear Jerusalem moan.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Trinity Sunday 2019
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
* interview with Karen Armstrong in US Catholic, January 2010, (Vol 75, No 1)
** the perfromance was the group I’m With Her singing on Live From Here, 15 June 2019 at Tanglewood