Trinity Sunday, Year C
June 3, 2007
Christopher Putnam
Associate for Liturgy and Music, All Souls Parish

I believe in God the Father who made me. I believe in God the Son who loves me. I believe in God the Holy Ghost, who makes me good. Amen. That was the first creed I ever learned, literally, at my grandmother’s side. She led the Sunday school chapel, or “little church” each week when I was growing up.

I learned a lot in those little chapel services. Some of that has stuck, of course, and some I’ve had to relearn. I don’t see many chapel veils being worn around nowadays either. But that creed is definitely one of the things that has stuck with me. Hear it again: I believe in God the Father who made me. I believe in God the Son who loves me. I believe in God the Holy Ghost, who makes me good.

It’s been said that there has never been a Trinity Sunday sermon preached that didn’t have at least one heresy in it. So you can listen for mine, but I know this: Grandma didn’t preach no heresy!

So here I am today, on this first Sunday after Pentecost, commonly known as Trinity Sunday. And, of course, it’s the first Sunday P.A. – Post-Andrew. (And yes, folks, I miss him already too.) When we were talking a few weeks ago about filling the preaching schedule, though, I jumped at the chance to be up here today: it’s a nice coincidence that we’re celebrating all the musicians in our parish, but I actually have a particular fondness for Trinity Sunday itself, believe it or not.

Today is a hinge point of the church year, when we move from celebrations of events in the life of Jesus to the working out of the meaning of that life. And from Advent through Pentecost, we have celebrated the work of each of the three persons of the trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But today, we don’t celebrate an event – we celebrate a doctrine, one of the most ancient doctrines of the church.

We as Anglicans seem to like the Trinity. A priest in Michigan tallied all the names of all the Episcopal churches in this country, and found Trinity to be the third-most-popular church name, with 520 parishes honoring the Trinity, ranking after only Christ and St. John, and just ahead of St. Paul. (I know you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you: All Souls joins 18 other parishes, in a tie with St. Simon for 64th place. Small but mighty.)

Now I’ve never been closely connected to any of those Trinity parishes, so that doesn’t explain this mysterious fondness I have for this notion of God. Rather, I think it’s related to the very notion that the doctrine of the Trinity is explained as a mystery. That’s not an oxymoron: It’s explained. As a mystery. How can it be that the God we worship is three in one, and one in three? Aren’t we good monotheists? Does this mean we worship three gods? After all, in today’s Gospel, Jesus refers to the Spirit and the Father as separate from himself, so where does that leave Jesus’ divinity?

I would propose that it is exactly through our sense of Jesus as divine that we too share in that community – the community of intertwining, dancing love into which we have been baptized. Going back to the days of the early church, becoming a Christian meant simply proclaiming faith and being baptized, then as now, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity, you might say, is an analog concept in a digital world. We humans tend to be perfectly suited for this digital age, in which so much of our experience is seen in terms of black and white, on and off, ones and zeroes, yes and no, Dodgers and Giants. But the Trinity doesn’t allow us to reduce things in that way. The Trinity exists in the grays between black and white, in the dimmer switch between on and off, in the endless fractions between one and zero, in the negotiations between yes and no. And what could possibly be more mysterious than bridging the gap between the Giants and Dodgers?

William Billings, the first important American composer, was an itinerant singing teacher in New England in the late 18th century. In addition to his music, he wrote quite a lot of rather quixotic advice about singing, much of which is good advice to this day: “It is also well worth your observation, that the grand contention with us, is, not who shall sing loudest; but who shall sing best.” Some of his advice might, to say the least, be better warbled: “Be sure not to force the Sound thro’ your Nose; but warble the Notes in your Throat.” (Don’t listen to that one, choir!)

But Billings also wrote a text which, if it rhymed, might well be fitted to Gilbert and Sullivan: it is a parody of the Athanasian Creed. The Atha-what? I hear you say. The Athanasian Creed, attributed to St. Athanasius, the 4th-century bishop of Alexandria who the Orthodox still revere today for saving the church from heresy by fighting for the doctrine of the Trinity.

If you ever spend the sermon time browsing the Prayer Book, you may have come across it, in the small print of the Historical Documents section of the back. Here’s a taste:
The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.
And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.
So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.
And so on.

Billings’ version went something like this: “There is the time of the whole note, the time of the half note, and the time of the quarter note; and yet they are not three times, but one time.”

I once had a choirboy who described the conductor as “the person who says ‘Now.’ ” For God, the great conductor, every moment is “now.” There are not three “Nows” but one “Now.”

St. Augustine, who said “the one who sings prays twice,” used similar language to that of Athanasius in talking about time. He talked about the present of the present, the present of the past, and the present of the future. Listen to that again: the present of the present, the present of the past, and the present of the future. And yet, as Athanaisius might say, there are not three presents but one present.

So for God, I say again, every moment is “now.” Every moment of intimate presence and communion among the creator, the redeemer, and the sustainer means being fully present to one another in that moment, that eternal present.

And that’s what music does for us: it brings past, present, and future together in each moment. At least, that’s what live music does for us. Recorded music? Simply a transaction. Someone records a song, we listen to it. We can listen to it over and over, and the song will never change. Our perception of it will, certainly – we will hear new things, things we missed before; we can hit rewind, or play it out of its usual context. But the song remains the same.

Live music, however, is more than a simple transaction: it is a gift. It is a gift of time, a gift of talent, and most importantly, a gift of oneself.

The world of music is full of threes: rhythm, pitch, and timbre (or tone) is one; another, more fundamental one is that of composer, performer, and listener. And yet, as Billings and Athanasius might say, there are not three musics, but one music.

The British theologian Jeremy Begbie explores this at great length in his book Theology, Music, and Time. (Actually, Michelle Stearns, sitting in the alto section, should probably come up to continue at this point: she just completed her PhD with Begbie as her advisor. Michelle, I hope I do this justice!)

Begbie points out that these roles are distinct, but can also overlap in many different ways. Take the world of jazz, for example: it is not uncommon for the composer to be performing her own music, listening as it goes along, responding to the improvisations of other performers and even the audience, and, in a sense, re-composing the music as each moment goes by. That’s not so different from my own role writing and conducting original music, and responding to the performance in the moment. And surely, I’d like to think, every performer is listening as the music moves along – though I’ve certainly, sadly, known some who didn’t.

The important thing to remember about all this is the importance of everyone’s role if we are to create an authentic, vibrant musical experience. In the interaction of composer, performer, and listener, we participate in God’s creative act at the beginning of time – that is not a privilege reserved to the composer alone. Whether we’re talking about Genesis or the Big Bang, God is the one who said “Now.” “Now: let there be light.” Or, this being Berkeley: “Now: this singularity of all the matter in the universe in one tiny speck will begin to explode, and will still be exploding without signs of slowing down twelve billion years from now, and as far beyond that as we can imagine.” Our place amidst that inconceivable explosion allows us to look back with Stephen Hawking, and say that the unknown on the other side of that moment, that is where God is.

On this Sunday, when we connect our celebration of the fundamental nature of God with the pivotal role that music plays in our worship of God, I want to make very clear how strongly I feel about the way in which we’re all in it together here. Music is woven throughout our liturgy, on as many levels as we have imagination. We have instrumental music, music sung by the choir, music sung by Angel Band, music sung by soloists, music sung by the clergy, and most important, music sung by the congregation – all of us here in this place to worship the God we meet in one another at this table. St. Paul described “psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs” (another Trinity!), and we might just as easily describe virtually all of our music in these ways – our hymns of all eras, our service music (including the Sanctus – Holy, holy, holy – in which we join explicitly in the song of the angels), our psalms and canticles.

We talk all the time about “making music,” don’t we? We draw on the past: our own past and the past of all of our brothers and sisters who have come this way before, treading the path that has brought us here. We build a future, for those who come after us to tread their own path. But most important, we live in the present: each moment is ephemeral, and as much as we can anticipate what is to come, or remember fondly what has come before, we are where we are, composing, performing, and listening, participating in the ongoing act of creation, in God’s eternal “Now.” But I think the best thing about music isn’t what it means, or what it does – it just is. And on this Trinity Sunday, we can allow ourselves to spend some time here, in the worship of God simply for the sake of worshipping God.

In today’s opening collect, we prayed that God would “Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory.” This is a frequent theme of prayer among musicians: there is a choristers’ prayer which says “Grant that what we sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth in our lives.” I know I’m not just preaching to the choir when I suggest that as a motto for all our music in church, and notice the order: it doesn’t ask that we believe words before we can sing them, but rather, it assumes that we sing, and asks that our lives be changed so that we may change the lives of others. There is no truer worship than that of sharing our own experience of the love of God, paving the way for others’ lives to be changed as ours have been. However we see the Trinity: as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; as composer, performer, and listener – all these are different ways into a single, larger reality. In the language of aesthetics, of beauty, they are known as the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of all that?

Finally, I ask you to join me in a prayer that brings these themes together. You’ll need to open your Prayer Books (and those of you who have been reading Athanasius have a head start!) to page 819, at the bottom of the page. Prayer #17 is entitled “For Church Musicians and Artists.” But wait. There’s something wrong. We are all artists; we are all musicians. Let’s say it together, changing one word, which occurs twice: that word is “them.” Join me, as fellow musicians, fellow creators, fellow worshipers, fellow participants in the divine work of creation, the creation, in fact, of the divine, and change the word “them” to the word “us.”

O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to US even now glimpses of your beauty, and make US worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.