The Common Good
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day Sunday – May 30, 2010
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Proverbs 8: 1-4. 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5: 1-5; John 16: 12-15]

Today, the week after Pentecost, the Church celebrates the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity is, perhaps, one of the most difficult of Christian teachings – One God in Three Persons. It is fraught with difficulties because some of the reasoning which undergird it were framed in the language and philosophy of the fourth century and those concepts are now unfamiliar to us and often difficult for us to understand, at least not without some effort. When did you last go to a part and the concept of hypostases come up? Ontology is not a big topic of conversation these days, but it was in the fourth century. So, we tend to leave it to people, like myself, who are in the ministry or studying for the ministry. One of the people who put in enormous effort to understanding the Trinity was Augustine. I remember when I was a first year doctoral student doing a course in Medieval theology and our very first assignment was to read and outline Augustine’s massive and magisterial work De Trinitate (On the Trinity) and be ready for the next class! I can tell you that Augustine and, regardless, he and I became well-acquainted and he continues among my “friends.”

There is a story told about him that as he was working on his treatise on the Trinity he was walking along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea there in North Africa deep in thought. As he walked he saw a little boy dumping bucket after bucket of water into a hole dug in the sand. “What are you doing?” Augustine asked him. The boy responded, “I’m emptying the sea into this hole.” Augustine laughed and said, “You can’t do that. The sea is too large and the hole too small.” The boy’s replied, “So it is with you and the Trinity. The mystery is too large and your mind is too small.” With that, so the story goes, the boy disappeared. Augustine was sure that it was an angel sent to humble him.

I recall that story – because I’m sure I’ve told it before – simply to remind us that there are always going to be some doctrines, some realities, some truths that are greater than we can comprehend. That doesn’t lessen their truth or their effectiveness for us, it just reminds us that we are limited and the God we serve is not. It’s important for us to remember – and I hope that I’ve brought that out to you in two stints in this pulpit over twelve years – that God is God and that we’re not. No matter how hard we may try, we will never be able to wrap our minds around God – God is God and we’re not.

Thus, we have to come at these great teachings in ways that will help us to understand and then help us to have them have an effect in our lives. I’ve talked about what is called the economic understanding of the Trinity. That is how the Trinity works. We see that, to some extent, in the Scriptures we’ve read today. In Psalm 8, and to some extent in Proverbs, we see God the Father: the Creator. In Romans 5 we see the work of God the Son: the Savior, Redeemer, and risen Lord. In the Gospel, John 16, we hear of God the Holy Spirit: the teacher, the comforter (the Greek there is paraklete – one called alongside to help), the giver of gifts. One of the reasons the early Church came to the conclusion that God was “three in one,” is that they saw these evidences in their midst.

If we go to one or two particular verses in Psalm 8 I think we’ll also see another way that we can talk about the evidences of God as Trinity. In verses 4 and 5 the Psalmist says, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” There we hear the echo of Genesis, how humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Augustine, who thought long and hard on the relationship of human beings to themselves, their world, and to God, also came to the conclusion that it we’re made in God’s image and perhaps why we often struggle with our sense of self and identity. Augustine cried out to God in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Centuries later, the philosopher Blaise Pascal would offer the thought that we are made with a “God-shaped void.” I would say that we should give serious consideration to the doctrine of the Trinity precisely because we know that there is more to us.

That more that is within us is the very image of God and it looks and longs for what will make it complete. Perhaps that is another reason why our Christian faith teaches us that God is Triune – a Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We hear theologians talk about the “community in the Godhead” and, indeed, the Eastern Orthodox even describe the Trinity in terms of a dance – perichoresis – one that is so elaborate and intricate that you can’t tell where it begins or ends. Human beings are made in that likeness, we’re complex beings and we’re beings drawn to relationship. We find our truest and best expression in relationship with God – the Other – and with others. We are, by our very nature, drawn to a life in relationship, a life in community. This was also picked up by Augustine in De Trinitate, as he reflected on how we, ourselves, are tripartite beings. He notes vestiges of the Trinity such as: 1) lover, loved, and their love; 2) being, knowing, and willing; 3) memory, understanding, and will; and 4) object seen, attention of mind, and external vision. [cf. Augustine, The Trinity. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003)]. There is a God-given, created dignity given to human beings, which God restores for us in Christ, as Paul tells the Romans.

That dignity leads to the common good, because we are meant to live together. The restoration of human dignity is for all humanity, not just the exaltation of the individual. This is something we Christians in America sometimes forget and, believe it or not, we can learn a great lesson from a Frenchman who visited our shores back in the 1830s. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is an oft-referenced, but I think not fully read, masterpiece of observation and insight. He notes that aristocracy tends to lead to selfishness while democracy leads to individualism. Tocqueville describes selfishness as an “exaggerated love of self” that “originates in blind instinct.” Individualism, on the other hand, “proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.” Tocqueville does a superb job of demonstrating that selfishness and individualism are both, ultimately, destructive of common life and the good that it does. [See Democracy in America, vol. 2, p. 104]

The antidote for individualism, which is just selfishness in a more liberated form, is from free institutions and from the exercise of voluntarism on the behalf of others. What he says is something we need to remember. Tocqueville writes, “The free institutions which the inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to make themselves useful to their fellow creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them are at length acquired.” [Democracy in American, vol. 2, p. 112] In other words, we learn the value of the common good by making it happen – we serve and we grow. Here is how a basic Christian doctrine can also aid us in our lives as members of a free society.

In our contemporary society we have too often forgotten the wisdom of the common good. We’re eager to get ahead. Our mantra is “I don’t have time.” Our goal is to have more, but, when push comes to shove, that is not the measure of “the good life.” Rather, it is seeing the good of the whole and seeking to hold that up. Concern for the common good makes the burden light and the church, as it did during Tocqueville’s visit, must light the way. We must renew our commitment to care for each other and to build up not only this gathered community of faith, but the larger communities of which we are all a part. We are called to the common good, to a life of relationship and that means we become concerned about more than just what is good for me – it’s seeing the good of others and seeking that.

Someone has said – and it’s been attributed to Tocqueville, but I’ve not found it anywhere in his book – “that as long as America is good it will be great and when it ceases to be good it will cease to be great.” The truth is there, however. We will only remain a great nation if we realize that we were built on the common good. We have to start doing the common good right here, serving each other. It’s realizing that it’s more about doing good for others than it is for seeking our own. If we begin by serving others, well, it will go a long way.

That said, I’m not saying that it’s easy to do. We can certainly find that struggle in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome in another passage, where he talks about the struggle to do the right, when the wrong seems so attractive. It’s also there in the passage we read today, in which we’re reminded that sometimes we may even have to suffer for what is right and good, but even suffering can bring forth good. , can’t we? There is always a tug, a pull, between that which is right and good and that which is self-centered and wrong. There is a conflict between that which gives life and freedom and that which pulls, burdens, and weighs us down. The choice comes from within us, aided by God’s Spirit and the gift of grace, to live as God has called us to live, freely for the common good, making a difference because we’ve experienced what it means to be different, to be renewed.

It is not inappropriate to recall this great truth of the common good as we celebrate the doctrine of the Trinity and remember those who have modeled the common good for us in their service. I am always struck by the simple, powerful words penned by Katherine Lee Bates which, to me, sum up the life we’re to lead in community – in service of God and of our sisters and brothers made in God’s image and likeness:

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

Perhaps we will truly learn the meaning of the common good as we learn to love God and others more than self? God bless this land of ours and renew the Christian Church as a witness to the common good. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.