Trinity Sunday: God the Father’s Day?
Some years ago, David Roseberry posted a piece on Anglican Compass titled, “Should You Preach a Father’s Day Sermon on Father’s Day?” (Answer: “Yes!”). Let me pose another question, particularly appropriate in 2025, when Father’s Day converges with Trinity Sunday. My question is this: Should we preach on God the Father on Trinity Sunday?
Have you ever considered that the Church observes two major feasts for God the Son (Christmas and Easter)—three if you count Ascension Day—and one for God the Holy Spirit (Pentecost), but none for God the Father? I don’t know the historical reason for that. However, I want to propose that we could rightly take Trinity Sunday to honor the first Person of the Trinity.
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A Father Movement
Once, I taught a three-semester survey course on theology partitioned according to the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and thus, the first semester was on “God the Father.” When I assembled the bibliography at the nearby seminary library, I was puzzled to find virtually no books exclusively dedicated to the doctrine of the Father.
One of the few I found was by Tom Smail, titled The Forgotten Father (1980). Interestingly, Smail was a leader in the charismatic movement in the 1970s. He was, however, not an uncritical leader. Smail argues:
We have had a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement. The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each, in a different way, is inadequate to the gospel, which is a Father movement.
Smail is warning that the doctrine of God in the contemporary church is unbalanced, perhaps overbalanced. Too often, the Holy Trinity is presented in catechism classes by way of a geometrical model:
Not only is this model sterile—who wants to love and worship a fidget spinner or dwell in a space station?—but it is liable to a faux egalitarianism. The Father could be on the left, on the right, or on the bottom, and God remains God in the center. But is this really how the Bible and the Creed speak of the Father?
The Unknown God
There is, to be sure, a genuine reason why the doctrine of God the Father is overlooked. He is the awesome God of the Old Testament, “in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes” (Exodus 33:18-33). He is the “unknown god” of the pagan world, as Paul noted (Acts 17:23). John’s Gospel sums the mystery this way:
No one has ever seen God [the Father]; the only-begotten God [Jesus], who is at the Father’s side, he has made him [the Father] known.
John 1:18
Jesus not only opens our eyes to the Person of the Father, he teaches us about his relationship as the Son, saying: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). The Father and the Son are one God, but the Father comes first. St. Paul expresses the relationship of the Father and Son in the same way when he writes:
…for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
1 Corinthians. 8:6
The Father and the Trinitarian Controversy
Much of the early Trinitarian controversy focused on the divine Persons and relations. Most famously, the First Council of Nicaea proclaimed the Son “of one being with the Father” (homoousios), to which the later Council at Constantinople added the Holy Spirit, “who proceeds from the Father.” Gregory of Nazianzus, the archbishop who convened the latter Council, stated:
Teach also that we must not make the Father subject to [another] source, lest we posit a “first of the First,” and thus overturn the [divine] Existence. Nor should we say that the Son or the Holy Spirit is without source, lest we take away the Father’s special characteristic.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 25.15
Worshipping God the Father
We are not only to believe in God the Father as doctrine but also worship him in Spirit and truth. After all, it is Jesus who taught us to “pray like this”: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name” (Matthew 6:9). Likewise, our Prayer Book collects often begin with “Almighty God our heavenly Father…” and end with “to the glory of God the Father.”
The Father is, by definition, an authority figure. “Your Kingdom come,” Jesus prays. So also St. Paul prays:
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
Ephesians 3:14
This notion of authority has become scandalous to many Americans who decry “the patriarchy” as the source of all evil in the world. To be sure, there are many flawed (aren’t we all?) and abusive fathers and rulers, but the very notion of abuse of authority presumes that there is a true Judge who will bring justice and peace on earth (Revelation 16:7). June is a good month for patriotic expressions: “Our fathers’ God to thee, author of liberty, to thee we sing”; and “Lift every voice and sing, ’Til earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.”
I agree with David Roseberry that it is appropriate to preach about earthly fathers on or near Trinity Sunday. The writer to the Hebrews says this:
We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Shall we not be much more subject to the Father of spirits and live?
Hebrews 12:9
So I say, when Father’s Day and Trinity Sunday converge, let’s celebrate the convergence!
Image by Toltek from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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Trinity Sunday commemorates the Christian doctrine of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—three persons in one substance, an eternal community of love.
