One of the literary devices in the English language that gives me the most joy is the oxymoron a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms to make light of a situation and or draw keen attention to a situation.  The word itself is an oxymoron, oxy from the Greek for sharp or pointed, and moros from the Greek for dull.   Believe it or not there is an entire web site, oxymoronlist.com, dedicated to this literary device and it is quite an extensive list. There are some couplings of words that we commonly use that by suggesting they are an oxymoron we are making fun of the situation; like the following: Government organization, Microsoft works, academic fraternity, airline food, airline schedules, American culture, bipartisan cooperation, and finally, one really fitting for our time…cheap gas.   There are also those couplings of words that we use all the time to describe everyday items that when you stop to think about it, make absolutely no sense such as: authentic replica, plastic glasses, working vacation, jumbo shrimp, tax return, new classic, alone together, boneless ribs, all natural artificial flavor, and my long time favorite new improved.  It’s either new or it’s improved because it can’t be both but we don’t even think about it, we hear it in commercials all the time oh I have to go get some it’s new and improved.  Then there are those oxymora that use opposites to draw our attention to a certain situation such as deafening silence, silent scream, and living dead.  Finally I would submit for your enjoyment xenophobic foreign secretary, and zero deficit, just to show that the list has at least one for every letter in the alphabet. 

            What got me going on all of this oxymoron stuff was, reading the passage of scripture from 2 Corinthians, in preparation for the sermon it struck me that the heading for this passage, not a part of the actually passage itself, but the heading for the passage is final greetings.  I read that than thought “That doesn’t make any sense.  You can’t have final greetings even if you could they would come toward the beginning of the letter not the end because greetings come at the beginning.  Final comes at the end, you could have final goodbyes or final salutations, or final conclusions, or even final farewells but not final greetings.  That is an oxymoron.”   Oh I know what the translator meant by final greetings but it just seemed odd to me.  As I sat there thinking about it I wondered how this passage could possibly relate, what this passage could possibly be saying about Trinity Sunday, today, that day when we celebrate one of the key theological understandings in our faith that being the triune nature of God.  Did you catch that?  Today we are celebrating our understanding that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all the same God.  God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sustainer cannot be separated because all three are one.  Three are one?  “Three are not one, three are three and one is one, but three are not one.” I thought to myself.  Then it hit me a key component of our faith is an oxymoron.  Then I got to thinking about all the other oxymora that are components of our faith like our understanding that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  That doesn’t make sense either.  You can’t be fully two things that are opposites of one another like human and divine, three can’t be one, but we believe those things.   Also we don’t call those beliefs oxymora we call them paradoxes.  A paradox being a statement which seems opposed to common sense, defies intuition, or contradicts itself but is perhaps true.  I don’t know about you but a paradox and an oxymoron still sound a lot alike to me.  The only thing I can figure is a paradox is an instance when we know there is a contradiction in terms but we choose to believe it anyway.  Not to be funny not simply as a literary device but because we truly believe these two opposites go together and have no other way to explain it. 

            By the way the paradox of the Trinity that we are celebrating today and the other one I mentioned about Jesus being fully human and fully divine; it took the church 300 years to come up with that.  Up to that point there were competing view points about the nature of God and the individual parts of the God head.  The church struggled, and argued, and worse fought for 300 years over who Jesus was.  Was he a human who had God’s special blessing?  Was he God kind of projected here on earth?  What did it mean that he was human and divine, like when you glue two boards together to make one board but you can tell they were two boards and you can still take them apart if you want?  No like water and Kool-Aid once they are mixed you can’t tell which is which and you can’t separate them.  Not until the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 did the church reach a definitive conclusion about the Triune nature of God and the divinity/humanity of Christ.  Not till they wrote the Nicene Creed did the church have one single unified position on what we believe about God and specifically about Jesus.  Up until that point what we had was what should be an oxymoron but all too often is just a reality and that is a “church fight”. 

             Paul writing well ahead of the Council of Nicaea, in these his final greetings to the church in Corinth seems to be imploring them to avoid a church fight.  His farewell begins with “Put things in order…”  If that isn’t language meant to avoid a fight I don’t know what is.  He is urging them to prioritize to put first things first and let the other things go.  The extraneous junk will always be there, but it is not worth fighting over, remember what is important and make that the main thing.  Then he says “listen to my appeal,” The important word in that phrase being listen.  You can’t listen if you are jabbering on all the time.  You have likely heard it said that “God gave you two ears and only one mouth so the intent must be for you to listen twice as much as you speak.  The important thing is you can’t shout insults at the one with whom you disagree if you are intent on first listening to them.  Paul also wants his readers to not only listen but to obey what he is telling them.  He goes on to say “agree with one another,” Notice he does not say to simply tolerate one another, he says we should agree.  Sometimes the best we can do is to agree to disagree, another oxymoron, or is it a paradox?  The point being it is God’s intended purpose for us to be in community with one another and we need to find whatever common ground it takes to live within the bonds of that community.  “Live in peace” Paul also says.  When we have things in order, when we keep the main thing the main thing and don’t allow ourselves to be distracted and enraged by all the extraneous junk, and we celebrate those things upon which we can agree then it is possible for us to live in peace.  God’s desire for us is shalom not shouting.  Paul further upholds acting in love and finally calls us all to be a part of the communion of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit isn’t a lone ranger, not only are the other two parts of the Trinity in relationship with the Spirit, but by the power of the Spirit we are one with each other.  We through the Spirits call and by the Spirits grasp commune together as individual parts of the one body of Christ. 

            It is sad to say but the church obviously didn’t put Paul’s final greeting into action because we know the church continued to fight right up to the council of Nicaea.  Sad also to say the fighting didn’t end there.  We would do well today on this Trinity Sunday to hear Paul’s words anew for they are just as appropriate for us in our time as they were for the Corinthian church in Paul’s time.  I think we would do well to consider the paradox suitable for a bumper sticker or t-shirt that Frank Logue raised and that is “There is no I in Christianity.”  Now I am pretty bad when it comes to spelling but even I know there are three Is in “Christianity.”    But Frank’s point is none the less true.  Christianity is about dying to ourselves and living to Christ.  It is about the Chalcedonian formula of “I, not I, but Christ.”  The idea being that we keep the main thing the main thing, that Christianity ought to be focused on Christ and were that to be the case Christians wouldn’t be able to focus on their individual selves so much and perhaps we all just might get along a whole lot better.  

            Given that much of our faith is paradoxical, that is that we hold opposite claims about God in tension with one another; there is likely to always be tension between individuals with those differing views.  The important thing however is that we model our relationship with one another after the relationship of the Triune God, three but one.  May we who are of slightly different opinions about certain aspects of God’s nature and God’s will for our lives remember that while different we are all apart of the same Body. May we put things in order, agree with one another, live in peace and love one another so that we don’t look like oxymornons ourselves.  Amen.