Trinity Sunday 2017A
June 11, 2017
Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity, a feast that has driven many a seminarian and new priest to their knees in hopes that they won’t draw the short straw and have to preach it; and I admit to a bit of fear myself; preparing sermons on the Trinity have often been used as jokes among friends as a test to see if the preacher was orthodox or not, sometimes with those listening to the sermon counting the number of times the preacher wandered into a heretical territory…
The good or the bad news, depending on one’s perspective is that I am fairly awful at both math and history; so, all the language that has been used over the centuries to describe the Trinity, doesn’t really tie me up in knots as it sometimes does others. Honestly, when I start reading things about three persons and one nature, I get a bit of a headache… Trying to explain any of that for me, kind of misses the point, at least for modern congregations. It just doesn’t really help me get through my day.
What strikes me as I read these readings, is relationship… Paul’s blessing at the end of his letter to the Corinthian church is simple and yet very powerful. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Grace, love, communion… what do you think about when you hear those three words…. Grace, love, communion… Certainly, I think about God… particularly, I think about Jesus, but let’s get a little more abstract for a minute… as I reflect on those three things, it occurs to me that those are three things that we all really need; we all need grace… that wonderful gift from God that helps us know we are loved and forgiven even when we really mess up; we all need and desire love in our life, to be appreciated for who we are; and of course, we need communion, we need to be in relationship to God and each other. God created us to be in relationship… and for me, perhaps that is the key… the great mystery of the Trinity is at least, in part, about relationship…
It seem to me that it isn’t really possible to have grace, love and communion in a vacuum. No one can live into those ideals without others… as people created by a God of love, our every desire is to be in relationship with others. God created out of love because love leads us into relationship with God, and I’d like to think that perhaps God desired to be in relationship with us as well. God lives in community in God’s very being in the Trinity and has thrown open wide God’s very life for you and I to participate in that holy community built on grace, love and communion…
You and I, as disciples who are members of the kingdom of God, also invite others to participate in God’s life as well. As the church, we baptize in the name of the Trinity, bringing the newly baptized into the community of the church, so that they may always know that they too are God’s beloved and our brothers and sisters in the kingdom… it is perhaps one of the most important ministries that we share in, together with celebrating the Eucharist together. All of our ministry and work as the church is born from those two great sacraments. It is there that we are invited to participate with God in the work of the kingdom, and also where we discover whose image we are made in.
Can we truly understand the Trinity? Can we really understand who God is? It seems to me that the moment we think we understand, we should perhaps realize that we can’t. But honestly, anything worth loving is worth spending our entire life learning about, and trying to understand. All the definitions in the world will never help us understand what or who the Trinity is, as much as being in relationship with God will. So, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Experience and relationship are important… and as those who are created in God’s image, the image of grace, love and communion, it is also our calling to bring those kingdom values to others, who may have forgotten in whose image they are created.
So now that we have experienced the hope of Easter and the comfort of the gift of the Holy Spirit, it’s time to get to work. Nothing can stop us. Jesus is with us every step of the way, even to the end of the age.
