TRINITY SUNDAY

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: TRINITY SUNDAY
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: June 10, 2001

TEXT: John 16:5-15 – When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak in his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

ISSUE: The church celebrates today the doctrine of the Trinity. It is the expression of our Christian understanding of the fullness of God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. While the teaching may not be the most exciting aspect of our faith, it does attempt to define what we believe about God. What we believe about God affects the way in which we live our lives. It provides us with mission and purpose of living in love and caring compassionately and sacrificially for one another.

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I thought that this morning I might talk about something a little different from what we normally hear in sermons, at least mine. I thought this morning I might talk about God. Mostly we speak of Jesus, his teachings, life and parables. We spoke last week of the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Church, but we really don’t talk too much about God.
This Sunday that follows the Feast of the Pentecost has been known as Trinity Sunday for many years in the life of the church. The Doctrine of the Trinity is intended to define the Christian understanding of God in all of God’s fullness: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I know that many of you have been waiting all week with baited breath for me to talk with you this Sunday about the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. We have all heard some of the examples that attempt to explain the Holy Trinity. It is like the sun: It is radiation, light, and warm; all three but still one sun. The trinity is like water: steam, liquid, and ice, but still water. So, there is God who is likened to a loving creative Father, like the loving forgiving Son, and life giving continually sustaining Holy Spirit. All of this concludes with the saying, “But of course you can’t understand it; it’s a mystery.”
Like it or not, I suppose that the idea of understanding God has some importance, and at the same time we do have to live with the paradox of trying to understand something beyond our human comprehension. For all intents and purposes, having some idea of what God is or is like has its effect on how we live our lives. Coming up with a concept of God in the modern world is not easy. There was a time when God was pictured as the compassionate, and sometime judgmental old man in heaven with a beard served its purpose. At the time there was the basic concept of the three story universe. The place of the dead was under the earth, and a place of dark shadows. We lived on the second story, and God was above on the third floor able to look down and seeing everything going on. More simplistic folk thought you had to follow the rule, and the good folk might make it to the third floor, and the bad were sent to the cellar. In our age since man has gone to the moon, and to even greater distances by sending TV cameras into space and with the remarkable ability of the Hubble space telescope to look deep into the past, and to the beginnings of the creation of the universe. Concepts of the expanding universe that expands through eternity challenges our comprehension or even our ability to state with any certainty that there is a God at all. The Big Bang concept, which indicates that the universe at the beginning was the size of a basketball, raises the issue of who lit the fuse to create the universe, and where did God stand or was it as some might believe cause by spontaneous combustion?
We have probably all thought of God being somewhat mysterious, but the mysteries of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Black Holes in space, quantum physics are every bit as awesome as the concept of God and the creation. We may be inclined, if we can still believe in God at all, think of God as some kind of force, or energy that brought all of our being into existence, and the universe goes on expanding into infinity until such time that it simply burns itself out like a fire works display on the 4th of July.
Yet from the purely mysterious scientific point of view, it’s hard to come up with God as personal and interactive. People today are very locked into scientific and technological models about most everything. Some are hinting at the idea of what we say, think, and do, may well be merely the result of our brain chemistry make-up. If this is so, then our ability to be really free thinkers and responsible people is considerably diminished. What is right and wrong (our ethics and morals), what is beautiful or ugly (our aesthetic sense), is very much at loose ends, up for grabs. Without a place for God, we seem to be a meaningless conglomeration of particles expanding into . . .(what?) . . . no where? A purely scientific universe without God seems to be meaningless.
We are left with the question what is the truth?
Down through the ages, there have been those who have had visions. In this age and particularly in our culture we are very suspicious of people with visions and so-called mystical insights. We read about one such insight in the Book of Isaiah (6:1-8). Isaiah a holy man has a vision of the Throne of God. His vision contains seraphs or angel adoring the Holy of all Holy Beings. Isaiah is dazzled by the vision seeing himself as an unworthy creature of such a vision: “Woe is me! I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” A seraph flies to him, and cleans him, and calls him to bear witness. Isaiah is called into relationship with the Holy. There is a break through of the Holy into the mundane, the ordinary, to give purpose and meaning to the life of the prophet. The prophet has an experience of God.
The Book of the Revelation of John is another mystical expression from the Scriptures. John was living in a difficult and hateful world. But he has a vision of God breaking through and into that world bringing hope and a vision of ultimate victory in a deceitful and hateful world. God and goodness shall prevail.
Jesus called upon his disciples to look for the Spirit of Truth. Jesus lived at a time where the most important thing in the world was a person’s honor, or the family’s honor. They lied and cheated to maintain their status in the community. It was hard to believe anybody. Thus, you hear Jesus saying time and again: “Truly, Truly, I say to you. Verily, Verily. Amen, Amen.” I bring to you a truth about what God is like. The God he reveals is the God of Love and forgiveness, and the God who will make all things new. He call upon his followers to believe, to trust, to be loyal to the God of love. For that belief is what gives purpose and meaning to human life, to be in a loving, forgiving, renewing relationship with one another is the hope of the world that breaks through bondage, human humiliation, degradation, and lifts up the human condition into God’s presence.
In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, what we are given to see is a metaphorical expression of God’s likeness. God is one. Yet God is in relationship with the Son. Between them is the bonding and binding relationship and Spirit of Love. Furthermore, Jesus Christ, Son of God becomes the outstretched hand of God that holds onto and embraces the creation with the loving Holy Spirit.
These concepts are not based on science, or upon proofs as the world understands proof. They are based on the human need for meaning and purpose, relationships of love, respect. Through God we have a concept of what is right and wrong; what is lovely and beautiful. We find our meaning in caring for one another and being in relationship with one another. What we come to believe and trust in as the holy, as the mysterious, as God, is what guides us in our living meaningful purposeful lives. If God is seen as hateful and completely judgmental, that’s the way we are inclined to live. If God is non-existent, then there is little hope or no hope for the future, no reason for being. If God is remote and like a clock maker who winds his clock and goes away, then the universe becomes mindless, soulless. What we believe is so important to the way we conduct and live our lives.
As strange as the Doctrine of the Trinity may seem, it has its purpose. God is indeed an incomprehensible mystery. If you can figure God out, then that is not God, but a human creation. No, we don’t know where God stands. But we know we are alive, in relationship, and that loving relationships give meaning to life. We know that watermelons, steamed crabs, corn on the cob, and fireflies, dogs, and butterflies are curious mysterious creations, but they are good, lovely, in a world of simple wonders. We share in the marvelous mystery and miracle of life whenever a child is born, and we baptize our children. All of these things bespeak of something truly unique and beyond our comprehension that we call God.