Holy Trinity B
May 30, 2021
Grace, Waseca, MN
Isaiah 6.1-8
This past week, as I was studying the First Reading from Isaiah, I wondered if there was a way to get a glimpse of what Isaiah’s awe-filled experience of the majestic God was like, if there was something from my own experience. I kept thinking about one of the most awe-filled experiences of my life, attending the birth of my daughters. To see them born, cut the umbilical cord, and marvel at their little fingers and toes was amazing. And to hold in my arms the fruit of the love Cindy and I have humbled me in an unexpected way. Like Isaiah, I think it’s an experience that renders you both grateful on the one hand but also unworthy on the other.
Can you think of such a moment where you’ve been rendered speechless and overwhelmed? Maybe it was hearing a piece of music that swelled your heart and brought you to tears. Perhaps it was a movie or play that affected you deeply or a piece of art that captivated you. It could have been the sight of a random act of kindness that stirred your heart or the loss of a loved one breaking it. Maybe it was standing by the side of someone who has been wronged or being moved to give generously to some need. I believe that each of these is an in-breaking of God.
I believe that these experiences and countless others are ways that God draws us into the Divine Life. In and of themselves they are wonderful, yet they are even better when we can attach the name “God” to them. We remind one another that although the Triune God shows up in all of the expected places, proclaimed Word, waters of baptism, bread and wine of Holy Communion, God can be and is elsewhere, too. Yet, like Isaiah, we are to remember that although these experiences are intensely personal, they are never private. A word needs to be uttered, a thought spoken to another or several others, the wonder of God’s presence shared.
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday and countless preachers who have not wriggled out of preaching today will remind you that this is the only Sunday devoted to a doctrine and not an event in the life of Christ. (I could quibble with that assertion since I believe the Trinity to be a person.) My own dance with the Trinity began when, as a lay person, I asked my pastor to explain it and he gave me a book, The Triune Identity, by Robert Jenson. That’s what pastors do. Another member, Jim, saw me with the book and said, “If you keep reading stuff like that you’ll end up with your collar turned backward. Jim knew of what he spoke, he was headed to seminary himself.
In seminary and other graduate work, the Trinity has been there, both haunting and taunting me. I don’t pretend to understand or can explain how God is both three in one and one in three, but I can relate ancient creeds and theories, use analogies for it and explain why they are heresies. And all of these things are important because faith always seeks understanding. I like what Dan Clendenin says: God “is infinite, mysterious, and beyond human knowing. But we should never imply [God] is unknowable.”
For me, here’s the bottom line: at its very heart, God is relationship, within God’s self and with all of creation, especially humanity. God is Lover, Beloved and Love that holds it all together, drawing us into that Love in various ways and releasing us to share that Love with others. As someone once noted, any depiction of God that doesn’t include Love probably isn’t God at all. This week, as you think about the love men and women had to give their lives for our freedom and others around the world, I invite you to open yourself to this mystery of God’s love, shown most perfectly in the cross of Jesus Christ and share that mysterious love with someone else. Amen.
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