Trinity Sunday (Year C) - June 16, 2019

Holy Trinity Sunday
Year C
June 16, 2019
John 16:12-15

Holy Trinity Sunday - the beginning of the season of Pentecost, the unofficial start of summer in the Church. We mark this transition from Easter to the Season of Pentecost to ordinary time - with a change in liturgy, different music and different parts of the liturgy highlighted,  with our choir breaking for the summer and special music coming in. Amid these changes, today is a festival day that is often overlooked - our last Sunday in white until All Saints’ Sunday. It isn’t very often that I preach on the “day” of the church year, over the appointed texts. But today, I’ll give it a shot. Because today is a day in which we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - the Three in One.

The temptation today is to try to explain the mystery of the Trinity. The Trinity is like a three-leaf clover, three distinct leaves part of the same cover. The Trinity is like water - it exists in three forms, liquid, ice, and vapor - but it is all H2O. The Trinity is like a person - we can be a friend, a sibling, and a pastor/ teacher/ mechanic/ IT specialist (whatever occupation you’d like to insert there) all at once. Our God is like a fidget spinner with three spokes rotating around the same central point. I could go on.

Yes, that's the picture. Clear as mud, right?

When I was on internship, one of my internship committee members came into my office one day. He said to me something like, “You know. I’ve never understood the Trinity.” So I pulled down this curriculum that I put together as part of my confessions class. I was really proud of that curriculum; it was supposed to be an “adult confirmation” class kind of thing; admittedly, while it is okay, it needs a bit of tweaking. But I had this whole section explaining the Trinity, using the Apostles'  Creed (or Nicene creed - I don’t quite remember) - but whichever it was, it was complete with a diagram. Pulling it off my shelf, I flipped to the diagram of the Trinity, and tried to explain it. I fumbled through my “explanation” - The Son is not the Father but the Son is God. When I finished, he said, “That looks and great, but I still don’t ‘get’ the Trinity.” And at the time, I didn’t understand how, given my pretty diagram, how I still didn’t do anything to clear his confusion about the Trinity. I even had a pretty picture. I thought I had the “explanation” all figured out, and while I didn’t (and don’t) fully understand it myself (cause we can’t), I thought at least a picture should shed some light on it, bringing some clarity and understanding to a not-so-easy to understand but beloved Christian doctrine. (At least that was my hope).

The thing about the Trinity is that - try as we might - we cannot fully explain the Three-in-One God that we proclaim. Jesus doesn’t try to explain it. The Bible doesn’t try to explain it. The Divine is a mystery. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. As I look back on that conversation during internship, I am more convinced that this member of my internship committee wasn’t looking for me to explain the Trinity. He wasn’t looking for the theological constructs that get us to the doctrine of the Trinity. He wasn’t looking for me to push back against the various heresies declared by the early church. He wasn’t even looking for a pretty diagram. Why? Because, try as I might - pretty pictures and all - any explanation of the Trinity will fall woefully short of the God that we proclaim. He wasn’t looking for an explanation. He was looking to see what the Trinity means for him. While they may help to a degree, metaphors and diagrams that point to the Trinity only get so close (and each in their own way soon devolve into any number of early church heresies of varying degrees). I care less about accidentally espousing heresies. But I do wonder, if by trying to explain the Trinity, we miss something. I wonder if we miss proclaiming what the Trinity means for me, for you, for the world.

Instead of an explanation, throughout the Scriptures and throughout Jesus’ ministry, we get a promise. Our doctrine of the Trinity is how we try to understand and capture how God moves about the world, in relationship with us and all of creation. And that God is a God of promise. Jesus and the Holy Spirit (according to today’s Gospel text) reveal something about who this God we proclaim is and how this God works in the world. We get a promise that we have a relational God. A promise that nothing can separate us from the love of God we’ve found in Jesus.

We have a God, God the Father/ Parent/ Creator, that Maker of Heaven and Earth, that creator of all that is seen and unseen. This one who creates is not one that creates just “because” but rather creates to be in relationship with that creation. It is a God that creates humankind in God’s own image - in relationship with God and with one another. It is a God that calls God’s own creation, not just “good” but “very good” (Gen. 1:26ff). Our Scriptures point not to a God that is far off, distant, creating then stepping back and watching the creation unfold. No, our God has a stake in what God has brought to creation. We proclaim, in God the Father, the Mother, a God that is intimately involved in the workings of the world - and invites us into relationship with Godself - from the very beginning. Our God is a God that continues to reach out and reach into God’s creation, again and again, without ceasing. What does it mean for you to have a God that will always reach out and in to your lives, into our community, into our world?

And in the New Testament, God reaches out again in a new way. Dr. Ralph Klein, the Hebrew Bible professor at LSTC, in his musings about the incarnation of God in Jesus, says, in the incarnation, “it is as if God said, ‘I’m God not a human being, but would it help [our relationship] for me to become human?’” That comment from Dr. Klein changed how I saw the incarnation, how I saw God the Son. Would it help you to know that I am committed to you and to our relationship if I put on human flesh, literally walk among you, experiencing the joys and the pains of life and death. Would it help if I pitched my tent among you and dwelt with you? In other words, in Jesus, God reaches out and into our world again for the sake of being in relationship with God’s beloved humanity. In God the Son, we see a God that is so radically for you, for me, for us that God risks putting on human flesh, risks living a human life, and risks dying a human death. We have a God in solidarity with what it means to be human. It turns what we might expect a relationship with God to look like upside down.

We’ve been reading Rachel Held Evans’ book Inspired in our Adult Forum. This is what she has to say about this God who becomes human, in our reading for this week. “What I love most about the parables are the details. I love these details because they reveal to me a God who is immersed in creation, deeply embedded within the lives of God’s beloved. Our is a God who knows how to mend clothes and bake bread, a God familiar with the planting and harvest seasons, the traditions of the bridesmaids, and the tickle of wool on the back of the neck… [In Jesus], I met Good News that had a body. In Jesus, I met a God who spits and kisses, who yells and cries. I’m a messy and embodied person, and this is a messy and embodied faith” (161, 163). In Jesus, we proclaim God the Son as one who does not back down from our humanity, but rather embraces and embodies it for himself. No longer can the flesh we wear and the lives we bear threaten to separate us and break relationship with the God who created us. Because our God, God the Son, wore it and bore it too.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear yet another excerpt from the Farewell Discourse. In this farewell discourse, Jesus promises the gift of the Holy Spirit - a gift that we celebrated last week during the festival of Pentecost. God the Holy Spirit is the one who remains with us and dwells with us still. God’s relationship with God’s beloved humanity doesn’t end with the ascension of Jesus. But the gift of the Holy Spirit continues that presence. This is the one that we trust leads and guides us. This weekend, I found myself celebrating that gift of the Holy Spirit among us as the ELCA elected several new bishops - an African American pastor from the South-side of Chicago, a Latina woman, and a gay man - all under 50, and we've elected a record number of women to the office of bishop. It

is an exciting time to be the Church together. The Spirit of Truth is still alive and working among us, shaping and empowering us for living out the relationship and the love we’ve found, making us into kingdom builders.

So today, we celebrate the three in one God that risks everything to be in relationship with God’s beloved - you, me, and the world that God created.
Amen.