June 3, 2007 at Saint March Church in Norman, OK
Proverbs 8: 22-31 + Romans 5: 1-5 + John 16:12-15
As long as we continue to think that the Holy Trinity is only about God, we will probably never get it, live it, nor understand all that is revealed by and through a God who is present and revealed to us as a creative and loving parent, who poured out love for us enough to take on the human condition even to the point of death, and continues to live in our midst by forming a community of beloved disciples who live in imitation of the One who created and brought them to life.
What I propose to you is that The Holy Trinity is about us too. I think that is why the Church celebrates this Feast on the Sunday after Pentecost. This is not just about doctrine. It is also about experience of living in love as a people of faith. In as much as we are made in the image of God, then we are an integrated community of love that is inspired, sustained, and enlightened by the spirit of truth.
The deepest meaning of the Trinity is not “God beyond us.” Rather, it is “God for us.” Simply put, Trinity expresses ‘the essential truth that the God who saves through Christ by the power of the Spirit lives eternally in the community of persons in love.
Relationship! That is the key to the Christian understanding of God. A God in relationship is the Father Jesus revealed. Living in that relationship of love is consequence of the Spirit making love the surest sign of the Spirit. This is why breaking the relationship is the experience of sin, and the restoration of relationship is salvation by forgiveness. The examples of sin in the stories Jesus used are always about relationships broken. Sin and Death its consequence are confronted again and again by Jesus who raises up people in order to restore them to relationships: the mother-in-law of Peter, the child of a Roman Centurion, a little girl, and his friend Lazarus.
The one who comes to save us from death restores us to one another. A people living in faith live in love, and in order to sustain and preserve that love, they forgive. Without forgiveness, we experience in deep personal and sad ways the absence of God. What we do when we act together in love is the work of God in this world. When we respond to brothers and sisters whose lives are up ended by natural disasters is the work of God.
When we share our faith with others, with our children, when we invite and bring the unchurched to worship with us or introduce someone to the RCIA or a Bible Study, it is Jesus Christ still teaching and revealing the Father because he told us to do that. When we Baptize, Confirm, Forgive, Anoint, Ordain, and bless the covenant of Marriage it is the work of God who is present, active and alive in those sacramental moments. This is the meaning of the Trinity: a living God found in relationships formed by love and fulfilling the Will of God. Anything we do, by and through love is the work of God, and our understanding of this draws us deeper into the awesome truth of God’s love and God’s life.
This Feast then is not intended for a clear articulation of some doctrine. It is meant to give us an opportunity to commit ourselves to this God who, though beyond our comprehension is not beyond our experience because that God is present and active at the very core of our being.
If we concentrate merely on the doctrine, we might be awed by an intellectual concept. But if we concentrate as the scripture texts of this day suggest we do on all the ways our triune God has blessed us, we may be more inclined to cry out with the psalmist who cry we have taken up already today: “O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!”