Trinity

In the Christian Church, the calendar goes through a cycle of festivals and occasions that repeat each year. Advent is a season of preparation during which we read the words of the prophets and tell the stories of the family of Jesus. Christmas is a celebration of the human birth of the Christ child and of events in his early life. Epiphany celebrates the visit of the magi to the child and the spreading of the gospel beyond the Jewish community to the wider world. Lent recalls the life and ministry of Jesus and invites the faithful to think of Jesus’ humanity. It comes to four during Holy Week when the church prepares for seasons of grief and loss as believers face their own mortality and hear the stories of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. Easter is the festival of resurrection and the joy of knowing that death is not the end of our human story. Pentecost celebrates the birth of the church and the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the longest season of the Christian year and parts of Pentecost are recognized as ordinary time. Then the process begins again with Advent.

In general, the festivals of our faith follow the events of the life of Jesus - his birth, his growth to maturity, his trials and temptations, his ministry and miracles, his crucifixion and his resurrection. Pentecost is anchored in the story of an event in the life of the early church when its message and mission were revealed.

In that cycle, on the day of Pentecost in the eastern tradition and on the Sunday following Pentecost in the western church, there is a festival that is distinct. Trinity Sunday doesn’t celebrate an event in the history of the church, but rather an idea, a concept, a doctrine.

The stories of our people are filled with occasions when we failed to fully understand God’s nature and relationships in the world. When Moses went up on the mountain to confer with God and learn how the great commandments provided a way to human freedom, the people tried to make their religion into a simple matter of having an object to worship. They embraced a series of lies about having an idol. Moses, speaking for God, had to call the people away from those idols to return to worshiping the God of freedom. God is more complex than just an image to draw the people together. God is invested in human freedom and does not demand that the people be enslaved to a narrow set of concepts.

In the time of Jesus, there were faithful people who wanted to reduce the practice of faith to a narrow set of rules and regulations as if the complexity of the relationship with God could be externally judged and regulated. Jesus, through parables and sermons, invited believers to embrace a more complex relationship with God.

We humans have a tendency to reduce God to our own projections. Since we are created in the image of God, God must be like us and want the same things we want. Other people should be like us. It is a dangerous idea that leads us away from true freedom.

On Trinity Sunday we are reminded again that God is not a singular concept, but an unfathomable mystery. God is in essence, at the very core, relationship. The historic words of the trinity proclamation express that relationship: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One-in-Three and Three-in One. The use of family words helps us understand that the love embodied in God is similar to the love of family. The attachment of gender to God by the use of the word “father” can be a barrier to understanding the trinity. Many theologians prefer the use of Creator in place of Father to more fully express the complexity of God’s relational character. The traditional formula, however, remains a part of the worship life of the church and is used in baptism.

The celebration of Trinity Sunday is a reminder that every day is a day to celebrate God’s deep and abiding relationship with human life. God who works through creation to bring new life is also God who comes to us in human form and is also God who descends as Spirit to infuse our individual and communal lives. God is all of this and more. Whenever we declare that we fully understand God, know God’s will and purpose, or possess God in ways that others do not, we need to be reminded of Trinity Sunday. God isn’t ours to possess or understand or know in the sense that we embrace other ideas. God is holy mystery of relationship within relationship. God is not just one thing, but rather everything.

My human father used to repeat an aphorism that he probably heard as a child, perhaps from another family member: “If you think you’re a saint, you ain’t.” Part of a saintly life is the humility to admit that there is still much to be learned and ways to be better as a person. When we think that we fully understand God, the god we are understanding is only part of the complete nature of God. There is always more to be learned and more to be revealed. Trinity Sunday is an invitation to embrace the process of learning and growing in faith.

In the church we accept faith formation as a lifelong process, not a single task. We don’t so much graduate from Sunday School as mature into a life of learning and growing in faith. Each day is an opportunity to discover more of the power and presence of God in our lives and in our world. Church leaders are constantly discovering new ways to express faith in worship, new ways to engage faith in mission and ministry, and new ways to share Gods love in extravagant hospitality.

Happy Trinity Sunday. May it be for you the beginning of a new chapter of discovery. May the mystery of God surprise and amaze you today and every day of your life.

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