John 16:12-15
No offense, but you’re a bit of a weirdo. If it makes you feel any better, so am I. Actually we all are. You know why? It’s because, as Christians, we believe this “weird” thing about God. It’s something that none of the other world religions believe. And that is that God is one and yet - this is where Christianity differs from all others - this one God exists in three equally divine “persons,” whom we most commonly call Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the doctrine of the Trinity. We may not think about it very much on a day to day basis, but it’s at the core of our faith and really at the core of who we are. It’s so essential that it’s the only church doctrine that has a Sunday dedicated to it each year. Welcome to Trinity Sunday.
Funny thing, though, as fundamental as the Trinity is to our faith its is one of the most difficult things to explain. Come on, how can God be three persons and still one God? Well, many preachers this morning will try to answer that question with various analogies, metaphors and even some visual aids, I’m sure. But for better or for worse, that's your call, I'm not going to even try. Partly because I think the impulse to explain God is rooted in a desire to control. For when we can explain something, at least to our satisfaction, there's a sense of mastery of it. We’ve figured it out and can move on. But in addition to that another reason I’m not going to try is because Jesus didn’t.
In our reading from the gospel of John, he refers to himself in relation to the Spirit and to the Father, but clearly he’s not interested in parsing out all the theological implications. Instead, what Jesus seems most concerned about as he is saying goodbye to his friends on the night before he knows he will be killed is offering hope. Hope not found in a Trinitarian doctrine, but in a Trinitarian God. One God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bound together in an interdependent, indivisible relationship. What Jesus reveals without any real explanation is that God is ultimately relational.
So even if we can’t understand a three in one triune God being relational is something that we do get, right? Because who we are, the ways that we understand our own identities, and the experiences that bring the deepest meaning and joy in our lives often depend on interaction, on relationship. This is part of what it means to be made in the image of God - a God who is not one solitary being alone, but a God whose three persons are forever in relationship with one another. And as those who are made in the image of such a relational God it makes sense then that whether we are extroverts or introverts, social butterflies or monastic hermits, we cannot survive - or at least thrive - living in isolation. We certainly learned this during the worst of the pandemic: we need each other.
Which is a wonderful thing, but it can also be terrifying. I mean it would be much easier, or at least much safer, if we didn’t need each other. Because my guess is that for most of us the source of our deepest pains and vulnerabilities comes from relationships. Nonetheless there is hope in the revelation that God is fundamentally relational too. Because that means that our vulnerability, our need for connection, for the meaning-making of relationship, is not a mark of weakness, but rather a mark of divinity, a reassurance that we are, indeed, made in the image of God. And that ultimately God is the One who can meet our deepest need for connection, for meaning, for relationship.
Because our Trinitarian God is not a closed relationship. God is not something or someone that we observe from the outside once a year. On the contrary, the love that exists between Father, Son, and Spirit cannot be contained. It is always spilling out and flowing beyond the three persons. As we hear Jesus say in another part of John’s gospel, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life.” It is this love that God has for us, for the world, that is always being poured out into our lives, inviting us to join in - always reaching out, connecting us, enfolding us so that we might have the abundance of life in relationship with God and with each other.
On this Trinity Sunday we get to live the
richness and the abundance of this life of relationship as we celebrate our
graduating seniors and welcome a whole cadre of newcomers into the life of the
parish, in addition to partaking in our first meal together since the pandemic
shut down. It has been over two years since we’ve had anything like a parish
picnic. And even though the weather is far from ideal (it’s been raining and
storming all morning) there is still much to celebrate and much to enjoy. The
Holy Trinity invites us to delight in the gift of love, the gift of people, the
gift of communion together now and always - even if that might mean one weirdo
with another.
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