Trinity Sunday Yr B May 30th 2021
Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17, Psalm 29
We find ourselves at the time of our church year and our common life for that matter, when it seems like we are completing one thing and embarking upon another. The Sundays of Easter have come to a conclusion, we have celebrated the Day of Pentecost, although we call these days the Days after Pentecost, and we alight for just a moment on this, Trinity Sunday, our feast day, before we come to rest in the ordinary days.
That all sounds so linear, like we can finish up one thing and then begin the next. But you all know that I am not a linear thinker, and therefore in my mind, seasons have a tendency to overlap, or to extend, or to be hurried, but never to happily move in a straight line. That presents a bit of a challenge for me, a challenge to be fully present to the now. It’s good to look back and see where I’ve been, and to look forward to see what may be off on the horizon, but to let the anxiety of the past and the future be the present reality, robs the present of it’s grace. And this time around, that seems even harder. We’ve been through so much, and sometimes just want to get over with it all and get back to normal.
But if we don’t pay attention in this moment, we’ll miss incarnation, and we’ll miss resurrection. In other words, being fully present to now, puts us in a position to see, hear, feel, God in our midst, the reality and the truth of God in you and me and in all of creation. Being fully present helps us to experience the wideness, the boldness, the tenderness, the compassion, of God. It is to be able to listen to God, and to subject ourselves to God’s authority. If our lives are a narrative, a story that we write with God, then God’s authority is as author, creator, maker.
I do believe being fully present is a good way to experience this thing we call Trinity. The three in One, the One in three. Because Trinity is much more like a dance than a doctrine. Imagine, the God of the universe who creates, who authors, who makes, all that is, seen and unseen, who is love, exuberantly spilling over into what we call son and spirit. God being with creation, in the midst of creation, continuing to create, loving, healing, reconciling, speaking, writing the story. So how do we talk about Trinity?
Here is an example. I really love being a mother. And motherhood has changed for me these days. My children have grown up and are having their own children. I continue to love to watch Tom and Willie grow and deepen. Deepen in character, faith, expression and relationship. As their mother my heart breaks when they are in pain, and my heart soars when joy finds them. As their mother, I try to prepare them and support them both in their successes and their mistakes. My greatest hope is that they will grow into the full stature of Christ. And now being a mother has made me a grandmother.
Even though my mom and dad have both been gone for years now, I’ll always be a daughter, and I’ll always miss my mom and dad. I’ll always hope that they would be happy for me.
And then there’s being me. A woman who is creative, passionate, stubborn, compassionate, controlling, a woman who has good judgment sometimes not so good judgment once in a while, a priest, and now a widow.
All of these, mother, daughter, widow, are always in relationship. Nothing I do, or think, or am, can be separated from the rest. I bring to this present moment all that I am, all that I have been, and all that I am becoming. It is the story that I write with God while responding to the joys and challenges life presents.
If that’s not Trinity, I don’t know what is. Trinity is at its essence relationship. It is relationship among what is, what was, and what shall be. It is relationship among creator, created, and community. Trinity is lover, beloved, and new creation.
I remember so very clearly the Sunday night youth group that the priest came to, to explain to us teenagers everything we ever wanted or didn’t want to know about the Trinity. I remember nothing else about that night, except that I left as confused as I had come.
Today I know that that is because understanding Trinity isn’t an exercise of the intellect. Nor is Trinity to be described adequately by our language, because Trinity does not dwell in the world of language. I think efforts to construct Trinity are woefully inadequate. Even the Nicene creed that we all recite by memory each week, which was compiled by men who tried desperately to describe what Trinity is not, is only a glimpse of what may be true. Because the real truth of Trinity lives in that part of us that is intuitive and relational. Trinity exists in the part of our humanity that yearns to be in relationship, that yearns to dance.
Theologians have written tomes about Trinity, I write only this. Trinity is the truth we find in the God who loves us so much to come into our lives as one of us, to be forever among us and forever before us. Trinity is the way in which our lives are lived in relationship, relationship that makes real the body of Christ. And Trinity is the life that is made absolutely new through our creator God.
Sharon Grover’s favorite hymns goes like this. “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the trinity, by invocation of the same, the three in one and one in three. I bind this day to me forever, by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation…. I bind unto myself the power of the great love of cherubim…..I bind unto myself today the virtues of the starlit heaven… I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead.” We call upon the authority of the one who is creator, the one who created, and the one who gives new life.
We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity. We must bind ourselves each and every day to the chance for new life given to us and written for us by our Creator. I wonder what Trinity means for us, at Trinity? What is the new story that is being written as we come out of this extraordinary time?
We must bind ourselves to the strong name of the Trinity, to the authority that creates us, redeems us, and makes us new creations. We must be fully present to Trinity, to the relationship that enfolds us, empowers us, gives us new life, and calls us from darkness to light, brokenness to wholeness.
In the name of the one who is creator, who is redeemer, and who is sustainer of all life, in the name of the one who is father, son and spirit, in the name of the one who is mother, daughter and compassion, in the name of the one who is Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver may we be present to the power that protects us, guides us, and gives us new life.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God: Come let us adore him.
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