Wonderful Surprises
Dear friends,
This Sunday we will celebrate the Trinity. It’s the only feast day that honors a doctrine, and not an event in the life of Jesus or the ministry of a saint. The Gospel passage from John that our lectionary gives us was chosen because it’s one of the few that mention all three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one place. Most years, I prefer to focus on the subject of truth found in this Gospel and ignore the Trinity altogether; the verdict is still out on what I will preach this Sunday!
But for my message to you today, I thought I’d take on the challenge of the Trinity, not so much to explain it but to reflect upon it. The Trinity has been explained in many ways from very heavy philosophical ideas to picture metaphors like Patrick’s three leaf clover, or “scientific” analogies such as the three states of water: liquid, solid (ice), and vapor. With any of these it is important to remember that none of them attempts to describe God in God’s very being or essence. That simply cannot be done, though it is in our human nature to try.
Over the years, I’ve tended to reflect on the Trinity as a statement of how God relates, not how God is. And yet, I’m aware that how anyone relates is indeed how one is. In other words, when it comes to relating, we can’t pin God down to one thing or one way. When we consider one way to view God there is always another way, an “on the other hand.” Which raises the question, why three, as in the Trinity? And who knows?
What we do know is that just as we can’t pin God down to one of our simplistic ideas, we also can’t pin her down to three either, or any one of the three. God is relating everywhere; and because of the multiplicity of God’s relating, God can never be missed. Look at the glowing smile of the ebullient toddler who was baptized last Sunday at St. John’s. God is there. Look at the heartbroken faces of the families who grieve the loss of their children to gun violence. God is there. Look at the dedication of our Deacon, David Curtis, whose compassion and heart for justice led us to ministries of feeding, clothing, praying, marching, and forming our faith. God is there. Listen to the desperate pleas of our neighbors still in need of affordable housing, life-sustaining employment, adequate health care. God is there - in the tears of joy and in the tears of sorrow, in a constant, overflowing gift of self.
So how is it that we are like God in our own “trinitarian” way of relating? We are the image of God, and in that image, we also cannot be pinned down to one way of relating. We are all many things. We may say that she or he or they are this way; and yet, “on the other hand”… You and I, we, all of us, are there in beauty and in destruction, in laughter and in tears, in joy and in sorrow. What wonderful surprises we all are, just as God is always a wonderful surprise. Like God, we are all, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, a sincere gift of self:
“God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason, the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself (or their selves) in love, which is a sincere gift of self.”
In Christ,
Amelie+
