Trinity Sunday

 Trinity Sunday Ah the feast of the most holy and blessed trinity.  The concept of Trinity has been debated and discussed for more or less for ever.  And it may interest you to know the word Trinity isn’t in the bible…the concept is there, as we heard in the gospel, but it isn’t spelled out for us.  What we do get is a sense of there being three persons.  The trinity.  Yet the concept of their being three separate beings of one substance…of being begotten not created…all that is doctrine. So Why should we care to differentiate or try to figure it out? Why all the discussion around the most holy and blessed Trinity? what is the point?  1) it keeps professional theologians employed.  2) in struggling to understand the Trinity…we grow closer to God. We most often refer to God as Father, Son and Spirit and these are certainly biblical.  Jesus often refers to God as his Father and Jesus, historically was male hence the Son and that leaves the Spirit….which is far more ambiguous.  Biblically though, God is described as a parent, King, beginning and end, the rose, the tree, I Am, saviour and by many more names.   The people in scripture had a deep and intimate relationship with all members of the Trinity, whom they didn’t hesitate to describe in everyday terms.  Terms and expressions that were picked up and added on to through the centuries, but many of which we have lost.  When describing the Trinity the idea wasn’t to create the perfect doctrinal formula to pronounce, in blessing or baptism, but to express the fundamental nature of God in terms we can relate to.   A God who was not a distant and threatening ruler on high, like Zeus, sitting on a mountain top throne.       But a God who is so committed to creation and us, that God would create us and all of creation in the image of God…not individuals, but communities…We are created for relationships, interconnectedness...  just as God exists in Trinity and Trinity in unity.  So too we were not meant to be alone. But in our church, describing this relationship has been somewhat single faceted, hierarchical and masculine.  The trinity is often thought of in order of importance with the Father first, then the Son and finally the Holy Spirit…and even the Holy Spirit which is a feminine noun in Hebrew…we often refer to as he. Yet the importance isn’t so much the words that are used as the meaning they convey.   The way you understand the word “Father” very much depends on the kind of father you had and the stereotypes of our culture.  Different words will underline different understandings and different aspects of the trinity. Take a minute to reflect on each of these reflections of the Trinity and what they tell you about who God is in relation to God and to us. Father, Son and Holy Ghost Creator, redeemer, sustainer Earth-maker, pain-bearer, life- giver Rose bush, the blossom and the fragrance that comes from them. God the lover, Jesus the beloved and the love itself. The book, the word, the ink The candle the flame and the light This is not an exhaustive list, nor are you limited to what others have written the goal is the struggle to know God.  And how we react to the way God is described often says more about our journey to find God than about God.  How do you describe God in your own mind?  Which aspect of the God head do you most relate to and Why do you think that is?  Could you think of God as female? Or male? Or both?  Is God any? Or all?  The languages we have are imperfect and limiting…restricting how we understand God.  How do you describe a God who is more then a mere gender can relate without calling God “it”…which I’d say sounds terribly rude!  The Trinity in all aspects is indescribable and so we are forced to fall back on metaphor.  It’s not that God looks like or acts like my dad…but at his best my father can behave with the compassion, justice and love of God.   So for me… I can relate to God as the father.   I can understand Jesus as the son, as I have been and continue to be a beloved child of loving parents.  the Spirit is tricky… However when I look at some of the other images of the trinity I get a better understanding.  I have felt, as a palp-able force, the love that binds my family together and impels them to act of love…even when we really aren’t keen on each other…so the idea of the Spirit as love works for me. The phrase Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one really good idea of how to understand the relationships between God…but it only takes us so far.  All the traditional ways of describing the Trinity are simply the efforts one desert dweller trying to describe a blizzard he’s never seen to another desert dweller.  We do our best …knowing we’ve fallen short of the mark.  But we aren’t  trying to solve a mystery novel, we’re trying to grow closer to our eternal center of being…our dearest friend and the one who is muse to all creation.   By struggling to understand who God is and how God is we continue in our Christian journey and by naming the One who causes to sun to rise, by praising he who is the great sacrifice and  by praying for Sophia and all her wisdom  to enlighten us…perhaps …just perhaps we’ll be able come to terms with knowing the unknowable Trinity. Amen