A friend of mine said preaching on Trinity Sunday makes her feel like the heart attack victim that called for a priest who, on arriving, moved the gathering crowd aside, knelt beside her, and asked, “Do you believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?” With great effort, the stricken woman addressed those surrounding her, “Here I lay dying, and the Father is asking me riddles.”
Volumes have been written by great theologians trying to explain this mystery – this riddle of how God can be one in three persons. They are really hard to read I will never understand much of it but the bottom line is I accept them, just as I do the Nicene Creed and the creation story, as earnest human efforts to explain something that cannot be fully explained – the nature of God and how God relates to the world and us.
Have you ever played “drop the needle?” In the old days when there were records and record players and we were in a music class, the teacher would put the needle on a record and play a few bars of music and see if we could identify it. Sunday school teachers would “drop the needle on the bible,” so to speak, read a verse or two and see if you could identify the passage of scripture. When I read the scripture for today it occurred to me that we were playing drop the needle on the very few scriptures that could be used to provide evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity… By the time Matthew and 2 Corinthians were written there were explicit depictions of God as one and yet three distinct persons, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…. Going back to the beginning of time in Genesis the reference was a bit more subtle.
In this first version of the creation story in Genesis there are two hints that there is more to this creator God than meets the eye: The second verse says “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Another translation says: “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (NIV) Then when God decides to create humanity, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” (26) Did you ever notice that before? There are differing opinions as to who God is consulting with here but there is definitely a divine communication going on and a mutual sharing in creation.
Genesis describes the creation of humanity in the likeness and image of God. Frederick Buechner has said that God created human beings so that the universe will have something to talk through, so God will have something to talk with, and so the rest of us will have something to talk about. (Beyond Words, Humanity, pg. 161)
Genesis also says we have a definite place in creation in relationship with God the creator. and responsibility to care for this fragile earth our island home. We write volumes trying to define God and preach millions of sermons about God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How complicated we make it all – full of doctrine and dogma and riddles. God’s definition of all that he had created including us was simply …it is very good and then God rested.
Perhaps the best way we can get a handle on all this is in terms of relationship. Drop the needle on 2 Corinthians and Paul ends his letter with a blessing in the name of the Trinity, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” So the identity and function of this God in three persons is defined in terms of grace, love and communion. Relationship is the nature of who God is. And relationship is the nature of who we are.
Jesus said to his apostles go out to all people and bring them into community. Baptize them and teach them what I have taught you. Baptism attaches a person to the life of Jesus but also to a Christian community. It has been said that there is no way for any of us to grow in faith and the life of Christ alone. There is no solo journey for us because we are Trinitarian and formed in a relationship with Father Son and Holy Spirit.
So what do we do? Do we throw up our hands and say, “I can never understand this so why bother? I think I’ll go shopping or watch TV.” Or do we try to find evidence for God in our own experience?
If you drop the needle on your life, can you identify times when you suspect you have experienced the presence of God in your life? How did that sound? How did that feel? What did you see? What did God seem like at that moment? If you stop to think about it our experiences of God’s presence do not stay the same….any more than our other relationships stay the same.
Barbara Brown Taylor says … “Some days God comes as judge, walking through our lives wearing white gloves and exposing all the messes we have made. Other days God comes as a shepherd, fending off our enemies and feeding us by hand. Some days God comes as a whirlwind who blows all our certainties away. Other days God comes as a brooding hen who hides us in the shelter of her wings. …If we were to list all the ways God comes to us , the list would go on forever: God the teacher, the challenger, the helper, the stranger; God the lover, the adversary, the yes, the no.” ( Taylor, Barbara Brown, Home By Another Way, Three Hands Clapping, pg. 153)
The doctrine of the Trinity and all of scripture speak of the many ways that the one God who is Three breaks in on our lives creating, redeeming and saving us and filling us with breath and Spirit. We know more about God than we think we do…drop the needle on the record of your life ……