Holy Trinity Sunday

Summary

I grew up at Trinity Lutheran Church of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We called it, ‘Trinity’ for short.  At some point I asked my parents what the word ‘trinity’ meant, I had heard it in church and knew that it was the name of my church, so I wanted to know its meaning.  I know I asked that question, because I remember my dad pointing out the tall triangular windows that ran down the sides of the church’s sanctuary.

My dad using architecture to explain theology makes total sense, for my dad is an architect. So, buildings and their shapes and uses are one of his loves, something that he has passed on to me.

Now Trinity Lutheran of Minnehaha Falls was designed and built in the early sixties and made quite the architectural statement when it was first built.  Its design held much meaning, not only to the modernist school within architecture, but also to the theologian, and that is why my father was pointing out the shape of the stained glass windows to me when answering my question.  For one of the ways to visually symbolize the word ‘trinity’ is to show three sides to the same object, a triangle.  ‘Trinity’ is the name for the three persons of God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So, there with the triangular windows in our sanctuary, we worshipers each Sunday morning were surrounded by architecture representative of the Trinity.

A quick side note concerning my home church’s architecture, it was designed by the same firm who designed this building. And yes, they put as many stairs in my home church as they did the ALC!

Now, back to my story. I am not going to claim that I understood immediately what my dad was trying to tell me, but the mystery of the Trinity was planted in my young mind.  Over the years I won’t say that the mystery of the Trinity has necessarily lessened, for as I have learned more, and come to a greater comprehension of God as the Trinity, the mystery has actually deepened in certain ways.

For when we speak of God as Trinity, we need to grapple with the mysterious reality that God is simultaneously Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  How did we come to this paradox?

Well let’s look into that question.  As the early Christian believers developed in their faith, they struggled with how they could worship one God, who was being talked about in three distinct ways.  For from the beginning they understood that God was the Father and Creator. The Father created the world and themselves.  Yet God’s interaction with humanity was at times in the form of the Holy Spirit, who moved over the waters at creation and with whom the Apostles were filled on Pentecost. Then of course we have the Son, Jesus. In Jesus, God had come to earth to save the world by his death upon the cross and his resurrection to new life.  So, the arguments whirled through the decades and centuries of the early church, was God one, two or three persons?

After much discussion, they came to the understanding that God was Three-in-One.

What our belief in the Trinity comes down to is that we experience God uniquely in these three persons; our Father the Creator, Jesus our Savior, and the Holy Spirit our constant Guide and Teacher, three distinct characters of One, Holy and Divine being.

I want to share with you some simple analogies of the Trinity that come to us from the Celtic Christian tradition.

The Celtic peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany found wonderful ways to bring understanding to the mystery of God’s reality using lines such as the following:

Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,

Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair.

Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one

shamrock to wear.

Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin share.

Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer.

Aren’t they great images that broaden our understanding and comfortability with the mystery of God?

And really that’s what we need to come to terms with, the mystery of God.

God is not truly knowable.  As humans we cannot fully define God, we cannot sketch out his bounds, saying where God begins and where God ends.  God is not able to be put into a box, the very thing that so often we wish could happen.  If we knew, then faith would not be so hard.  Right?

Most of what we do know of God comes from the Bible, in which we have the truth of God’s relationship with the universe as well as humanity.  It is in the Bible that we get our glimpses of God’s movement through time, through history.  When we look at how God moves through time, we are able to see the movement of the Trinity within the biblical framework. Scripture comes to us in three parts. Looking through this lens, first, we can see that the people who lived in the Old Testament times understood God as Father and looked to him as their Leader and Creator. The Father was understood to be judgmental and law-based, a right or wrong kind of God, although grace shone in his actions. Within the movement of time we see that the Israelites were being prepared by the Father, through the prophets for the coming of the Son of God. Thus, secondly, the New Testament Gospels are all about Jesus coming to humanity and his life on earth. In Jesus we get a glimpse of God as a human, relating with and loving the people of the earth.  Thirdly, we know that Jesus left us with the Holy Spirit, the promised Advocate, who speaks on his behalf because Jesus is no longer physically present with his followers. We learn of the work of the Holy Spirit from the books of the Acts and the Epistles, written by those who witnessed Jesus Christ to the world after he left. So, as you can see, the Trinity, as we understand God, is present and actively moves through the Old Testament, and in the New Testament. But most importantly for you and me, God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit continues to move through each one of us today, because, though God’s biblical story ends with the book of Revelation, his relationship with humanity does not.  God continues to love us, and relate to us today.

God the Father, our Creator and Lord seeks us out daily to let us know that we, his children, you his created child are God’s beloved.  God the perfect parent loves each of his children with perfect, all-encompassing love.

God the Son, our Savior and Lord desires to remind us each day, that because of God’s love for us, he died to redeem our sinful and human stained lives, through the giving of his in death.  Doing all of this so that we might live forever in his love.

God the Holy Spirit, our Guide and Advocate, leads us, and pursues us so that we may know that we are never alone, and even more, that we can know that God wants the best for us each moment of every day, and the Spirit will show the way.

The mysterious Trinity; Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Creator, Savior and Guide, is our God, the only God, whose whole being is love, whose purpose is to give that love experienced in grace, to you, to me, and to the world.

So, let me leave you with a simple Celtic prayer for God’s presence that can be prayed at any time, and anywhere.

O Father who sought me, O Son who bought me, O Holy Spirit who taught me.  Come.

Amen.

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