Holy Trinity Sunday May 26, 2024

 Holy Trinity Sunday      May 26, 2024

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday.  Generally, this is NOT the favorite Sunday of preachers.  Preaching on the Trinity is rather difficult.  Hard to say much about a mystery.  But here goes.

Any second or third graders here???  Can you tell me what 1 + 1 + 1 equals??   THREE!   And that is true if you went to Fairbanks, Alaska, or down the southern tip of South America, or way over to China, or even to France.  1 + 1 + 1 = 3 since the beginning of time, in all places, even far distant galaxies, and will be true even when our youngest member (???         ) grows old, and far beyond that. 

It is certain that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, EXCEPT when we come to today’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.  Because then we say, rather oddly and contrarily, that 1 + 1 + 1 = ONE. 

How come?   Because of our experience.  You see we are, like all the children of Abraham, monotheists.  Along with our spiritual brothers and sisters who are Jews and Moslems, we all trace a spiritual heritage back to Abraham, way back in ancient times.  And Abraham, our Father in Faith, received the revelation that there is just ONE God.  One God, and all the other so-called gods are phonies.  False gods. 

The false gods are still with us.  No longer idols and statues and grotesque images, but the false gods of money, of power, of pleasure, of the exalted self.  There are still plenty of false gods.

Anyway, Abraham rejected all that and held to the belief that we have inherited from him, of ONE God.

Nice and simple.  But then experience began to get in the way. 

Because unlike Moslems, for whom God is always and everywhere distant and wholly other, we Christians experience a God who was so in love with us, so caring for us, and so anxious to be and share with us, that this wholly transcendent God, Who is wholly Other, none-the-less, became fully and totally one of us.  Simply out of love for us. 

This is, of course, Jesus Christ.  And in Jesus, in His teaching, in His preaching, in His actions, in His giving of Himself totally and completely for us on the cross, we see the human face of the Divine.  Jesus is God.

But still, all one God.          Then things got even more complicated.  Because not only do Christians experience God as all-powerful Creator, existing before all ages and totally different from us, and not only do we see and experience the Divine in the life, death and resurrection of our brother, Jesus, we ALSO experience God as closer to ourselves than our own heart and soul; sustaining us, comforting us, challenging us, leading and guiding us, sanctifying us:  the Holy Spirit of God. 

          Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Three ways of experiencing God, each as real, and yet mysteriously only One God.  That is the Trinity.

So, for today, if you said 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, you are correct. 

But if you also said, 1 + 1 + 1 = 1, you are also correct. 

The mystery of the Trinity however is not about mathematics.  It is far too important and vital for that.  The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is about our relationship to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that makes a full and complete relationship with the Divine possible, real and full.  And that is certainly something to celebrate.

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.