How do you relate to God? There are many ways! Some experience God as Creator, some as Father or Mother. Others relate to the human embodiment of Jesus as we encounter him in the Gospels, and we have just celebrated the unbounded presence of God in the Holy Spirit, present in all circumstances and unencumbered by the limits of time and space. It is possible that you have experienced God in different ways at different times in your life. Like all relationships, our relationship with God is not static, it grows and expands over time. 

Scripture is theocentric not Christocentric. Scripture is about God and how God works through Christ and through the Holy Spirit. Trinity Sunday emphasizes the oneness of God by manifesting God’s self in distinct realities. The beginning of Scripture which we have just heard in the passage from Genesis sets the tone for how we are to understand God. God is one. God is a universal God. God creates, sustains, orders, preserves, provides and loves. I would add that God is the quintessential and original artist! The creation account makes it clear that God was there from the very beginning. 

Scripture begins not with the choosing of Abraham or the election of Israel. God begins with creation. This means that we must jettison any ethnocentric, patriarchal or exclusive understanding of God. God is universal, inclusive; not a God of any one people, nation or race.  

It is important to consider not only that God created the world, but why God created the world. The answer: out of an outpouring of love beyond our understanding. And God’s grace is not limited to humans but is poured out on the whole universe, infused in its very essence. And it is God’s ongoing creation, dynamic and evolving with us as active participants. 

Today’s Gospel was most likely selected for Trinity Sunday because it includes the Baptismal formula which includes all three persons of the Trinity “In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. It would be a mistake however to think that the doctrine of the Trinity is fully developed. The doctrine of the Trinity is still evolving, not in some theological “think tank” but in the experiential lives of believers over time. It can start to feel complicated as the theologians over time have tried to define God. 

Tertullian, an early theologian and Church Father for example, was the first one to use the word “Trinity” to explain God and he got in a bit of a muddle trying to explain it. His position was that the Son and the Spirit were subordinate to the Father. The church declared this as a heresy but built a doctrine on it anyway and then later condemned it as heresy. In other words, some of the greatest theological minds have grappled over the centuries with what can only at best be described as a mystery. 

As Christians we grapple with the question of who God is and what it means for us to live lives that are counter-cultural to the values of the world in which we live; lives that look foolish to people with different values; lives that care for people in need, lives that forgive and believe in second chances, lives that contribute to the good of all and not only our own immediate circle and interests. This is alien to many people, but not to God, and all because we believe that the God who created us, who became human to show us how to live, and whose Spirit dwells now in each one of us, calls us to involvement and action and empowers us as a community to be her animating presence in the world. 

The writer of Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t attempt an explicit doctrine of the Trinity either because he is focused on what we refer to as “The Great Commission” and how Jesus inspires his followers to live the lives that they are called to despite their fears and misgivings. The scene is almost comical:  It is not as if Jesus is addressing ranks of eager followers all singing the hallelujah chorus! No, he is on some unnamed hillside speaking to eleven doubtful disciples (down from twelve a week ago) and telling them that they are to make disciples of all nations.  

This does not mean nations in the way that we understand the word, but refers to including people of races, cultures, creeds and genders. Telling this small band of disciples to go out into the world in this way would be like telling people today “Go out into the world and find a cure for cancer, eradicate all hunger, and while you’re at it, establish world peace”. To the disciples, and to us too, the task is impossible which is why we are thrown on the complete mercy and strength of God. 

Gabriel Keizer, a minister in Vermont, tells the story of holding an Easter vigil to which only two people attended, but he still held the service and lit the paschal candle, and proclaimed “Christ is risen”.  

“The candle sputters in the half darkness” he writes, “like a voice too embarrassed or overwhelmed to proclaim the news ‘Christ is Risen’. He goes on: “But it catches fire, and there we are, three people in a flickering light in an old church on a Saturday night in the spring with the noise of the cars and their winter rusted mufflers outside. The moment is filled with the ambiguities of all such quiet observances among few people, in the midst of an oblivious population in a radically secular age. The act is so ambiguous because its terms are so extreme. The Lord is with us or we are pathetic fools.”  

And so it is with the church, and with us here at St. Matthias. We take a fragmentary community, a fragmentary understanding of the Trinitarian God, and we go out into the world with everything Jesus has taught us. The Lord is with us; every time we gather together to pray, it is an act of radical fidelity; every time we go back out into the world to live our lives grounded in the love of the Creator, inspired by the teaching of Jesus, and empowered by the indwelling Spirit, is an act of radical service. Amen.

 

 

 

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