Trinity Sunday

              June 03, 2007

 A man ran through a crowded train looking very agitated and calling out, “It there a Catholic priest on board?”

     When he got no reply, he ran back up the train shouting, “Is there an Episcopal priest on board?”  Still, he got no reply.

     By now, becoming more desperate, he ran down the train shouting, “Is there a Rabbi on board?”

     Eventually, a gentleman stood up and said, “Can I be of any assistance, my friend?  I’m a Methodist minister.”

     The man looked at him and said, “No, you’re not going to be of any help.  I need a corkscrew!”

     Even adding a fourth to the Trinity would not be enough for some people. 

      We celebrate Trinity Sunday on this day.  It is simply our theological statement that we believe in the God of creation, the God of redemption, and the God of sanctification; not as three separate gods, but one God who has been revealed to us in those three crucial ways.  It is central to our faith and separates us from Unitarians and other one-God religions.

     Anne Murrow Lindberg wrote to her mother-in-law and said, “I will write everything as I would like it to be told to me.  At 7:30 Betty, our nurse, and I were putting the baby to bed.  We closed and bolted all the shutters except one on the window where the shutters are warped and won’t close.  At 10:00 Betty went in to the baby, shut the window first and then lit the electric stove, then turned to the bed.  It was empty and the railings were still up.  No blankets were taken.  You know the rest.”

     Then the awful waiting set in.  “Finally,” Anne Lindberg wrote in her diary, “The baby’s body was found in the woods on Hopewell Mt. Rose Road, killed by a blow on the head.  I feel strangely a sense of peace; not peace really, but an end to restlessness, a finality, as though I were sleeping in a grave.”

     In recalling the months and years that followed, she wrote, “I do not believe that suffering teaches.  If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers.  To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to stay vulnerable.

     That is the story of a woman afflicted by a devastating kind of sadness, death, and loss.  But, it is equally the story of a woman who, by the grace of Almighty God, remained open to the guiding and comfort of the Holy Spirit.    

     On this Trinity Sunday, we need to heed anew the words of Jesus the Christ who said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”  He goes no to assure his followers, both then and now, that the Holy Spirit will become their guide and will reveal those deep truths of God as we are able to bear them.  This is, theologically, the work of the Holy Spirit.  The God of the “still many things” cannot and will not be stuck in any time, any book, or any denominational formula.  God is, in truth, the God of “still many things.”

     There are lessons for us on this Trinity Sunday.  First, the revealing of God’s will to us and for us is a progressive thing.  It is only possible to tell us what we are ready to hear.  Same principle applies in our spiritual lives as in educational development.  We generally have to take basic math and understand certain universal rules before we can understand algebra, plane or solid geometry, or calculus. 

     God the Holy Spirit can teach us only what we are able and prepared to learn.  It is only as we give up more and more self-will that we can learn more and more of God’s will.  God’s revealing as Holy Spirit is always active and we commit an often tragic mistake when we believe we fully understand all of God’s will for us in this life.  We make spiritual progress, but can never claim spiritual perfection.

     The second lesson is that the revelation by the Holy Spirit of basic truths is revealed in bits and pieces to many different people.  Preachers and theologians are not the only ones to whom God has revealed a bit of the truth.  As a matter of fact, the more I am around preachers and theologians and hear them spout on TV and radio, the more I’m inclined to think preachers and theologians suffer most from selective hearing. 

     We do a grave and dangerous disservice to ourselves and others when we seek out only those who already agree with us on various issues and doctrines.  Any religion or belief system that makes no room for God’s revealed truth that stretches and challenges their own is practicing dogmatism.  The whole truth is not revealed to conservatives only, nor to liberals only; not to charismatics only, nor to pietists; not to Episcopalians only, nor to Baptists.  It is for that reason alone that we need tolerance, openness to many diverse views and opinions.  I don’t pray that the day may come when we all use the same approach to the faith.  I do pray that we may be one in love for each other.  We must live out our faith and support each other in community.  God is community; having been revealed as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

     Finally, it is the function of the Holy Spirit to take the things of God in Christ and teach us the genuine significance of them.  The true greatness of God in Christ is the inexhaustible nature of the one whom we worship.  No one has ever, nor will ever, grasp the totality of all that Jesus the Christ came to say and do.  It is the special task of the Holy Spirit to continually open out to all who prepare for it the meaning and message of Jesus the Christ.  Revealed truth comes to us not from any book alone, not from any creed alone, not from any doctrine alone, but from a living, ever-presence person.  The closer we strive to live to this one called Jesus the Christ, the better we will come to know him.  There is nothing strange or different about that.  Knowledge of another is based on spending time with that person. 

     We will never exhaust the infinite or grasp the grandeur of a God immense enough to have created even the little bit we can see.  There will always remain something of the mysterious to us.  That is one reason we come forward again this day, on the Lord’s day when we celebrate the Trinity, in obedience to his command to take and eat this, drink this in remembrance of him.

     Stay vulnerable in your life and in your beliefs and watch amazing things happen in your life and in the life of this parish.  You don’t need a corkscrew.   The Trinity is always enough.  Amen.