Trinity

John 16:12-15; Romans 5:1-5

Trinity Sunday/Holy Communion/Confirmation

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand;

and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings,

knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character,

and character produces hope,

and hope does not disappoint us,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

John 16:12-15

[Jesus said,] ¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Meditation

“The doctrine of the Trinity,” wrote Marguerite Shuster, “like most of the great doctrines of the church, is more a way of preserving a mystery than of explaining one” (“Struggling to Conceive God.” The Living Pulpit, VIII:2 [April 1999]; pp. 6-7).

So here it is in a nutshell: The Creator of the universe and the giver of the covenant with Abraham is God. The full divinity of God also resides in God’s son, Jesus. The same divinity also lives in the Holy Spirit.

They are inseparable, but distinct from one another. In the gospels, Jesus prays to God, because they are distinct persons. He also tells the disciples that after he is gone, he will send an Advocate, a Comforter, a Helper: the Holy Spirit.

They are all, together, the one, triune God; and they are all in relationship to one another. So you might say the doctrine of the Trinity is about God being in relationship.

Like all doctrines of the Church, this doctrine is incapable of defining God, delineating God’s qualities or characteristics. It can only try to point faith in the direction of the holiness that is beyond our grasp and beyond our ability to articulate.

I cannot give you a list of human [the better word is anthropomorphic] attributes of God—the nose, the skin, the hair, the gender—and say, that and only that image is what God is.

But in the Trinity, I can tell you something about what God is like.

God is like the relationship between a parent and a child. When Jesus came up out of the water of his baptism, it depends which gospel you read whether God spoke directly to Jesus, or spoke to the people about Jesus. But either way, God said, “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

There is a truth in the relationship between any parent and their child that is deeper and more mysterious than the simple definition of who one is and who the other is. The truth of who they are is in the relationship that binds them together.

God is like the fulfillment of a promise, the embodiment of an expectation met.

When Jesus was about to be taken from the disciples, he said, “ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”

And then, after he was gone, the Spirit came like the rush of a violent wind and inspired all the disciples; and then the whole book of Acts tells us about how the Spirit led them out into distant lands, causing the Church, through their efforts, to come into being. I wonder if any of those original disciples ever stopped and said, “He told us you would come to us. But this is beyond anything we could have expected or imagined or hoped.”

And so I can’t give you an exact physical description of God.

But I can tell you that God looks something like that moment when a mother looks at her newborn baby, or sees her adopted child for the first time, and that mysterious bond, so infinitely deep, is finally given expression.

I can tell you that God looks something like that moment when a peace accord is signed between bitter enemies, and if only just for a moment, people accustomed to war savor the taste of peace.

I can tell you that God looks something like the kind gesture you made toward someone who needed it; the decision to give to a special offering that will help someone you will never meet; the forgiveness that you were given that finally removed your guilt; the support you offer when someone is in pain; the celebration of someone else’s good news.

But most of all, I can tell you that God looks like the moment when bread is broken and a cup is shared, and for those who will hear it, a promise is repeated: “This is my body, broken for you;” and far beyond what we see in these simple elements of bread and wine, something holy happens, and you and I suddenly, once again, find ourselves in relationship with each other, and with the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Keith Grogg

Carolina Beach Presbyterian Church

Carolina Beach , NC

June 3, 2007