In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
We are so accustomed to hearing today’s reading from Genesis, we don’t give it much deep thought. God created – and the world as we know it began. However, if we were asked to explain exactly how God managed this miracle, despite all Genesis tells us, we would pause in confusion. Yet, here we are today, after Pentecost, after Eastertide, on the first Sunday of what some call “Ordinary Time” – on Trinity Sunday. The doctrine of the Trinity is a bedrock of our faith, but it is as difficult to explain as is creation itself.
One of the challenges on Trinity Sunday is that there are no Biblical passages that discuss our Christian understanding of God as three Persons. The word in the Athanation Creed, one of the three creeds accepted as valid by the Church, is “personas”. Like the mask Greek actors wear to play different characters. Change the mask, and you have a different persona, but it is always the same person behind the three personas!
Other monotheists, such as our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, are completely baffled by bold assertions in Christian creeds and in doctrinal theses of just how the One God of the Abrahamic religions can appear to be three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and still be only one God.
Nerveless, here we are, on the Sunday in the Church calendar that especially celebrates this enduring mystery. Holy Trinity Sunday!
For us at Mystic Side, today is also communion Sunday, a Sunday when we engage in a community action of love, a sharing of God’s love in the actions Jesus gave us. So today, rather than trying to explain the theology of Trinity, of our God in three Persons, we might look at what this our Triune God means for us, for the Church.
The major point about the Trinity is this: God is social, and so are we.
Martin Luther once said, “God is nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love.” And if God is love, then God cannot exist in isolation. Think about it. To love is to be in relationship, and to love perfectly is to be in eternal relationship. If God is perfect love, then God must be social.
God is not some simple, solitary, isolated, individual being. God is not some kind of Wizard of Oz hiding out behind the curtain of the stars. Rather, God is personal in the sense that God is the love that creates, redeems and sustains everything that exists. At the heart of the universe is the divine union of Persons in love, and if God is the love that creates and reconciles and transforms all that exists, then God must be relational in God’s essence. So when we say that God is Trinity, it is a way of saying that God is love, nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love, a love that overflows into all of creation.
If God is social, then we are social too. If we are created in the image and likeness of the Triune God, then we are also created to be in loving relationships. This is actually quite a radical statement in our society, where we have always prized rugged individualism. Think about the Me Generation. Many folks, philosophers and theologians, have noted that the rampant individualism of our society is one of the greatest problems facing us today.
In his book “God in Public,” Mark Toulouse (Disciples of Christ/UCC minister) writes:
“Personal success and consumption have become the primary ends of American life. As [the Baptist preacher] Carlyle Marney used to say, Americans are addicted to salvation by successing. This statement might today be altered to include salvation by consuming. The pursuit of private gain has become the great American sport in all walks of life.”
And this is bad. It is bad not only for society, but it is also bad for people themselves. Mother Teresa always pointed out that she was not called to be successful. God had called her to be faithful. The loneliness and isolation and despair that are so prevalent in our society stem from this view of people as isolated, individual selves.
But the doctrine of the Trinity tells us success is not our goal. It tells us that we are created for loving relationships. We are hard-wired for relationships of mutual fellowship and love.
God is love, and thus the purpose of our lives is to participate in that love, and to share that love with others. That is why, when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, He said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
This may be the key to the universe.
God is love. Participate in that love. Share that love.
God is social, and so are we. God is nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love, and we are created to participate in that love and to share that love. These insights that come from thinking about the Trinity could really transform how we think about God and ourselves and our place in the world.
The Holy Trinity is a way of saying - that costly love, that vulnerable love, that suffering love that we know in Christ, that love that continues in the new life given to us in the Spirit is who God most truly, most fully is. God is Emmanuel, “God with us” and for us, who suffers with us and for us, not hanging out in some far corner of the universe watching all the pain and sorrow of the world, but rather hanging on the cross for us and for our salvation.
The Trinity, at its heart, is a way of pointing to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the new life that comes from this, and saying that is what God is most truly like. The love that moves the sun and the other stars is the same love that poured itself out in the self-giving love of Jesus.
God is nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love. And if we are created in the image and likeness of God, then we are to find our true selves not in being aloof and alone and apart and above it all, not in being successful, but rather in giving of ourselves away in love, in our vulnerable and suffering hearts, and in all those ways we are with and for one another.
God is social, and so are we.
God is nothing but burning love and a glowing oven full of love.
This is why we were created - to participate in and share that love.
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus Christ, You walked among us, and know our weakness and our fear. Grant that we who follow You may have the courage to live our faith, to keep our promises to You, to accept the uncomfortable and sometimes painful process of spreading Love wherever we go, that we may follow Your example, surrendering to You, and willingly loving all people in Your Name. This we ask for the sake of Your love. Amen