Easter and Pentecost are gone and while we may have earned a well-deserved summer vacation, Mother Church is saying, ‘Not so fast…’ Hey, the temperatures are warmer (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and we’re downright tempted to do what the mice do when the cat’s away (leave at 3:15), but that’s just not going to happen yet - we’ve got Trinity Sunday this weekend.

For the uninitiated, Trinity Sunday may seem like the Church’s annual exercise in futility – it’s when preachers mount pulpits and take their best stab at explaining the unexplainable: who is God? The best two thousand years of Christendom have been able to do is come up with an idea we call ‘The Trinity’ – one God in three roles or offices or persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. What this means is that Sunday’s feast is the only day of the year when we ponder a teaching of the Church rather than a teaching of Jesus (the word Trinity is actually not found in the Bible).

And while taking a stab at answering an unanswerable question certainly seems pointless, I think this is actually one of the more important feasts of the year. After all, if we never attempted to climb unclimbable mountains, build impossible buildings or swim impassable rivers we would not be all that we were created to be. This is the most adventuresome day of the year for Christians as we ponder the “Is-ness” of God – the very being of God.

Like our Jewish ancestors, we realize this can be dangerous. We resist making images of God (statues and the like) because we don’t want to violate the second commandment. So we go for metaphor, ‘God is like…’ which can be helpful (God is like a chord made up of three individual notes...). However, we soon realize that whatever proofs, formulas or explanations we can drum up fall short. If God exists outside of Creation then how can we attempt to understand Him (or Her) by using only those things available within Creation? What’s more, for any ‘proof’ to be valid necessitates the neutrality of the observer, which is simply not possible.

One thing we often learn from this exercise is the utter complexity of God. We look at the evidence that surrounds us – the natural world of ocean rhythms, interstellar order, and the incredible intricacies that make up the simple beauties found in budding plants and the eyes of a newborn. And while Trinity Sunday may remind us of our inability to understand God, it also reminds us that we are able to know God. Just think about how many things you and I know but don’t understand (I know my car works but will never understand how). We also remember what scientists tell us – that most discoveries are preceded by hypotheses; a belief in what’s happening before it is actually proven. Don’t we sell ourselves short (and display no small amount of hubris) when we conclude that we can’t believe in God because we don’t understand God?

So this Trinity Sunday, when we contemplate the adventure of going deeper into the unknown of God, we know that it involves doing nothing more than taking the hand that is reaching for us. It is the One that beckons us to forgive that wrong, reach out to that needy neighbor, and take a stand against injustice. In doing this we are saying what we believe. May we be granted faith so to do, in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.


Reading
The Great Emergence – Phyllis Tickle
The Slate Roof Bile – Joseph Jenkins
Governance and Ministry – Dan Hotchkiss