A Sermon Delivered at St. Matthew’s, St. Paul, May 30, 2010

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-2; John 16:12-15

Blair Pogue

For years I was baffled by Trinity Sunday – the day we celebrate this morning.  To begin with, I wasn’t sure what the Trinity was.  I believed in God, was learning more about Jesus and how Jesus related to God, and never quite understood what the Holy Spirit was about or did, but was open.  In the first churches I attended after becoming a Christian the emphasis was, of course, on Jesus.  There was no mention of the Trinity. 

When I became an Episcopalian the Eucharist became a regular part of my life, and there was greater room to discuss and grapple with questions in community.  Every year there was this Sunday called “Trinity Sunday,” however, and on that day the preacher gave a strange, coded, mathematical sermon I never understood.  There was mention of three in one and one in three, but it was never clear how that equation related to the life of all of us sitting in the pews, or mattered.

Over time I’ve come to understand the importance of God as Trinity not as an intellectual exercise, but because I’ve experienced God working relationally through you, the community of men, women and children known as the church. I’ve had a taste of abundant life as we’ve dwelt together in scripture, shared bread and wine at God’s table, learned from the homeless men, women and children we’ve companioned, and given and received hospitality.  The God I’ve come to trust is a God who moves in and through his people and world bringing goodness, hope and glimpses of grace even and especially in the most difficult times.  The God I believe in is a God who is in himself relational.  This God is known to us in scripture as three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who live in a dynamic, reciprocal, co-equal friendship.  Each person of the Trinity is different, but these differences are a plus rather than a problem.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in reconciled diversity, where difference is not negated or downplayed, but makes unity in love possible. 

The God who inspires and moves me is a God whose life is, at heart, a sacred dance.  Early Christian thinkers used the word perichoresis to describe our relational, Triune God.  Perichoresis means “circulating around the neighborhood,” a God whose communal life is open, spacious, who gets out where others are, relating, caring, and becoming part of those around Him.  Martin Luther once wrote that a Christian lives on behalf of others.  We are able to do this because Christ lives in and on behalf of us.  Our God is a God who lives for others.  

We know this relational God above all through relationships.  I was introduced to Jesus when I was a high school student through a very special adult mentor named Pam.  She loved God and lived the life I hungered for.  Her words and actions tapped into my hunger, and gave me hope about new possibilities.  Later in life I met Dwight, who, through his unconditional love and honesty, gave me a taste of God’s love.  Through my relationship with Dwight, living with someone different from myself but with whom I am reconciled in Christ, I know that God’s promise is true: “love is stronger than death.”

The fact that God gives us the opportunity to participate in God’s life has been a joyful revelation.  For years I tried to imitate Christ, more often failing than succeeding.  The weight of this burden, the constant awareness of my failings and the inability to live up to Christ’s perfection was heavy.  Somehow I had embraced the fallacy that living a Christian life was mostly up to me.  And then Dwight and others came along and pointed out that while God appreciates my help he will be just fine without it, thank you very much.  What God offers us is the opportunity to participate in his life, to discern what He is up to in the world, and then to have the joy of partnering with Him. 

While talking about God as Trinity is first and foremost pointing to the fact that God is relational, collaborative, creative and constantly oriented outward toward the world God so loves, this does not mean belief is unimportant.  Belief is critically important.  There is a critical difference between believing that God is actively working in and through the world – that God is up to something – and the belief that God created the world and then abandoned it to its own devices.  If God is not working through the Holy Spirit in our midst we will have to figure everything out for ourselves.  If the only power is ours, which can be used violently as well as creatively, we’re all in trouble. There is no hope or guidance, and heaven help us!

The Trinity is the Christian way of talking about how God is active and alive in the world, constantly working to bring healing, reconciliation and new life to the world God so loves. I can trust this God to bear the weight of the suffering of this world, the challenges my community faces, the grief and personal disappointments we all experience.  This does not mean that we’re off the hook.  God calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to live on behalf of others.  We are blessed by God not so we can feel great about ourselves, but so we can be a blessing to the world.  We are called to fully align our lives with God’s priorities, and to share in the work God is already doing in the world – feeding the hungry, providing shelter to the homeless, comforting those who are ill and those who mourn, companioning those in need of a friend, speaking truth to power, doing the right thing even when it comes at a cost.

Trinity Sunday is about reminding ourselves of the pleasure and privilege of joining God’s sacred dance, of experiencing abundant life, of feasting at God’s table, of having a taste of the kingdom as we laugh and break bread and live with and love men, women and children from every possible nation and background – knowing that we are reconciled in Christ.  Amen.