Trinity Sunday is a heavy lift for preachers. All of the other Christian Church festivals and holy days celebrate events, but Trinity Sunday is all about an idea! An indefensible, unverifiable, seemingly incomplete idea that has animated the church for centuries.
God is three. God is one. God is undivided. God appears everywhere. God is now. God has always been. God always will be.
If ever there was a concept-that could turn our attention from the limits of our language for and images of God, to consider an idea for which both language and imaging fail – Trinity Sunday is it!
One of the many challenges to proclaiming the Word of God on Trinity Sunday is that there are no Biblical passages that explicitly address the unique Christian understanding of God as three persons. Such claims about the doctrine of the Trinity have emerged through historical scriptural reflections by church leaders.
Such a conundrum that causes us to wonder, “How can these things be?” is why Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus is such a fitting text for this day. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews and a Pharisee, has evidently witnessed Jesus at work: teaching, preaching, healing and casting out demons. As a Pharisee, whose life’s work is to interpret sacred texts and teachings into a contemporary context, he was probably ok with some things being a bit out of the ordinary. (Unlike the Sadducees, who were the ones holding tightly to traditional interpretations and ancient practice and believed that the law was static.). But even Nicodemus struggled to understand Jesus’ circuitous answers to his straightforward questions. His “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God” is responded with “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above!” He then queries, “can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” To which Jesus replies, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it.” This leaves Nicodemus completely confused and asking, “How can these things be?”
Our second reading today from the writings of the prophet Isaiah pictures, in words, the image of God in a throne room crowded with six winged Seraphim, shaken by earthquakes and filled with smoke. This challenges our imaginations seeking language to describe the majesty of God, even as the Seraphim’s song ricochets off the walls in endless adoration singing, “Holy, Holy Holy is the Lord of hosts.” It’s as if no words are very sufficient and no single voice can embody God’s magnificence. When words fail, the Christian Church sings.
Even as we have raised our own songs of praise this morning with, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty” and “O Love How Deep, How Broad,” we offer our hymns in worship and recognize our worship in music.
At the end of the day, as at the end of our lives, we can but offer our worthiest strains to God, who sits majestic on a throne and, at the same time, watches with unconditional compassion over every one of us! Such loves cause me to wonder if it is possible that God’s agape love for us and for creation also surpasses human words, prompting God to sing to us, of us, for us as well? My imagination pictures God as a choir singing around the world’s sorrows, restoring life, healing wounds, drying tears, wrapping us in an ever-faithful embrace of acceptance.
Today we are also mindful of so many who have given their own lives to protect and defend our lives and freedom. This Memorial Day Sunday, we remember to honor and humbly thank those who have served in harm’s way and are yet still serving in unselfish dedication, willing to give their lives for another. “No greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13)
