Trinity Sunday -- Year A, Genesis 1:1-2:3, Psalm 150, 2 Corinthians 13:5-14, Matthew 28:16-20 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Chaplain Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi May 22, 2005 In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity--whole, undivided, One yet at the same time Three. We celebrate the unfathomable depths of the mystery of the Godhead--Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier--coeternal, coexistent, cooperatively working in all that is touched by creation. Yet how do we get beyond words … to the very heart of what is the Trinity? Can we fully capture the mystery? How do we explain it? How can we delve into the depths of the great mystery--understanding more fully the relationship amongst and union of the three? Is the relationship to be understood as an equilateral triangle--equal-sided and all connected into one perfect geometric shape? Is the union maybe more like three perfect circles of equal circumference linked together or better yet, three linked circles looping back, interlocking into a single three-dimensional circle? Or maybe we can envision a representation of infinity, with no beginning and no end, yet overlapping, the crossing-over point, representing the connection of the Three? I think each of these ways to visualize the Trinity may "get at" something of just what is the Trinity, but the exercise to conceptualize the Trinity seems to ever-fall short of the mark. The visuals are too simple; they're too limiting in scope. They just don't do enough to explain it all; and this isn't necessarily easy to settle for in a world that overloads us with images, or news flashes … or ways to conceptualize a topic of conversation or the "picture" of perfection, or a world that continuously tries to reveal all without our asking--where everything that is unimportant seems to be laid bare for the whole world to see again and again and again. We visualize often to the point of overload, but I think any exercise of truly understanding the Trinity can only hope to delve further into the mystery--to rest in the tension of both unknowing and certainty. The Trinity is something that is best celebrated as a mystery--something that can be experienced but not explained. Let me say this again. The mystery of the Trinity calls us to settle--to rest in the tension of belief, of truth without full understanding, of living into leaps of faith. Because … we are after all a people of the Trinity, a people believing in the full potentiality and reality of the three aspects of the Godhead: whether we understand the three "Persons" to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit; or as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer; or as Source of Life, Renewer of Life and Life-Giving Breath; or maybe even in ways that are still being revealed to us at this very moment in our lives and the life of the Church. Belief in the Trinity, or what we're getting at when we speak of the Trinity, is to live into the mystery of the related-ness we share amongst all created things--all things with breath--all things that move and live and have their being. Our lessons today set forth some groundwork for our consideration of the nature of the Trinity--in Genesis as divine say-soer and architect of Creation joined by both a wind sweeping across the chaos of void and darkness before all of life comes into being and by a yet-to-be-more-fully-realized aspect with whom the architect invites to make humankind in "our likeness;" or as Paul envisions them in his second letter to the Corinthians as grace (Jesus Christ) and love (God) and communion/fellowship (Holy Spirit); or as the gospel writer more specifically names them as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And each of these facets are employed to get-at the nature of the one God dedicated to the creation of, working out a purpose within and the sustaining of this world. These facets are getting-at, if you will, the very nature of a God who is desirous of fellowship amongst the facets; and as created beings of such a God, we, too, find ourselves desired for relationship, communion, remember-ance even. And it is this interconnection that is at the very heart of today's Gospel lesson. Here at the end of Matthew's gospel we receive a trilogy of sayings that form a single, concise unit comprising Christian hopefulness: 1) a claim, 2) a great commission and 3) a promise; and the latter two--the great commission and the promise of Christ to be with his disciples (with us)--rely upon an integrity of authority implicit through the relationship of the Godhead in Jesus' claim. It is only through the authority granted by God and the sustaining presence of Christ allowed through the ever-working of the Holy Spirit, that those ordained by Christ--the commissioned, the baptized--can live out their calling in this world. And so it is through an authority of greatest proportions and assured by the indwelling of the Spirit of God that we can take up our call as Christians to share the Good News of God in Christ Jesus: making disciples, baptizing and teaching. In his personal journals outlining a portion of his journey through the Christian life, Thomas Merton puts it this way: [Of most importance is Humanity's] creative vocation to prepare, consciously, the ultimate triumph of Divine Wisdom. [Humankind], the microcosm, the heart of the universe, is … called to bring about the fusion of cosmic and historic processes in the final invocation of God's wisdom and love. In the name of Christ and by his power, [Humankind] has a work to accomplish--to offer the cosmos to the Father, by the power of the Spirit, in the Glory of the Word. Our life is a powerful Pentecost in which the Holy Spirit, ever active in us, seeks to reach through our inspired hands and tongues into the very heart of the material world created to be spiritualized through the works of the Church, the Mystical Body of the Incarnate Word of God. (April 25 and 28, 1957, III.85-87) Delving into the mystery of the Trinity is an exercise into understanding more fully the very nature of God--to experience God. We are of a God who desires relationship with the whole of God's created order. We are of a God who desires relationship within the realms of all existence, whether it be in shared responsibility or workings within and amongst the Three persons of the Godhead, or in the realm of the whole of creation of which we have been made stewards. And in this relationship, we find ourselves invited--invited to be co-creators, invited to be part of the working plan of salvation in this world, inspired and enlivened by the very breath of God still moving over the chaos of human life and in the face of natural disaster, or wherever it is that the healing hand of God reaches out for mutual embrace. And, it is through this lens that we can more fully understand the role we are to play, as Paul suggests elsewhere in his second letter to the Corinthians, to be living, breathing "epistle(s) of Christ … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (3:3) As we live out our lives as epistles, in testimony to the working of God in this world, in ages past and present and yet to come--and more importantly, in our very lives--we are compelled by the Gospel to share the story, to live our lives in holiness and wholeness, to practice what we preach and to walk the walk of the talk we talk. And, we are called to do this in our various and common lives … me, from this pulpit or from the parish office or at church camp or on retreat, and you at the office, or at the gym, or in the classroom, or amongst family and friends, or wherever it is that your life connects with others. Through the Great Commission, our lives are called into example, to be examples, by the most perfect example--Jesus Christ--through the working of God and the indwelling of the Spirit. And in this commission we are so called to proclaim and so called to live Christ, that we--in our simple, mundane, ordinary lives--may find ourselves and be found by God and others to be within the intimate love of the triune God, as both participants in and partakers of that same love. May we ever find ourselves within this love of God. May our stories ever be testaments to and of the triune God. May we ever live into the Mystery of God. Amen. ----------------------- Works Cited A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily meditations from his journals. Selectd and edited by Jonathan Montaldo. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Biblical citations are from the NRSV.