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A weekly sermon podcast from Ojai, California. Grounded in scripture and open to the world, these reflections invite you to listen, wonder, and live the story.
Trinity Sunday is often a Sunday when preachers become slightly apologetic.
We stand up and say things like, “Well, no one really understands the Trinity, but let’s give it a try.”
And we reach for diagrams and metaphors
that eventually collapse under their own weight.
Water, steam, and ice. Three-leaf clovers. The sun and its rays.
And to be fair, the doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious.
Christians have spent centuries trying to find language large enough
for the God we encounter in Scripture.
“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is the traditional language of the Church.
In our worship today, we also speak of Source, Word, and Spirit –
not to replace the ancient faith, but to illuminate it.
• The Source from whom all life comes.
• The Word through whom all things are made.
• The Spirit who breathes life into creation and draws all things together.
There are other alternatives that appear in our liturgies that can be helpful
in our approach to the Holy Trinity.
But perhaps the greatest mistake we make on Trinity Sunday
is assuming the Trinity is mainly a puzzle to solve.
Because in the New Testament,
the Trinity is not presented as an abstract math problem.
It is presented as a revelation about the nature of reality itself.
And therefore, about us.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely about who God is.
It is also about what it means to be human.
We heard it already in the opening words of our long passage from Genesis.
“In the beginning…”
Before there are stars or oceans.
Before there are trees or birds.
Before there is anything at all.
The Spirit of God moves over the waters.
The Word of God speaks: “Let there be light.”
And from the Source of all being comes a world overflowing with life.
Again and again the story tells us:
“And God saw that it was good.”
The universe does not emerge from violence.
It does not emerge from rivalry. It does not emerge from scarcity.
It emerges from divine abundance.
And here is the crucial point:
Before God is Creator, God is communion.
Before God makes anything, God is love.
That conviction sits at the heart of Christian faith.
Centuries later, the scholar and saint Augustine reflected on this mystery.
If God is love, he said, then love itself tells us something
about God’s inner life.
There is the one who loves, the one who is beloved,
and the love that flows between them.
Not three separate gods. Not three competing centers of power.
One living communion of self-giving love.
Augustine was not trying to explain the Trinity.
He was trying to point toward a mystery too beautiful for ordinary language.
Love is not merely something God does.
Love is what God eternally is.
And if that is true, then something remarkable follows.
If we are created in the image of God,
then we are created in the image of communion.
Human beings are not designed for isolation.
We are not self-contained units.
We are not merely consumers, producers, voters, customers, or data points.
We are beings whose deepest identity is relational.
We become ourselves through relationship.
With God.
With one another.
With creation.
Perhaps that is why loneliness wounds us so deeply.
Why estrangement hurts.
Why reconciliation can feel like resurrection.
Because we are creatures made for communion.
Yet ours is a culture that often tells a different story.
We are encouraged to imagine ourselves as radically independent individuals.
Build yourself.
Brand yourself.
Protect yourself.
Optimize yourself.
Increasingly, our technologies reinforce the illusion that
we can curate our lives without depending upon anyone else.
And yet the more connected we become digitally,
the more many people report feeling disconnected personally.
We can accumulate information endlessly
while struggling to cultivate wisdom.
We can increase efficiency while losing intimacy.
We can become more networked while becoming more alone.
The Trinity offers a different vision.
It tells us that the deepest truth about reality is
not competition.
Not domination.
Not isolation.
But communion.
At the heart of reality is a living relationship of love.
And because we are made in the image of that reality,
our lives flourish only as we participate in it.
This is why Saint Paul closes his letter to the Corinthians
with one of the most beautiful blessings in Scripture:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Notice that word again.
Communion.
Not conformity.
Not uniformity.
Not everybody becoming the same.
Communion.
A shared life of love.
Paul is not merely ending a letter politely.
He is describing the shape of Christian existence.
Grace.
Love.
Communion.
The very life of God shared with the world.
And that brings us to today’s Gospel reading.
Jesus sends his disciples out to baptize
“in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Notice that he says “name,” not “names.”
One divine life.
One divine communion.
And baptism is not simply joining a religious organization.
It is being immersed – plunged -- into the life of God.
Drawn into the communion that has existed from all eternity.
The early Christians understood this.
They often spoke of salvation not as escaping somewhere else,
but as participating in the life of God itself.
Becoming by grace what Christ is by nature.
Growing into the fullness of our humanity.
Or as the early church father Irenaeus famously said:
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Not merely successful.
Not merely productive.
Not merely efficient.
But alive.
Capable of love.
Capable of mercy.
Capable of communion.
This is why every Sunday we gather around a table.
We pray together.
We sing together.
We exchange peace.
We share one bread and one cup.
None of this is accidental.
It is rehearsal for becoming what we were created to be.
A people shaped not by fear, but by love.
Not by domination, but by communion.
Not by separation, but by belonging.
Of course, we do not do this perfectly.
Churches fail.
Christians fail.
We wound one another.
We fall short of the vision we proclaim.
But our failures do not erase the truth toward which the Gospel calls us.
The invitation remains.
To grow more deeply into the life of God.
To become more capable of love.
More capable of forgiveness.
More capable of communion.
And perhaps that is the deepest meaning of Trinity Sunday.
The Trinity is not a doctrine Christians invented
to make God more complicated.
It is our attempt to say what we discovered in Jesus Christ:
that at the heart of reality is communion
The Source who gives life.
The Word through whom all things are made.
The Spirit who breathes life into all creation.
And because we are made in the image of that God,
our deepest calling is the same.
To live in communion.
With God.
With one another.
With the earth.
And with the deepest truth of who we are.
For at the center of all things is a Holy Trinity,
an eternal communion of love.
And by grace, we are invited to share in it.
Amen.