On this Holy Trinity Sunday, if you want a concrete explanation of the Holy Trinity, you are going to be disappointed. Because as much as we like neat definitions and dis-ambiguity, the truth is that God is more: more than we can understand, more than we can know and more than we can imagine.
I think what we hear in all of our texts today though is that God desires to be known. And each reveals a different facet of who God is.
It matters how we think about God’s “is-ness”.
We
may begin with who God is not:
God
is not a distant clockmaker who sets the world in motion and then watches from
a distant perch to see what we will do;
And
God is not a puppet master, orchestrating world events for caprice or
entertainment;
Nor is God a malevolent judge setting on the mercy bench to mete out punishments.
In Proverbs, we meet God the Creator who acted long ago, as Wisdom testifies to her formation before the beginning of the earth. (v. 22-23)
And
in Psalm 8, we hear the Lord called majestic and sovereign, the one whose glory
is chanted (v. 2) and how the heavens with their stars and their moons are the
very work of God’s fingers (v. 3).
“Creation
is…incontrovertible evidence of divine majesty.”[i]
In Psalms for Praying, Nan Merrill paraphrases the psalm’s description of the heavens as “the work of Love’s creation …the infinite variety of your Plan”.
The next verses in the psalm shift to how God’s plans include humankind as co-workers and stewards of the earth, guardians of the planet, charged with care for all of God’s creatures - the land, the sea and the air we breathe. In his paraphrase, Leslie Brandt writes that the Divine “[assigns to us] the fantastic responsibility of carrying on [God’s] creative activity”.[ii]
Our Creator God isn’t alien or abstract, but the Lord we know intimately, albeit imperfectly and incompletely, through the very world we live in.
In John’s Gospel, God’s majesty as evidenced in the broad swath of creation becomes much more particular, as now we hear Jesus talking with his disciples during the Farewell Discourse before his arrest and execution. In verse 14, Jesus says, “[The Spirit of truth] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
Karoline Lewis, a Johannine scholar at Luther Seminary, writes, “In John[’s Gospel], to glorify is to make visible the presence of God, which is what the Holy Spirit does and what Jesus does.”[iii]
Episcopal priest Evan Garner goes even farther to say, “God cannot be understood but must be encountered through a relationship that grows from faith.” [iv]
As
we consider how we understand the Holy Trinity
or
who we know God to be,
our knowing is never mere intellectual assent to doctrine or beliefs, or even through our hearing the Word of God and the stories of Jesus, but through the transformation of our lives as “the Divine [is] living and acting and interacting with us on a daily basis.”[v]
Sometimes, like we sang about last Sunday, we hear God speaking to us in whispers, in “our neighbors’ urgent prayers” “or their “longing for rescue from despair.”[vi]
Other times, as at Pentecost, the movement of God and God’s Spirit is dramatic and noisy, a wind-born incarnation, and, like we heard in the acts of the apostles, it will not be contained or restrained.
Still other times, we experience God in the hand that reaches out for ours when we are hurting, in the encouragement that comes from our brothers and sisters in Christ, and in the very presence of Jesus in their faces and actions.
And of course, here in our sanctuary and worship we experience the presence of Christ at the Lord’s Table, in bread and wine, given for each one of us.
For all these glimpses of God alive and working in through and among us, we give thanks.
May we always pay attention to the places where we witness the power of God in ways, big and small.
I’ll
end with a prayer from our Christian brothers and sisters at South Yarra Community
Church in Melbourne Australia. [vii]
Let us pray…
O
Trinity of Love,
your greatness is known in all the world
and your glory reaches beyond the stars.
In
the first of your acts long ago, before the mountains were shaped
or springs brought forth water, you breathed your Spirit into being
to work beside you like a skilled artist, dancing joyously to the music of
creation and delighting with you in the works of your hand.
In your child, Jesus Christ, you have revealed the glory and honor for which you created all humanity. When the world would not accept his truth and crucified him, you raised him to new life.
Through him, you sent your Holy Spirit to pour your love into our hearts; whispering your words into our ears.
Guide us now into all truth and fill us with the hope of sharing your glory. Amen.
[i] William Brown. Seeing
the Psalms. 155.
[ii] Leslie Brandt. Psalms
Now. 21
[iii] Karoline Lewis. “Holy
Trinity - June 15, 2025.” Sermon Brainwave.
[iv] Evan
D. Garner. “In the Lectionary: June 16, Trinity C (John 16:12-15)”. The
Christian Century.
[v] Sundays and Seasons
Resources, June 15, 2025.
[vi] Mary Louise Bringle. “God
is Calling through the Whisper”. 2003.
[vii] https://laughingbird.net/
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