June 15, 2025 "Speaking of God"

Holy Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

 grace and peace to you

 from the one whose name is majestic in all the earth. Amen

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday,

it’s the only festival on the church calendar

 dedicated to a doctrine or teaching of the Church,

and a confusing one at that,

you’ve probably heard some pastors try to explain the trinity using a visual

and invariably they have committed some heresy

 because even if it is hard to say what exactly the trinity is,

 people are much clearer on what the trinity is not.

 Part of the difficulty

 is that the trinity itself

 is an attempt at explaining/ describing the truth about God

 that the community has experienced,

 a truth that is impossible to capture in one image,

a truth that seems impossible

 and yet is the experience of the community.

It is the truth

 that the God who created the heavens and the earth,

 the same God

who chose to draw near to Abraham and his descendants the Israelites,

 the same God who led the Israelites out from slavery in Egypt into Freedom,

the truth that that God,

who at Mt, Sinai told the people through Moses,

 I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me.

It is the lived experience of the community that that God

came to live among us

 and is revealed to us

 in and through Jesus,

 Jesus who was so human

that he died on a cross

but who God raised from the dead,

who before he died

promised the disciples

 that he would send them the Spirit of truth

 who would continue to teach them

because Jesus knew that there were things

 that the disciples just couldn’t understand

before they experienced the cross, the empty tomb,

 the appearance of the resurrected Jesus and his ascension to the Father.

 And sure enough

the community experienced the truth of the gift of the Holy Spirit,

in dramatic fashion on Pentecost

but also in quieter ways

like when the spirit falls on gentiles before they are baptized,

or even prevents Paul from traveling to Asia before going into Europe.

The community continues to experience the spirit’s presence

 when they come up against an impossibly difficult situations

 and yet have the words to preach the good news of Jesus in the face of persecution

 and are guided in directions

beyond where they otherwise would have gone.

This is the lived truth of the community,

 who first experienced God in all of these ways

 and then tried to describe that experience

 and they came up with was the trinity,

 God three in one

 and one in three

and then because we humans are uncomfortable with mystery,

we tried to explain it

And of course we fought over it

and had councils about it,

this year is the 1700th anniversary of the first council of Nicaea

from which we get the Nicene creed

that we said all of the Easter season,

a council that was convened to try to come to some agreement

about the nature of Jesus

and therefore the nature of the trinity,

 and that was only the first council,

 and it got quite contentious over the years,

there was even a split between East and West over one word,

filioque-

and on the one hand we might think it’s a big fuss over something small

and on the other hand we understand the passion because this is God we’re talking about

and that really is the essence of the whole thing

it all goes back to the question: How do we talk about our experience of God?

As we see in our scriptures appointed for today

there is no one way to speak of God,

 and communities throughout the ages

have found different ways of speaking of the experienced truth of God.

In Proverbs we have the wisdom of God

personified as a woman,

Lady Wisdom appears other places as well

and here she talks about being present with God at the creation of the world,

 the poet describing how the wisdom of God infuses all creation

and calls out to all humans

even as she takes delight in the human creation of God.

The psalmist also draws on creation

to express the expansiveness of God

 poetically tracing the majesty of God

from above the highest heavens

 down to the deepest depths of the sea,

 and from the most domesticated of animals

out to the wildest beasts.

God is in all of it

 and God is majestic.

As we move into our new testament scriptures

 we start to see the language that led to the trinity-

 the doctrine doesn’t appear in scripture

 but the triune experience of God is all over the New Testament,

 in Romans Paul speaks of us having experienced the peace of God

through the grace of Jesus,

as well as the love of God

 “poured into our hearts” through the Holy Spirit

And in our gospel from John

we hear Jesus teaching the disciples

 about the gift of the spirit of truth

that will come as a guide,

 who will take what is Jesus’

 and give it to the disciples,

oh and remember that Jesus and his father

 are so close that all that the Father has is Jesus’

and this is what the spirit will pass along to the followers.

 Father, Son, Spirit,

the three intimately connected

who are working to draw humanity and all creation

into the community of the divine.

This is what we celebrate today,

 the community of the divine

 that stretches from above the highest heaven

to the depths of the deepest sea,

 that is wise beyond all wisdom

and yet who is continuously working to draw near to us

 to be in relationship with us,

 in whatever form makes the most sense in the moment

and so we have a myriad of ways

 to speak of our experiences of God,

 but however we do

it all ends in praise to the Lord

 whose name is majestic in all the earth. Amen