The Mystery of The Holy Trinity, May 2010

Last Sunday, we baptized Jennifer “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Today we try to get a glimpse, a hint of understanding of who this three-in-one God, this Trinity, is. Does believing in the Trinity, as Christians – do we mean that we believe in one God – or three Gods, as the Muslims claim we do?

What do we mean when we recite the Nicene Creed? “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…” Do we believe in one God or three Gods?

For us to fully understand the nature of the Trinity is as futile as the little boy’s actions in a story about St. Augustine. One day, while Augustine was struggling to understand the Trinity, he decided to take a break and go for a walk on the beach. There he saw a little boy digging a hole in the sand with a seashell. When he had finished digging, the boy ran to the edge of the ocean, filled his shell, and raced back to pour it in the hole.

After several trips back and forth, Augustine asked him what he was doing, the boy replied, “I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole.” Augustine then realized that this was precisely what he was trying to do – fit all the great mysteries of God into his mind. But we do need to have some understanding of the Trinity.

Suppose we look at an egg. There are three parts to it: the shell – would you call that an egg? And the white or albumin – would you call that an egg? And the yolk – would you call that an egg? Well, the egg is made up of all three parts – the shell, the white, and the yolk. The egg is incomplete without one of these elements – yet we would call all of them egg!

So it is with the Trinity. God is one – just as a complete egg is one. Yet God is made up of three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, the answer is YES – Christians do believe in one God – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit! Three persons, ONE God.

If I were to separate the shell from the white and the white from the yolk, the egg wouldn’t now become three eggs, would it? It would still be one egg. So it is with God.

If you find that you have difficulty envisioning the Trinity, you are not alone. That difficulty is wide-spread. Steve Woolley, the retired priest from Walla Walla whom I have mentioned before, appears to thoroughly enjoy putting articles, or reflections of his own, on the Internet to stir up the clergy in this Diocese. This week, he wrote a bit about the Trinity. He says, “Speaking for myself, I like to think that I am a rather orthodox Nicene Christian…

The fact is that orthodox as I might claim to be and try as I might, I cannot hold a comprehensive unified view of the Trinity in my head. One ‘person’ or the other keeps popping out as a rather unique individual, existing within a hierarchy at that. How embarrassing!” He also quotes the author Katherine Mowry LaCugna, who wrote: “The doctrine of the Trinity is more like a signpost pointing beyond itself to the God who dwells in light inaccessible…”

All we can ever know about God is what God chooses to reveal to us. Beyond that, in this life, God will always remain a mystery. The mysteriousness of God is the whole point behind the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine does not define God, but it does describe what God has allowed us to know of Himself. It will always remain a mystery, because God will always be a mystery – at least in this life anyway. In today’s reading, Paul writes to the Romans: “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit…”demonstrating his understanding of the triumvirate nature of God. Paraphrasing the words of Paul writing to the Christians at Corinth: now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything in perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now.

We are encouraged by science to see mystery as the opposite of knowledge. And yet today we are asked to view the mystery through the eyes of Wisdom. Wisdom was present with God at the creation and she continues to be present – not only with God, but with humanity. By calling all people to seek her, Wisdom offers humanity access to the living God. She is at once the embodiment of God’s delight in the world and a dynamic portal to the creating God. Wisdom invites humanity to engage in a joyful search for God’s presence in and through this world.

There is coming a day when we will understand all things completely. But until that time, we live in the mystery of this life. The Gospel passage this morning has Jesus telling his disciples “there is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now.” Jesus promised his disciples – and he promises us – that the Spirit of truth would come to guide us into all truth. Not suddenly and instantaneously, but slowly and gradually, in a measure appropriate to our ability to receive it.

So what are we to do with this doctrine of the Holy Trinity? I would like for us to be reminded every time we hear about it or ponder it, that the Good News is not that we have God all figured out, but that God has us figured out. I want us to be reminded that our journey of life is not one in which all the mysteries of life will be solved, but one in which we know that God is behind us, ahead of us, and beside us leading us to the day when all mysteries will be revealed.

As Jason Sierra wrote, this day we are invited to stand in faith, to be precisely where we are, in the mystery of the Trinity, in the mystery of a God revealed to us in this moment, this age, this life, and this faith – a mystery that we can explore and unravel together, knowing that in seeing more truly, with each new revelation, we step into greater hope, greater joy, greater love, greater knowledge and communion with God the Three-in-One.