One week each year, the church calendar invites us to focus on the Trinity. Most weeks we get to explore a cool story from Jesus’ healings or teachings or miracles. Not this week. Instead, we explore a complex theological concept that is, in the end, a mystery. And not the kind of mystery that can be solved – the kind we are invited to live with and embrace, but not solve.
God is one being in three persons: Father/Creator, Son/Jesus, Spirit/Breath. That’s not the same as three gods . . . God is just one, and yet God is three. Of course, that is absurd and doesn’t make sense. That’s where the mystery comes in. God is complicated and beyond our understanding. And that’s ok.
However, God is not beyond our experience. We encounter God in everything that is created. We notice God in hope-filled moments of new beginnings. We feel God’s presence urging us to reach out and help someone in need. Even if we cannot explain it, we know that God is alive and active in our lives and in the world around us.
There is so much more to say about the trinity. Scholars have been writing and thinking about how God is three-in-one for a very long time. We will never sort it all out. Suffice it to say, God who connects with us and the world as Father/Creator, Son/Jesus, and Spirit/Movement of God is in relationship with us and all the world out of limitless love, profound faithfulness, and endless compassion for us and all creation. We may want to try and figure out more than that, but no matter; God will continue to love and care for us whether we puzzle it out or not.
Peace,