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The Rev. Laura Matarazzo
June 3, 2007 ---  Trinity Sunday

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Or, in the name of God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the giver of life…Or, God of love, Prince of Peace, Spirit of life…Or, in the words of the New Zealand Prayer Book: Love-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver… 

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day in our liturgical year when we acknowledge the triune God. For some, this 3-in-1 thing is a real stumbling block; for others, it’s irrelevant; and for still others, it is central to their understanding of God and to their personal faith. I must confess that the trinity rather delights me because it gives me not one, but three ways to play…three “persons” with whom to be in holy, life-giving relationship. 

So, as you might imagine, I am not interested in the trinity as a humanly contrived, doctrinal absolute in which you must believe to be a true Christian. No. I am interested in what I receive as a God-given trinity of persons, known through our scriptures and our real experience. I am interested in the trinity as an expression of the mysterious and wonderful nature of a God who is, ultimately, indefinable and boundless. I am interested in the trinity as a picture of diversity that makes God accessible to more persons. I am interested in the Trinity as a model of loving and active interrelationship and how that model speaks to our faith in God and our way with God’s people. 

I have found, over the course of my life, that I am attracted to one or the other of these “persons” at different times and in different circumstances. As a child, my God was the Father…kindly and expectant, calling upon me to be a good girl, to try hard and to be kind. As a young adult, Native American theology opened me to the power of the Spirit and for many years, Spirit was, for me, the most important person of the three. On the farm, I knew the presence of the Spirit in the beauty of my surroundings and in me; we were related, all those fields and rocks and water and me, because of the one Spirit that dwelt within us and among us. Slowly, as I grew through the significant trials of mothering children and being wife to a workaholic, I began to turn to Jesus, the one who walked the earth as I do and lived a human life not so unlike mine, with disappointments and frustrations and joys and unbearable love…then I knew God “the son”…as I called out of my weakness for the strength that only God could give me. 

All of these three persons have been God for me, in different ways at different times…and always with the same result…a drawing nearer…a sense of connection…a sure and solid and never-failing relationship. These persons, these three dimensions of God invite us all into relationship! They speak to each of us in their own voices, from their own identities. We hear as we are able, tuned in to one or another of the three, or to the One. 

For example, our young people might be inclined to respond to Jesus—the “second person of the Trinity”—as he is portrayed in Luke’s gospel as a teenager. This scripture is the foundation of our Journey to Adulthood curriculum. It is the story of how Jesus went to the temple with his parents to celebrate the high holy days. When Mary and Joseph left to return home, they thought Jesus was somewhere amidst the family caravan, but he wasn’t. He had stayed behind, hanging around the temple, teaching and learning. He was where he felt God wanted him to be. His parents, sick with worry, exhausted themselves looking for their adolescent son…and then were angry with him for taking such freedom! This story must resonate with our Rite 13, J2A, and YAC members who are doing precisely the same thing—testing themselves and their parents with new freedoms, and beginning to establish their own identities outside the safe realm of family. God “the son” has experienced what they are experiencing and God is with them in it now. 

On the other hands, I have heard many people say that they respond more deeply to the Holy Spirit. Proverbs’ wise woman, Wisdom, is often understood as an expression of the “third person” of the Trinity; the “giver of life” who dwells within us, teaching us wisdom as we are able to bear it. She is the one who stands with us “at the crossroad” of decision, or pauses with us “beside the way” covering our sore heart with an inexplicable peace that soothes anxiety and restores confidence.  

For some of us, God is only one—God the Father Almighty, eternal in the heavens, before whom we stand in awe and reverence, offering our praise and thanksgiving. This person of the Trinity is all-powerful and steadfast in his love for us. Mountains speak of this dimension of God, and crashing waves, and a father holding his newborn child. 

Listen! You may have no use for one or another of these three persons. You may always pray to God; you may be most comfortable with the Holy Spirit; you may long for the human presence of Jesus. It really doesn’t matter how it is with you. The awesome thing is to see what a loving Creator we have, to offer us a choice, to give us such abundance of persons! What a love, to form itself into such rich variety to capture us, to entice us into relationship!  

...And to model for us the way to live with one another—not limiting our relationships to just one kind of person or to one group and not limiting our selves to being just one way or another.  God in three persons is the God of all persons! God expresses Godself in endlessly diverse ways and in every person, unique and yet related.  

Last year, I encountered a different trinity of persons in a book entitled The Faith Club. It is the true account of three women—a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian—who got together to write a children’s book about God. Before they undertook their intended project, they found themselves spending over a year in conversation with each other about their understandings of God and of themselves as followers of their respective faiths. The result was invaluable friendship. The three of them came to respect their differences and to honor the God in whom they all believed. They found themselves to be, truly, three in one. They found themselves related in deep and life-giving ways, sharing the love that begins in the God who loves us all. 

Finally, this is the heart of the holy trinity…loving relationship, modeled in this divine multiplicity of persons—God, calling us into conversation with him and with one another…in the name of God, holy and eternal trinity. Amen.

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