June 15, 2025

Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Epiphany, Winnipeg

There’s a painting up on the screen here. It’s a famous Russian Orthodox icon written by Andrei Rublev in the early 1400s. It’s known by two different names: one is “The Hospitality of Abraham,” and it recalls that time when three people, who it turns out are three angels, came to visit Abraham to tell him and Sarah about the son they will have. So Abraham and Sarah put on a feast for them, and here they are around the dinner table. The other name, the more famous name, is simply “The Trinity.” Of course, you can’t paint a picture of God, but in this icon you see a hint of who God is. Not one God all alone, but three persons, sitting at a table, breaking bread together, talking together, pondering life together, being in relationship with each other.

And being in a relationship with us.

1 Here’s a Holy Trinity story. It’s February 1993, the scene is the basement of Christ Lutheran Church in Rhein, Saskatchewan. A classic rural church basement, with dark wood paneling all around and a carpet of indeterminate colour and age underfoot. Seven confirmation students in Grade seven and eight are gathered around a table – one of those classic rural church basement tables. There’s a chalkboard at the end of the table – some of you might remember what a chalkboard is - and a pastor, who looks an awful lot like you might imagine I looked thirty two years ago, is standing there, chalk in hand. He’s gearing up to teach this class all about the Holy Trinity. It’s going to be SO GREAT. .

It was awful. I know, because I was there. Well, maybe not awful, but super-boring. My long talk about the Trinity did not move them the way I thought it would, so I went back home deflated and frustrated.

A few months after that half of them got confirmed, and the other half were confirmed a year later, even though my little Trinity talk didn’t really work out the way I wanted it to.

The little Trinity talk didn’t work out, but I saw some things and learned some things in the time that I had with those confirmation students, and with all the people around them in that little town called Rhein, over the next three years.

We had three full winters together, and with all those people I saw the change of seasons like I had never seen them before. I had grown up in the city and had never really known what full moon in winter was like until I spent that first winter when for a few days every month you could see everything out there in the middle of the night while the moon shone on that snow that stretched across fields forever. Everyone I mentioned it to still talked about the moonlight with a kind of awe, even if they’d had eighty or ninety winters to get used to it all. I saw the world around me come to life in the spring, and through the year there was always talk about life-y earthy things, like crops and soil and calving and fishing and gardens.

I learned to delight in creation, like the woman Wisdom we heard about in the first reading. And I heard and saw those confirmation students get all caught up in all of that too, and even though talking about the Trinity didn’t pan out, they lived their lives all caught up in the beauty of full moons and growing things and rain and creation and all that goodness that we try to put into words but can’t when we say something like, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

Over my years with those people in that small town, and all my years since then, inside and outside of church circles, I’ve seen and experienced so much of the goodness of creation, and the joy of human love and the marvel of people coming together, and the resilience of people who might have given up long ago, and forgiveness and good things and awful things where life still seems to hang on. I’ve seen people with talents and gifts and the ability to love, and I’ve received comfort and care, and so on and so on and there’s been so much life… And I’ve learned, like a woman named Wisdom who we heard about in that first reading, something about delighting in the human race, all these people God has created and given to one another.

All of which is to say that even if that talk about Trinity in a classic rural church basement didn’t really work at all, there’s been more of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – living in the world all around me than there could ever be in a textbook, a lecture, a catechism or even a sermon. I might even get personal enough about it to say that I’ve met those three – the three we call Trinity – in more ways than I even know.

That might almost be as much as I want to say on this Holy Trinity Sunday. That’s the thing about Trinity: Sometimes the more we talk about Holy Trinity the more it becomes all talk. But the God we worship and who calls us together, the three-in-one, is not a topic to discuss, but is a living someone who lives among us. One who has a relationship with us and with the whole creation; who is right here; who meets us. Meets us in the world around us, in bread and wine, in this gathering of people and gatherings of people in the most non-churchy of places too, in lives lived with loved ones and strangers.

Here’s the closest we’ll get to a lecture today: when we name God as three-in-one, or as three persons in one God, or as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or some kind of variation on that, we’re saying that God is always in relationship. So there are three persons in God, who give and receive from each other, who share with each other, who love each other. One comes into the world like Jesus did, one is sent into the world like the Holy Spirit is. It’s not that God is just some big…God force…who does three different kinds of things or has a few different roles. It’s just that even God is three people who can’t help but be in relationships. And right from before the beginning began God has been these three who have a relationship with each other in one God.

And if I say much more your eyes and mine will begin to glaze over if they haven’t already. Just remember – God is always a God of relationships, who lives in community with God and with us and with creation. So any time we name God here, or say the creed or see or make the sign of the cross, we’re reminding each other that God is living and related and loving. That’s just who God is.

I’ll just give you some homework (because all this started with a story of confirmation class, right?): Take the bulletin home with you, or if you’re online hang onto that Order of Service you downloaded. Look up the four readings we read this morning and read through them. Don’t get all hung up on the complicated ins and outs and details of it all. Just look for signs of God’s relationships. Look for God’s relationship with creation, and with a woman name wisdom. Look for how God gives us a role in creation and gives babies a voice that will bring down tyrants. Look for how God gives peace, and shares glory and love with us, and sends the spirit – one of those three in one persons – to be with us to help carry us along. Look for how those three in one share with each other and share with us.

There’s just relationship all over.

Then go on with whatever your day is; your day lived in the presence and love of that God who just can’t help but be in relationship with us.

Happy Holy Trinity Day.