Year C - Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 / Psalm 8 / Romans 5:1-5 / John 16:12-15

Jesus said to the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come…”

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

One of my favorite authors, Annie Dillard, writes in her novel Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery,
like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf.

We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape,
really see it, and describe what’s going on here.

Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise. [1]

On this Trinity Sunday, the truth of Dillard’s words echo loud and clear to me. Because on this principal feast of our church year, instead of celebrating a significant event in the life of Jesus or the life of the Church, we celebrate God who is in Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

For me, there is no doctrine of the church that reminds me of the limits of my human reason as that of the Trinity. When trying to describe the inner life of God whom we worship “in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance,” powers of analogy and language fail, and reason breaks down. We are left making those faint tracings on the surface of the mystery of the God in whom we live and move and have our being.

But the Scriptures tell us over and over again of a God who wishes to be known. Today’s reading from Proverbs gives voice to God’s wisdom; a voice that does not whisper, but rather shouts out, standing in the crossroads of the busiest streets: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live… The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago; Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.”[2] Wisdom’s call – God’s call – is to all that live. God is not content to remain behind the veil of mystery.

God’s very nature is so effusive and so expressive, so relational that it demands the creation of the universe, of the earth, and of you and me: when the creation fell from that for which God dreamed, God’s very nature demanded its redemption. And as God continues to again make new the creation, God’s reaches out in the blessing and sanctification of the lives of the redeemed. God wants to be known – and indeed is known. Our God in Trinity is not quiet, but rather, shouts out in the crossroads, wanting to be known.

“I still have many things to say to you,” Jesus tells his disciples, “but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Consider that final line again: “He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”[3]

God’s glory is in being made known, in being revealed to those who follow Jesus. Our God is not content to remain behind the veil of mystery. We may lack the right language to describe how God exists in Trinity; and we may see our analogies about the inner life of the Trinity break down as we try to describe the essence of God’s being. But through the lens of faith, we see that we are in relationship with God in the fullness of God’s being. Each time we make our Eucharist together, we meet God in Trinity. When we are joined to the new creation through the waters of Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – we meet God in Trinity. When we feel God at work in the world and in the church – and see things that have grown old being made new and things that were cast down being raised up – we meet God in Trinity.

Our feast today – this Trinity Sunday – is not a celebration of a mysterious theological dogma that defies our powers of description and analogy; it is a celebration of the Living God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – who is constantly shown to us, constantly present to us, and constantly revealed within us. It is a celebration of a God who is bold and generous in God’s self-revelation to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery,
like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf.

We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape,
really see it, and describe what’s going on here.

Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.” [4]

When we take that wider view, it turns out what appeared to be faint tracings on the surface of mystery of the Trinity are actually a journey into the life of God, a life in which we are a part. And so we choir our proper praise, until we at last see God one in God’s eternal glory: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, poured out for the love of all creation.

Amen.