C Cycle – Feast of the Holy Trinity 19

Prov. 8:22-31

I have heard many homilies which try to describe the trinity, three God’s in One Person.  To tell you the truth, all of them fall short and you can tell by the looks on the faces of the congregation they remain unclear how the trinity works or exists.  It certainly is not like my role as a husband, a father, an employee and a friend.  I relate differently in each of those relationships while at the same time I am uniquely me not separate entities of me.

I often am involved in small group discussions and find it interesting when the group is asked to reveal which person of the trinity they related to the best.  Jesus of course is the most named.  When you allow the discussion to go deeper many reveal real problems with God as Father.   It seems we who are fathers have not done a good job of showing love, compassion, forgiveness.  Instead we have hardened the image of God as a tough taskmaster, harsh, demanding and yes even brutal in punishment.

The other interesting thing is very few relate to the Holy Spirit at all.  It would seem we speak of the Spirit being present in wind, fire, water and describe Him as a Paraclete, Comforter, Advocate and Counselor.   We speak of the Spirit as bring gifts and avoid encouraging our people to be open to the gifts.

The word trinity is not used in the Scriptures, but they do give us more than a clue as to how the trinity exists and how each is important to our spiritual lives.  The entirety of the trinity is important for us because our faith is not about laws it is about a personal relationship with God.  So, it is important for us to relate totally with God, all three must be part of our spiritual lives as we draw closer and closer to the God who wishes to embrace us.  All of this is reveled to us in the scriptures.

We have always taught and believe God is love and God existed before the world and God created the world.  That is fundamental to all Christian faiths and is easy to grasp and believe.  Love needed an object to love and thus we see God not creating the son but as we say in the Creed the Son is born of the Father. Jesus was not created he was brought forth because God cannot exist without an object to love.  Remember last week when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples?  How did Jesus know by His breath the Holy Spirit can come into being?  Because He was with God in the beginning and God through Jesus bring forth the Spirit.

Isn’t that what we are confessing when we recite the Glory Be?  “As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.”  We are saying they did exist as one always even before the world was created.

Consider this as you think of which member of the Trinity you relate to more than any other.  When you pray the Father hears you and if you hear God responding to you in prayer, you are comforted.  Yet without revealing your prayer to the other members of the trinity they also heard your prayer; therefore, they know the depts of your heart.  They also know exactly what response you received from the Father.  They are so in tune with each other they do not need to have a round table discussion with your issues as the topic of discussion.

The trinity is critical to us as we seek to find the heart of God.  Jesus said in the upper room the Spirit will glorify Him. Do you want to develop a relationship with Jesus go to the Spirit and ask Him to reveal Jesus to you?  Jesus also said, “if you see me you see the Father” therefor you want to develop a relationship with a God who loves you ask Jesus to show you the Father.  If you want to know where to begin your journey go to the Father for, He was the one who promised us He would send us the Spirit to change our hearts.

This day is not about trying to understand the trinity it is all about us realizing how much we need each person of the trinity to become sons and daughters who feel the immense love of God each and every day.