~ This weekend, we mark “Trinity Sunday,” the celebration of one God in three persons. Now, theologians and scholars and saints have spent centuries writing about the Trinity, trying to explain the unexplainable, trying to solve this mystery. I’m not going to do that today. Smarter people than I have tried. And if you try too hard, the Trinity just becomes far more complex and convoluted, little more than an abstraction.
So may I propose another way of considering God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. More than the celebration of a complicated theological idea, this feast is really a celebration of something profoundly simple: love and light.
It is a reminder of God’s love for the world, for all his creation — a love, we realize, that is expressed in three persons.
If you want to understand the Trinity, let’s go back to the very beginning.
It is there in the first words that God speaks in all of scripture: “Let there be light.” With those four words, God the Creator began the great work of creation that goes on even now. In fact, LIGHT is the trademark, the signature of the three persons of the Trinity.
After God the Father launched creation with light, he sent his son into the world, announcing his birth with the light of a star. And Jesus went about literally bringing light to those in darkness: restoring sight to the blind, direction to the lost, mercy to those who were condemned, life to those who were dead. And for those who still didn’t get the message, Jesus plainly declared, “I am the light of the world.”
And at Pentecost, the great feast of the Holy Spirit that we celebrated last weekend, the third person of the Trinity arrived in a blaze of fire, tongues of flame settling over the apostles to ignite their hearts and light the way.
It is light that continues to burn. We see it in every baby baptized, every soul forgiven, every new Christian who takes a candle in hand and hears the words, “Receive the light of Christ.” We see it every day in every believing Christian – priest, religious, lay, married, single – who carries the light of Christ, the light of our baptism, to others.
Again and again, we are reminded:
The Holy Trinity is a never-ending, never-extinguished beacon of light.
John Wesley was an18th century cleric who founded the Methodist Church. He described the Trinity by saying: “In a room, there are three candles, and only one light.”
Friends, that light is with us here in this “room,” this sacred space, today.
And the question before us is, when we leave here, are we making that light visible to others? Are we scattering the darkness? Are we showing the way to salvation and hope? Are we being light? Are you being light?
A few weeks ago, I took a trip with some friends to the Bourbon Trail. We had a great time for a few days in Kentucky, even though I am not an aficionado of bourbon! But I am a bit of a Catholic geek, so when we were in Louisville, Kentucky, I made a point to visit the corner of Fourth and Walnut in downtown Louisville. I wanted to visit there to see an historical marker, maybe the only historical marker in the US commemorating a mystical experience. It is the place where the monk and mystic Thomas Merton had an epiphany in 1958. Merton wrote:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. … This sense of liberation… was … such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being…a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. …we all are! And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
People of St. Margaret, you are all walking around shining like the sun! We are all walking around shining like the sun! Or at least we should be, since we all carry within us the light of the Trinity!
Know this, as well: The world will do all it can to extinguish the light. With violence. With bigotry. With persecution. With cruelty and hate. With terror of all kinds. With every effort to make anyone feel worthless or less than human. That is happening in many and varied ways in our nation and around the world at this present moment.
With every attempt to grow hate and destroy love, the light flickers and dims.
But we cannot let it go out!
If you want to know how to make the mystery of the Trinity alive in the world — how to make it more than a theological abstraction — I offer simple advice:
Remember God’s love for the human race, his love for every one of us; a love so vast, it stretches across eternity. God’s love gave us his son, the Light of the World and then gave us the Spirit, the light that never goes out.
Let that light shine!
Let’s Christ’s light shine!
Give hope to the hopeless. Offer respect to the marginalized.
Welcome those who are shunned. Defend the defenseless.
Comfort those who mourn. Uplift those who are being stepped upon.
Listen to those who feel they have no voice. Treasure the most vulnerable.
Honor the dignity of every human person made in the image and likeness of God.
That will make the Trinity known. Our love and light will make the Trinity known.
Let this be our mission, our takeaway from this Trinity Sunday: the very words that began creation and that call us to continue that creation:
Let there be light.
Let us be that light!