Saint Luke's Lutheran Church

This is a difficult day for me to preach. Today is Trinity Sunday - the one day on the church's calendar which focuses not so much on a person or an event as it does on a doctrine - a teaching of the church. I know that people and stories are much more interesting than doctrines. So how do I talk with you about the doctrine of the Trinity without causing you to drift off into day dreams or to start thinking about things you have to do at home or at work?

First of all, let me remind you that the Trinity is all about a person - actually, three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Trinity is about a story - a love story, the greatest love story ever told. And the Trinity is also about you - for this God whom you know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loves you. That's why the Father created the heavens and the earth. That's why the Son suffered and died on the cross. That's why the Holy Spirit calls you to faith, guides you into all truth. Augustine, the great theologian from the fourth century was walking along the shores of the Mediterranean one morning, struggling to grasp the depths of the Trinity. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around this fundamental teaching of the church. Then he noticed a little boy who had dug a hole in the sand. He was running back and forth from the sea to the sand with a bucket. Filling the pail with water, he would pour the water into the hole. Within seconds the water was soaked into the sand and disappeared. Tirelessly, the little boy repeated the task. Augustine approached to ask, "What are you trying to do?"

The little boy, somewhat annoyed at being interrupted, replied, "I'm putting the ocean into this hole."

Without thinking, Augustine laughed, which only made the boy more annoyed. Then it dawned on Augustine that he was acting much like the boy. He was trying to cram a whole ocean of truth about God into the little hole of his own mind - and it was not working. The problem with the doctrine of the Trinity is that it seeks to explain a mystery - something that will always remain outside our ability to understand and comprehend. For the doctrine of the Trinity describes a God who is too big to fit into the human brain, a God bigger than we can wrap our minds around. It is very difficult for us to imagine how there can be three separate and distinct persons and yet only one diving being. How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all be God without ending up with three Gods?

Over the years, people have used all kinds of analogies to explain or illustrate the Trinity. One of the most common is the one that compares the three persons of the Trinity with a solid, liquid, and gas. Water is naturally a liquid, but when you freeze it, it becomes a solid we call ice. When you heat it, it becomes a gas we call steam. But this analogy fails because God does not come to us in three different forms, but as three different persons. It's the same water, but it's not the same person. Others have compared the Trinity to an apple. When you cut an apple in half, you see the skin, the fruit, and the seeds - three individual parts that together make one apple. But the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not parts of God -each is God in and of himself. One that I just heard this past week compares the Trinity to a candle, an electric lamp, and a kerosene lantern on a table. They are separate sources of light, but together they fill the room with a single light. Not bad, but it's still not the same as the Trinity.

These kinds of analogies can help but none of them actually explain the Trinity. God remains a mystery, and God always will. Many people respond to this mystery in one of two ways. Because it is hard for us to accept some things that we cannot understand, some end up denying the Trinity altogether. Since it doesn't make sense to them, they say it cannot be true. Others are willing to simply accept it by faith and not think about it.

Let me suggest another alternative - that we wrestle with this truth about our God so that we might come to know and love God more deeply. Jesus seems to encourage us in this third alternative in our Gospel lesson when he promises to send the Spirit of truth who will guide us into all truth. This Holy Spirit has been given to help us better know and love and glorify God.

Here's how that can work: Think of a young couple on a blind date - arranged by mutual friends. Both are teachers, but their classrooms are worlds apart. She teaches first grade, and he teaches physics at the university. While he was very comfortable talking to a classroom of college students, he felt awkward sitting across the table from this lovely young woman. He was nervous and so he talked about the things that he knew - planets and atoms and theories about how the universe came to be. These were things she did not understand - things in which she had little interest. His awkwardness was annoying. His conversation was boring.

He, on the other hand, was quite taken by this Kindergarten teacher. At the end of the evening, he mustered enough courage to ask her out again. Knowing that if she made up some kind of excuse she would hurt his feelings, against her better judgment, she said, "Yes." There was something about his depth and intensity that attracted her. In time, he came to love her, and his love drew her in. She came to find his awkwardness endearing, and she found herself wanting to know more about the things that interested him - even planets and atoms and theoretical physics.

God's love also draws us in. God's love for us and our love for God makes us want to know everything we can about the Trinity. There is something about love that is very simple. Even a very young child can experience and understand love. Yet love is also very complex and complicated. So we can spend a lifetime exploring the wonders of love in a way that take us to new depths. Our Christian faith is like that - very simple, yet never simplistic. Karl Barth wrote volumes on the teachings of the church. He was a very learned and intelligent thinker. Once he was approached by a reporter who asked him to summarize the church's doctrines. Barth could have given an impressively intellectual reply, but he didn't. Instead, he simply said, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Our Christian faith is simple, but it is not simplistic.

When Jesus said that we should have a child like faith, he did not mean that our faith should be childish. He never wanted us to be satisfied with what we know and where we are. This is why he promised to send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. The call to faith is the call to a journey - a process of learning and growing and serving that will only end when Jesus comes back again. So for as long as we live, Jesus invites us to allow the Spirit to guide us into greater truth, deeper faith, and better living.

Today we recognize those who have graduated from college and from high school this year. Graduation ceremonies are often called "commencement exercises." Commencement means "beginning," but I suspect that most graduates see their commencement as an ending - the end of school, the end of studying, maybe even the end of learning. But graduation is more of a beginning than an end - at least it should be. For learning and growing is something that needs to happen as long as we live.

So it is in our life and faith as disciples of Jesus Christ. When Jesus left his disciples, he sent them out into the world to make disciples of all nations - baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything he had commanded them. Baptism is the first step in becoming a disciple, not the last. Through baptism we are invited by God to continue to grow and to learn everything we can about our God. And God gives us the Holy Spirit to be our guide.

Trinity Sunday is not an academic puzzle designed to make our brains hurt. It is an invitation to think more deeply about our God and to grow in understanding, in faith, and in love for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.