Trinity Sunday - the only Sunday on the ecclesiastical
calendar dedicated to a doctrine. All the other special days
hark back to events - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost - but not this
one. Trinity Sunday is the day we Christians celebrate the
reality of one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.
Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is confusing. Even the
finest theologians find themselves at a loss to explain it
satisfactorily. Some use the analogy of the masks worn by actors
in the old Greek tragedies. One actor wearing many masks can
play many parts, or personas, but it is still just one actor.
Others have used the analogy of water. Under normal
conditions, water, H2O, is a liquid, but freeze it and it becomes
a solid. Heat it and it becomes steam. It is still H2O,
whatever form it takes, but it can have three radically different
forms.
Still others have used the analogy of roles and
relationships. I can be at the same time a father, a son, a
husband, a nephew, etc. - one man but many roles. None of those
are perfect analogies, but they are the best we can do with the
finite minds God has given us. The doctrine of the Trinity is
the very limited way in which we describe the God we have come to
know in the pages of scripture and the life of faith. What it
says about God is surely not enough, nor is ANYTHING enough.
Once we come to that point in our faith journey, we are just
beginning to understand.
The psalmist had a taste of this when he looked around at
the immensity of God's creation and asked, "When I consider your
heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which
you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?" Good question.
O Lord, my God, When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;
I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed. (1)
Mind boggling! Six million stars in just one corner of a
galaxy and a million galaxies so far away that it will take a
million years for the light from one of them to show up in my
Pennsylvania sky some night. And the God who made all that cares
more for us than about all THAT! There is BOGGLE for you!
Did you know that Psalm 8 has the distinction of being the
first biblical text to reach the moon? Yup. The Apollo 11
mission left a silicon disc containing messages from 73 nations,
including the Vatican, which contributed this psalm. An
appropriate choice for a cosmic journey, don't you think? It is
certainly an eloquent proclamation of the cosmic sovereignty of
God. At the same time it is a remarkable affirmation of the
exalted status and vocation of the human creature. (2) God has
chosen us to be partners in the management of this remarkable
creation. "You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you
put everything under his feet," in the language of the text. In
other words, God says, "This is all yours to take care of now!"
EQUALLY mind boggling. And a little disconcerting.
Perhaps you saw Al Gore on the cover of TIME magazine two
weeks ago. There are still folks who want him to run for
president again, but he has demurred so far. His big work these
days is to build a popular movement to confront what he calls
"the most serious crisis we've ever faced" - global warming. He
has logged countless miles in the past four years, crisscrossing
the planet to present his remarkably powerful slide show and the
Oscar-winning documentary that is based on it, An Inconvenient
Truth, to groups of every size and description. In tandem with
Hurricane Katrina and a rising chorus of warnings from climate
scientists, Gore's film has helped trigger one of the most
dramatic opinion shifts in history as Americans are realizing
that we must change the way we live.
In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming
majority of those surveyed -- 90% of Democrats, 80% of
independents, 60% of Republicans -- said they favor "immediate
action" to confront the crisis. (3) When the psalmist says what he
does about "all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the
paths of the seas," he is envisioning care, not carnage. We have
a BIG responsibility here. And yes, it is a little mind
boggling.
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in.
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Here is where the boggling really gets into high gear. My
mind can hardly go on when I try to think how people could make
themselves take a mallet and drive nails through the gristle and
bone of men's hands and then hang them up on crosses along the
roads of their empire and call it PAX...PEACE - strange kind of
peace, that; and that almost 2,000 years later, in the year 2007,
my life is affected profoundly by one of those crosses, the one
with the young rabbi from Nazareth on it, the one who is called
the PRINCE of peace, the one who, of all things, conquered death
by dying. It is hard to imagine.
I have told you before of Sam Shoemaker, one of the great
preachers in the first half of the last century and this story he
told on himself. He confessed that during his seminary days, as
he studied and reflected on God and creation, that he found it
difficult to imagine how the Lord could even THINK about these
little specks of life called human beings. How could God have
time for us when there was so much more to demand the divine
attention? Shoemaker explained his thoughts to one of his
professors, an eminently wise man. "Mr. Shoemaker," he said,
"your problem is that your God is too small. God takes care of
the sun, the moon, and the stars with just a word. Now, God has
all the time in the world just for you and me." God the boggler.
And now we are called upon to be boggled once more. This
time it is a simple invitation to a meal. The boggling comes
when we realize just who it is who has asked us. We who so often
think of ourselves as not much more than a grain among the sands
of time are invited to the table of the one who created all the
sand. It does not compute. But then, it does not HAVE to. We
can simply accept the invitation by faith.
That does not mean we ignore the fact that we do not
understand it all. We admit it, and come anyway...just as we do
in so many areas of our lives. We do not understand how brown
cows eat green grass and give white milk, but we still pour it on
our cereal. We do not understand a mother's love or a father's
patience, but we count on them and cherish them. We do not
understand how pain can help us grow, but we know that it does.
Yes, there is much we do not understand, and this is just one
more thing.
Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee;
How great Thou art; How great Thou art.
God the boggler. The Creator of all the universe is
inviting you and inviting me to dine. That's right, the same God
who boggles the mind...but hallelujah, also the God who saves the
soul.
Amen!
1. Stewart K. Hine, "How Great Thou Art," © 1953. Assigned to Manna Music, Inc. © 1955,
renewed 1981
2. J. Clinton McCann, The Book of Psalms, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 710-711
3. Eric Pooley, "The Last Temptation of Al Gore," TIME, 5/28/07, p. 32
click and send us mail