TRINITY SUNDAY 2022

 My favorite Far Side comic depicts a figure looking an awful lot like Albert Einstein standing in front of a blackboard. Three headings sit atop three columns on the board, marked Step One, Step Two and Step Three. Under Steps 1 and 3 are numbers and mathematical symbols, suggesting some type of formula. Step 2 has no such numbers, no symbols, no formula. Instead it reads, “And then a miracle happens.”
Sometimes, even in science, we just don’t know how we get from Step One to Step Three, we just know that we do.
Such are the attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit….one is tempted to give all the theological explanations and then just say, well then a miracle happens: Step 1 We Believe in God. Step Three we believe in a Blessed and Undivided Trinity. Step 2, a miracle happens which makes three into one, and one into three.
Some things can’t be explained as much as they can be experienced.
    In our reading from the Book of Proverbs Wisdom is a “being”—-Lady Wisdom is a title often given to the star of much of the Book of Proverbs. In today’s reading we hear that Wisdom was with God at creation…and she was. It is this same “Lady Wisdom” who over the generations, morphed into the Holy Spirit of the New Testament, as we hear Jesus discuss in our reading from John (it’s also interesting how the ancient writings about Lady Wisdom were clear in the gender identity and how bt the time we got to the 3rd and 4th centuries Lady Wisdom had become a male Holy Spirit (but I digress). Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that he must return to his Father, with whom he has existed since the beginning of time.
Bottom line, our Christian doctrine is clear—-God comes to us in three persons—a creator, whom we generally refer to as God or as “Father,” a Redeemer whom we refer to as the Son, Jesus, and our Sustainer, Holy Wisdom or the Holy Spirit whose existence we commemorated last Sunday. We believe in a Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe in One God. One God who has three forms emanating from the same whole.
    Almost all expository attempts at describing the Trinity fall short because at its heart, the essence of the Trinity is relationship. And describing the essence of a relationship almost always fails.  God, in God’s three fold nature, is relationship.
    Retired Lutheran Pastor Richard Lischer shared this interpretation of the Trinity he discovered while contemplating a stained glass window depiction of the Trinity: “The fairly typical Trinitarian design of three interconnecting triangles reminded me of an aerial photograph taken of our small farming community.  Besides the straight and orderly rows of crops in the fields, another distinct pattern emerged: well-worn paths criss-crossing from one farmhouse to another. These paths, worn into the ground by generations of neighbors visiting and helping out in times of need, linked the town, they knit the community together.” Lischer’s description of the interconnectedness represented in those paths explains my experience of the Trinity.
God grooves paths in our lives, coming to us at different times and in different forms to address a variety of needs.
God, in three persons, Blessed Trinity, reaches out to us as a strong parental type when we feel small and childlike. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a forgiving friend in times of loneliness and confusion. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a sustaining force of inexplicable peace when we are bereft and lost, angry and bitter, hopeless and helpless. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, longs to be a palpable presence in our lives, so God in God’s infinite wisdom, walks a number of paths to reach us.
Hopefully we are doing the same as we reach out to others. I envision a well-grooved path leading from our driveway to the Blessing Box where people, down on their luck walk up to the box and receive a true gift of the Holy Spirit—our love and our care. We groove a path from our driveway to the box and our neighbors groove another path from the box to their homes. The same is true of the Thrift Store—people make a path to donate, people make a path to receive. A relationship grooved not only in the sidewalk but in the hearts of those in need.

Step One: God Loves Us.
Step Three: God Wants to be With Us
Step Two: Through the miracle and mystery of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity, God’s Love is always with us. Amen.