Here is my sermon for Trinity Sunday, 2009. This is a little more outline-ish than usual… Here it is all the same. Comments welcome!
When we face a great Mystery of the Christian Faith… Problem to be solved (Haven’t yet figured out)… Mystery to be contemplated, thought about, considered and appreciated.
Just like looking at a beautiful gemstone or a diamond… You see if from one angle and then another and then another.
If it’s a problem, then we’ve just go to pour some resources into figuring it out and get to work. And there’s some value there. I studied the theology… Lots to learn about what’s being revealed by God about who he is… And we are His image and likeness, so there’s good stuff to consider.
But - if we think about it as a mystery, it’s more important that we let God do the teaching and that we let our hearts and our minds be moved and changed by the Lord…
Just think about it…
We know that God is one God. He is who he is - he’s not a committee or a democracy. And in his one-ness, he loved completely. We are united and not just a combination of mind and body and emotions and soul and heart and so on. What does that mean for me? What peace God wants us - what value is to be had in making sure that my body and my mind and my soul are all together right and ordered.
We know that God is three persons. That relationships and love are part of who we are. That God has made the family in his own image. How beautiful is it that God created us special. That families and love and relationships are meant for something and not just to be invented as we go along. What does that mean for us - even when we struggle with family or relationships?
We know that God reveals his inmost self to us in the Holy Trinity. That means that God is not trying to be distant, but that He’s trying to be close to us - and that requires receiving what he reveals. It means that God wants to share himself with us and this is why we long to share ourselves with others and to be understood by others…
We know that God acts in our world as one unified Godhead. We know that God has sent himself to us at different times in our human history and for amazing purposes. We know that God breaks a lot of the rules that we would expect if he was just another Greek God or Roman God or Psychologically invented myth. We know that God works miracles - sometimes to build the faith of large groups - sometimes for just one or two people.
Imagine taking the time to really think about what each of those things means? It would be like looking at a diamond. Each new thought is a new angle - a new way of seeing the whole… This is what contemplation of Christian mysteries should be! It’s my prayer that this way of thinking about our faith opens new doors for your prayer life and also for your intellectual connection to the Lord!
