Trinity Sunday sermon

 

TRINITY SUNDAY 2024

          For most of my career, I’ve been able to avoid preaching on Trinity Sunday.

          At St. James in Charleston, West Virginia, I had a retired priest helper and a deacon, so they got Trinity Sundays.

          At St. Paul’s in New Haven, I had lots of seminarians to assign the day to.

          At St. John’s in Waterbury, there were clergy aplenty—active and retired, seminarians and a lay assistant to give Trinity Sunday to.

          At my time in the Middlesex Cluster all I could do was call in sick or mumble a non-sense sermon on this day.

          At Trinity, Milton, there is a lay-reader that covers for me one Sunday a month. Guess whether I let him have Trinity Sunday.

          It’s time I faced up to the Truth—the Trinity baffles me and I don’t know what to say on this day.

          Two stories that give proof to my point.

          Eldridge Cleaver, in his autobiography Soul on Ice, tells how, when he was in prison, he saw the opportunity to be in a Roman Catholic confirmation class. He knew it would get him out of his cell for a couple of hours a week, so he signed up.

          At some point the priest who was leading the course asked if anyone could explain the ‘mystery of the Trinity.”

          Eldridge was about to raise his hand after a time of silence and say something about ‘three-in-one oil’ when the priest proclaimed, “of course you can’t, it’s a ‘mystery’!”

          Cleaver dropped the class.

          A second story.

          St. Augustine was on a beach pondering the way to figure out the Trinity, when he saw a small boy, with a bottle on the shore.

          The boy was actually an angel!

          Augustine went over to him and said, “what are you trying to do?”

          The boy/angel answered “I’m trying to get the ocean into my bottle.”

          Augustine laughed and said, “You can’t get the ocean into that bottle!”

          And the angel boy replied, “then how can you seek to comprehend the Trinity?”

          And, along with his bottle, disappeared.

          Three in one and one in three makes very little sense to me.

          One plus one plus one is three—not ‘one’. Yet in the doctrine of the Trinity, all three are One….

          But ponder this: one times one times one is One!

          The Trinity defies our logical mathematics.

          Paul writes to the church in Rome: “and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

          All I can pray for is that hope and that love and that the Holy Spirit will pour into our hearts.

          In my blessing at the end of each service, I don’t say ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’—I say instead, ‘God, our creator, Jesus our Savior and the Holy Spirit, our companion.’

          That’s the best I can do about the Trinity.

          I just hope it is enough….