God the Son as we have come to know in Jesus is someone with whom we have a relationship, although for many it might be a bit uncomfortable…

And now deftly inserted into this godhead, we hear of the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate.

Where there was One, there are now Three!

Oh, but it’s Three in One, and One in Three, don’t you see?

It’s a Trinity!

"You’re preaching Trinity Sunday?" usually leads to commiserating remarks from other clergy.

What are you going to say?

How are you going to explain in twelve minutes what theologians have struggled for centuries to understand? All the questions!

There was a time in the early history of the Christian Church – several centuries, in fact – in which the theological controversies spawned by disagreements or reservations about the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit led to murder, mayhem (literally!), and, of course, the inevitable schism, as well as less virulent forms of misunderstanding.

And other religions have looked at us askance: How can we be monotheists when we worship a Trinity?!!!

Academic careers and theological reputations have been founded on the parsing of this concept, in rather the same way that we can spend time debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

It makes for an interesting thesis – but where do we go from there?

More specifically, what does this have to do with US, and our lives as Christians?

On the one hand, the concept of the Trinity is almost an assumption: we hear it woven throughout our worship, most obviously in blessing, and in the endings of our prayers, which invariably invoke a variation on the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and, in the reaffirmation of our faith, made each Sunday as we repeat the Creed.

Ah, the Creed.

Even though most of us don’t read the words of Scripture literally, we seem to approach the words of the Creed with a sense of rigid and fixed meaning. And it makes us uncomfortable – and for many people it’s a "deal breaker" – they feel they can’t be a "true" Christian without being able to believe – literally! – every word.

I can’t tell you how many people have expressed to me sotto voce, in a kind of confessional mode:

I’ve had this fantasy of having everyone stand to repeat the words of the Creed, suggesting that they sit down when it comes to a part with which they disagree, or kind of go half-way down when they just aren’t sure what it means or whether or not they believe, and then standing up again for something that they could affirm… If people were open, and willing to risk sharing their doubts in public, I think we’d have people all over the congregation bobbing up-and-down to the cadence of that reading… (A kind of theological "When you’re up, you’re up!")

If only we could realize that in religion, as in other parts of life, doubts and reservations are not a bad thing: they challenge us to look at God, and at our relationship with God, in new ways. .

Many of us have a tendency to "pigeonhole" God, having a pretty clear idea of who God is and how God operates, and are rather like the kindergartener who was flabbergasted to run into his teacher in the grocery store: somehow he thought that as a TEACHER she must belong to the school, must LIVE there and be defined by her role within its constraints, physical and vocational.

Paying attention to the dissonance can break us open, and expand and deepen our understanding.

Dorothy Sayers tells the story of a Japanese man who is politely listening to a Christian who is trying to explain the concept of the Trinity. The Japanese man is puzzled: "Honorable Father, very good. Honorable Son, very good. Honorable Bird I do not understand at all."

Like the Japanese man, many of us do not understand "Honorable Bird."

We have a kind of knee-jerk association with it that conjures up a frenzied worship in which people wave hands, speak in tongues, maybe even handle snakes, and are "slain in the spirit." It’s a bit more out-of control than we’re comfortable with!

Yet we, too, are possessors of the Spirit. It is God’s gift to us.

Jesus is leaving the disciples.

He knew that it is one thing to be a real, living presence in someone’s life – and another thing entirely to be gone, to be a memory or a set of instructions or "Rules to Live By." He knew that his following, his message, his ministry, lay in the experience of his presence, and not in any particular thing he said or did.

How could he, a person who lived and died in a particular time and place, in first century Palestine, continue to live in people’s lives across time and throughout the world? "If I go," he tells his disciples, "I will send the Advocate – the Spirit – to you."

I will send you a different form of my presence, a form that is not confined to time and space, a form that will live in you and your descendants wherever you are…"

Today Jesus tells us, [The Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you…

Here in the Spirit is a conduit between the human and the divine… the means by which the eternal is made known in "real time."

The Spirit descends upon us, too. It is a gift God continues to give as we are formed and shaped by the message of Jesus. And it is the Spirit, working in us and through us, animating and transforming us, taking what is God’s and declaring it in us, that makes known the eternal in the "real time" of our lives.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Three words. Three different experiences of God, but one God, speaking to us differently, as we need to hear, in language that we can understand.

This Trinity Sunday let us remember, in the words of Rumi, that "The form of a thing is a gate; the name of a thing is a title inscribed on the gate. Pass through the gate into the meaning within."

Let us pass through to the meaning within.

Amen.