Trinity Sunday, Yr C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Trinity Sunday, Yr C (2025)                                                    The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

John 16:12-15                                                                     St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

In the name of the one, holy, and loving God:

in whom we live, and move, and have our being.  Amen.

Today, Trinity Sunday, is the day the Church sets aside to focus on the Trinity:

    the one, holy, living, and loving God.

If we look in the back of the Book of Common Prayer,

 there is a section called the Catechism,

       or An Outline of the Faith.

This section delineates our beliefs about a number of topics, including:

 human nature, the ten commandments, sin and redemption,

the holy scriptures and, of course, the Trinity,

     with different sub-sections on God the Father, God the Son, and The Holy Spirit.

In keeping with my favorite refrigerator magnet that reads:

“The Episcopal Church:

Resisting simplistic theology since 1785”

      the introduction to the catechism says that it is not meant to be a complete statement of belief…only a point of departure for the teacher.

A point of departure.

It seems to me that we can, and often do,

get tied in knots trying to understand the Trinity

       and how we are to understand “one substance and three persons.”

Jesus begins today’s Gospel reading by saying to his disciples:

            “I still have many things to say to you,

but you cannot bear them now. 

       When the Spirit of truth comes,

     he will guide you into all the truth.”  (John 16:12-13a)

The Spirit will guide us into all the truth…in good time.

Lucy Lind Hogan says, “The Trinity is our way of life made possible by God.” (https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1697)

Our way of life.

Not our doctrine of life,

            or our way of understanding life through a particular set of beliefs,

       but, I would suggest…

our way of being in life.

Listen to how Jesus describes this relationship:

            “Holy Father,

protect them in your name that you have given me,

so that they may be one, as we are one….

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,

      may they also be in us,

            so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:11b, 21)

Father, Son, and Spirit are one,

            and Jesus’ prayer is that we, too, will be one…

And not only that we will be one,

            but also that we will abide in the Trinity as well.

How magnificent…

to think that we live, and move, and have our being in God!

Richard Rohr says that we, as human beings,

live within the same abiding relationships of unconditional love

            that constitutes the relationships among the Trinity.

Throughout Jesus’ life, he listens whole-heartedly to the Father…

tending to God’s voice through prayer

       and his relationships with others.

Given all this, I wonder:

what if we were to regard the Trinity

       as a way of understanding God’s presence and action in the world?

What if we were to regard God’s unconditional love for us

            and through us

                        as the answer to Jesus’ prayer for us?

If God’s unconditional love is the ground of our being,

            how might we embody such love in our interactions with those around us?

I find that a challenge worth attempting in these days and times.

Andrei Rublev wrote a famous icon of the Trinity.

I have placed one version here by the pulpit,

and I invite you to spend some time with it.

There are three persons seated around a table.

There is a vitality,

a life,

an energy,

       that fills this icon and surrounds these three persons.

Their eyes gaze gently

- and attentively –

at one another.

Their heads lean in toward each other.

The right hand of each of them is placed in a sign of blessing.

And there is a dish of food placed among them,

toward what seems to be an empty space on the fourth side of the table.

A space, perhaps, for you and me,

            with an offer to join them at Table,

      to be fed,

and nourished,

and blessed.

And then, perhaps, for us in turn to feed,

and nourish,

and bless one another.

It is an icon of community

            and of invitation.

Perhaps, as Karoline Lewis says,

the importance of the Trinity is not that which sets God in stone in some doctrine,

but that which represents the very nature of the church…

       that inherent to being church…

       is an ongoing endeavor toward naming God’s activity in our world.

Every week – every day – is Trinity Sunday (or Trinity Day)

as we read Scripture and pray and listen and observe

and try to understand God’s presence and work in the world.

Every week – every day – is Trinity Day

as we are invited into community…

       into the ever-present and ever-widening embrace of Trinitarian love…

      and then extend that invitation to others.

The Spirit will, in time, guide us into all truth if we will but pay attention.

We were created in love,

            by love

       and for love….

to extend God’s grace,

forgiveness,

       and reconciliation in a broken world.

In what ways is God inviting us to the Table?

In what ways are we extending that invitation to others?

Amen.