Today is Trinity Sunday. In fact, it is the 692d Trinity Sunday after the Feast was put on the calendar in 1334. And since we’re counting, I think this is my third or fourth reflection for Trinity Sunday. And each time the reflection gets shorter. And I wonder if this is because the subject is getting simpler or I am getting dumber.
Leaving my IQ aside, I don’t think the subject is getting simpler. Trinity Sunday is kind of the Sunday to which the whole first half of the church year, from Advent through Pentecost, points. And a lot is commemorated in that period. There’s God the Father’s creation of the universe: Jesus’ gift of salvation; the presence of the Holy Spirit among us. After all this, Trinity Sunday raises the question who exactly is our God. No, the Trinity is definitely not a simple topic.
So, how do we approach the question of who our God is. We don’t want to be presumptuous. And we can’t pin down an answer. But I think not getting an answer is the point. The question will go on forever, and our attempts to understand will be bits and pieces of understanding. The bits will come to us through Scripture, through contemplation. And I don’t mean something fancy when I say contemplation. I mean prayerfully thinking about what kind of person God is.
Today, I’m going to mention one of the bits and pieces: This is how God looks at us and feels about us. Since we are made in God’s image, we do have a little access to God’s feelings. This means we can answer from our experiences and the experiences of the kinship between all of us here.
In his First Letter, John actually defines God. He says that God is love. (1 John 4:8). In what follows this definition, John points out two other things. The first thing are the events that we commemorate from Advent to Pentecost — the Creation, the Incarnation and Salvation, the activity of the Spirit. The second thing that I think John wants us to know is that the structure of the universe is love, that this love became flesh so that we can live or abide in God, and that the Spirit is our witness to this. (1 John 4:7-16)
So, let’s take the abstract word “Love” and give it content, that is, let’s give it some down-to-earth reality by dragging it down to the level of our experiences. In other words, let’s put ourselves in God’s shoes. And let’s put God in our shoes.
So I thought of three examples, and I am sure that you can think of others. I think these examples will, I hope, show us what God is like and also let us feel a kind of intimacy with God.
First, the Bible has a huge arc. Simply put, the arc is that God put us in Eden and has been working hard ever since to put us back there. This is exactly the love that we have when we want others to be happy. It is the love of gift giving at Christmas or whenever. It is the parent’s and teacher’s love that wants us to grow up and be happy. It is the child’s love that works for the well-being of the parent. These are all the kind of love that wants others to be in Eden. This is the same love that God has when the Bible says he wants to open Eden again for us, that he wants us to be happy.
Here is another example. In the Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit. These are really nice. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) These are qualities that I think everybody wants to have. They are the love that we give to our church kinship, to our co-workers, to the store clerk, the passerby on the sidewalk, the dog, and so on. If we look back at the source of these fruits, we are looking at God because a giver of personal qualities like these fruits has to have these qualities himself. God is certainly generous! But he also has to be gentle and kind and patient. He gives us what he has. Let me give you the list of the fruits of the Spirit again: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-control.
A third example comes from the world of sorrow. Perhaps, someone beloved is ill or is no longer capable of thought or is angry with you. He will not talk to you. He will not acknowledge you. He behaves in ways that ignore your wishes and hopes. He contradicts you. He has cut you off. He even seems to hate you. Yet, you still worry and fret and pray and phone. You still try to talk. That is, you still love. And I think your love is the same love God has for the sinner or the person who ignores him or even despises him or the idea of him. It is the love of the father in The Prodigal Son who runs out before his son reaches the door because his son has always been his mind and the father hangs out around the door. God loves to the point that he is always hanging out at the door, always picking up the phone to make a call. In a way, this love is the summation of the other two examples I gave.
So, in conclusion, if God is love as John writes, I think he is an awful lot like us and we are an awful lot like him. It is because we both love, God first — I mean, he is the Creator — and then us. For God it is one-hundred percent love. For us, well, let’s say that frequently it is love. Pick your own percentage. We can talk this over with God when we meet the Trinity face to face and no longer have to struggle with one of my reflections because we are seeing Love as in a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12).