Trinity Sunday

“Day and night without ceasing they sing,
‘Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
who was and is and is to come.”

Do you remember when it was that you realized that your parents were people?

That’s a rather odd question and way of asking, but what I mean is – when did you first realize that your parents had a life and existence apart from you?

For me it was sometime in my late 20s when a lot of things changed in my life and I felt like I had turned a kind of corner into adulthood.

And I remember that one of the things which changed for me as I began to take on more responsibility in my life, as I began to enter into more serious relationships with others in friendship, marriage, work, etc, - was an increased awareness of the humanity of my parents and my family.

When you are a child there is something that seems eternal and invincible about your parents and family. When you’re a child, things are hidden from you – strained relationships are kept behind closed doors, your parents may face major struggles that you know nothing about, they protect you from unseen threats sometimes at great cost to themselves, and in your innocence, you assume that this is what it will be like forever.

But of course, things change and as I grew older not only did I lose a parent, but I came to realize that these people whom I called mom and dad didn’t just exist for my sake, but they were Barry and Eunice, they are individuals with lives connected to but separate from mine. They had lives before I came along and lives afterwards, they have strengths and weaknesses, like all of us, have done things right and perhaps things they regret. They have their own struggles and crosses to bear.

What I mean is that I think part of becoming an adult is recognizing that even some of those people whom we hold in the highest regard – even our families - are not perfect, that they have struggles and difficulties just like we do. It doesn’t mean we don’t love them, or appreciate them, or would want anything to be different, but when we grow up, get married, get a career, have children, faced our first real challenges in life, we begin to understand that it was the same for our parents, that though we didn’t see it they likely faced the same challenges.

This is of course different for everybody, and some people came to know the imperfections of their parents far earlier than others and in much more difficult ways, but the point I’m making is the one I’ve been making: that our human families, relationships, humans themselves aren’t perfect. None of us here in our marriages, our friendships, or our families can claim to be perfect, none of us can claim to have done everything right, said all the right things; we will disappoint others and fail others, we will be hurt by others, and ourselves and our relationships will always have this mark of human frailty and imperfection.

Today is Trinity Sunday.

Trinity Sunday is the Sunday following Pentecost when we look back over the last few months and realize that throughout this time we’ve focused a great deal on the Son, Jesus, who often talks to us and teaches about the Father, and who sends to us the Holy Spirit to be that love and that abiding presence in us forever – but what are they? When we refer to them – Father, Son, and Spirit - as the Holy Trinity, what are we even talking about?

When it comes to love, there are ways of explaining in a technical and chemical way what is happening when we love or are loved; but suppose you had to explain to someone who never knew love what love is like – what would you say? Would a biochemistry textbook entry about chemical reactions in our brains tell someone what love is like? We know love not by chemical formulae but by participating – by loving.

We have all kinds of technical language to talk about God Father and Son and Spirit, but God doesn’t come to us in a theological textbook, God comes to us in a person – Jesus - a person who desires to have a relationship with us.

To quote someone I like, “the trinity isn’t some far-flung speculation, it is that blessed family into which we are adopted.”

God invites us into that family, into knowing Him, not as an observer, not at arm’s length, but as a very member of that family with a seat at the table.

We are often let down by our human families, even by those closest to us, and some may never know the love even of an imperfect human family. But God’s answer to this is that we are adopted into a family whose love cannot fail us or disappoint us. God invites us into a  relationship with Him where we are free to be the people we truly are because nothing in us is hid from God, whatever we hide from other people in this life to protect ourselves we don’t need to hide or protect because God sees and desires nothing more than to forgive and see us made whole. This family life into which we are called and adopted by God, the life of the Holy Trinity, is a life of healing, of reconciliation, and of forgiveness. A life where we need not be bound by heaviness of heart, by anger, by trauma, by burden – because the new life in God is the only way that we can be freed from our burdens, have our trauma healed, and be reconciled to God, to our friends, and to ourselves.

Because in this life, this family, we are all one as if you are hand and I am the arm. We are all one in Christ – the truest image of perfect family. This is the good news of today the good news of Holy Trinity: that in this house, amongst this family, and at this particular table there is a place set for us.

“Day and night without ceasing they sing,
‘Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
who was and is and is to come.”