The Holy Trinity as intimacy with the divine...

Two short thoughts about living into the beauty of the Holy Trinity (the appointed Sunday for this past week) which has been dubbed one of two suicidal Sundays in the liturgical calendar for pastors (the other being Ascension Sunday.) One preacher put it like this:

The doctrine of the Trinity is not a form of divine mathematics, nor a holy riddle one must simply accept by faith. More than a numbers game, the Trinity is an affirmation of the truth about the God we discover revealed to us across the pages of the Bible.

To borrow from Douglas John Hall, the Trinity invites us to know God as: 1) over us; 2) with us; and 3) within and among us all at the same time. It is both a way of thinking mystically about the abiding presence and nature of God, and, a way to know and experience deep intimacy with the One who is holy.  This is number one: the Holy Trinity is both a way of knowing God and trusting that God's love will never leave us behind.  St. Augustine wrote:  Why [then,] should we go running round the heights of the heavens and the depths of the earth looking for him who is with us if only we should wish to be with him?

The second thought about the Holy Trinity is that it invites and encourages us to live with others in such a way that treats no one as a "thing" but rather always as part of the divine and beloved whole. Nobody is a cog.  No person is a thing to be used to get what we want. All people - and plants and animals and parts of the earth - are integrated in a sacred intimacy.  We know this when we confess: I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh I'll laugh with you; I will share your joys and sorrows til we've seen this journey through.

I didn't get a chance to preach/teach on Trinity Sunday because my dear friends and guests, Peter and Joyce, were with us to share some of their experiences from their assignment in Palestine and Israel. I was blessed to have them here and would not have traded it for the world. And, I've been thinking of how our embrace of the the Holy Trinity enriches our life of faith, hope and love.