Ok, the second week of feasts and the second gift. Remember last week was the Gift of the Spirit. Today is the Gift of Relationship.


Many years ago, well, many, many years ago, my homiletics instructor in the seminary said, “Gentlemen, more heresy is preached on Trinity Sunday than any other day of the year—so keep your homily short!” Now, I think that this happens because it’s really difficult to use words to attempt to describe God without restricting God by misleading and insufficient descriptions of God. I think our task today is not so much to explain or try to understand the Trinity, but to open our lives to further experience the truth that Trinity brings to us.


The doctrine of the Trinity says that we believe in God as completely one, and yet we know we experience God as Father, Son, and Spirit: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.


You see, the Holy Trinity is more about experience, and less about just “understanding.” Trinity is about what happens to us, not only what we think about. It is about what we know from experience, not only what we learn from textbooks or courses. It seems to me that this day is more about a quiet waiting and watching that prepares us and opens the way to a union, a deeper relationship with God.

The experience of God is an experience of relationship, not an experience of ideas. Any way you look at it, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, as a theologian or as a philosopher, thinking about the Trinity leads to reflections about relationships, what brings us together and binds us to one another, and to God.

I avoid the word: "Mystery." “Mystery” leads us to suspect that we cannot understand, and then we excuse ourselves from the wonder and awe Trinity can stir in us.

The experience of the Trinity is the ultimate acknowledgement of God's Loving presence. The three most essential questions that lurk in the depth of the human soul are stilled by the experience we call Trinity. Do you love me? How much do you love me? Will you be here tomorrow?

In the reality of the Trinity, God speaks to us and quiets the fear and anxiety that these questions can bring. "Do you love me?" "As much as I love myself", says God the Creator in whose image we are made. "How much do you love me?" "Enough to send my only Son to be with you in your darkest hours." "Will you be here tomorrow?" "My Spirit will be with you everywhere and forever." You see, there is no “mystery” here except the mystery of unconditional love.

This day calls us to wonder and stand in awe before God. This day calls us to raise our hands again, more confident than ever, as we sign ourselves in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: a people embraced in love.


Our life in the Trinity expresses our own identity and our mission in these days following Pentecost. We are sent now, just as Jesus, to reveal this God we have come to know and to let others see what we have seen, that they too may become children of God: relationship.


On Trinity Sunday, we are presented with the gift of Relationship: the passionate, loving relationship of Father, Son and Spirit, and our call, to join that relationship.