The nature of the mystery of the Trinity is not ours to grasp; living into the image of God we were created to be is what will heal us and the world.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year A
Texts: Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a; Matthew 28:16-20; plus John 13-15, 21
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
There’s a strange and beautiful phrase in our first reading.
On the sixth day of creation, God says, “Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness.” Our image? Our likeness? The Hebrew people didn’t have a conception of the Trinity, but they did have a complex, plural understanding of God. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, a plural noun, not singular as in English. So every time they said “God,” they meant One, but it sounded like more than one. Their word for Lord is Adonai, also a plural. There’s mystery here. God can’t be described in singular terms.
But this little pronoun “our” is the trap on this feast day of the Holy Trinity. We take off from there on a path of speculation as to God’s make-up, how God is Triune, how God works as One yet Three. It’s a trap that produces the Nicene Creed, a worthy credo, but one which completely omits the teachings and commands and way of Christ, the life in Christ that animates and fills the entire New Testament.
Jesus never tried to explain the true reality of God. He cared much more about the life in God to which he called people, and which shapes the whole New Testament.
Rather than focus on “our,” Jesus would prefer you focus on “image.” Because Jesus came as God-with-us to invite us to live into the image of God we were created to be.
Jesus invited this with the idea of “abiding.”
Jesus in John consistently proclaims that he somehow “abides,” lives, in the One he calls Father, and, in fact, he and the Father are one. If you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the Father, he says. It’s the blasphemy that got him killed. And then he speaks of the Spirit, who also abides in Jesus and in the Father, and now abides in God’s people. There is a oneness of God in Son and Father and Spirit that the Church wanted to express in a way that honored the oneness and the threeness. It’s just not the path Jesus needs us on.
The thing Jesus wants you and me to learn is what it is to abide in God. Jesus said you and I could have an intimate knowledge of God, Father, Son, and Spirit, within us. That the Trinity is found in you and in me. And in that abiding, we are transformed into God’s image.
And God’s image, Jesus says, is self-giving love.
Jesus commands us to love as he has loved, giving of himself for the creation. It is, Jesus says, the highest form of love, to give of yourself for the other. And it is the true nature of the Triune God.
So, Jesus says, when we abide in the life of God, God’s sacrificial love comes to us and flows out of us. You and I are like the stretching branches of a vine, connected to each other and into the life of God through that vine. God’s love flows like sap into our branches.
And when the love God has given you shapes your life, your words, your actions, your habits, your planning, into the self-giving love of God that now is your fruit to bear in the world, you are living as the image of God you were always meant to be.
This is what Jesus urges on those who would follow him after his resurrection.
On the beach in Galilee, the risen Jesus sends his followers out to care for his sheep. Three times he asks Peter if Peter loves him, and three times Peter says he does. Each time Jesus responds, “feed my lambs; tend my sheep; feed my sheep.”
This is your call to follow: if you love the Triune God you know in Christ Jesus, then this Good Shepherd needs you to feed the other sheep, care for the flock of God’s children. To be in this world the image of God’s love seen in Christ’s death and resurrection so all are blessed by it.
Jesus gives the same commission in our Gospel today. Jesus sends out the disciples – including you and me – to invite others to discipleship, to follow Christ. To invite others into the mystery of the Spirit of God living in them and changing them. To share the Good News that all are created in God’s image and can live in that image for the healing of all.
To do this, Jesus says to teach others to obey all that he commanded us. And what did he command? Love one another as he has loved. Love God with all you have and love your neighbor. Even love your enemy. Basically: learn to feed and care for my sheep and teach others the same.
So for today, leave the Trinity to the Trinity.
The mystery of the Triune God, how Father, Son, and Spirit are related and dance together, how God works, all that, leave to the holy mystery it is. God knows who God is. That’s enough.
But let us fervently pray that you and I and all God’s children grow ever more deeply into the image of the Triune God who created us in that image, sacrificed all to bring us back into relationship, and now lives in us to bring love and mercy and healing to this world. And as you become more and more visibly the image of God, the image of love, you will also more and more see God’s image in everyone you encounter.
You are the very image and likeness of the Triune God, the love and mercy that is God’s heart. What a difference you will make in this world!
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
