A Gift of a Sunday.

Trinity Sunday! A gift of a Sunday. An invitation. How do we make sense of the Doctrine of the Trinity? Why even bother trying? Because both Paul and John in today’s readings say that how we understand the Triune God shapes our lifestyle. Who we understand God to be shapes how we respond to God in our everyday lives.

All the earliest theologians developed their theologies, including their theology of Trinity, so that people might know God more fully as the author of all goodness and love, and that we might know that we are the object of that goodness and love. They wanted people to know that God the creator and source of all being will not give up on us no matter what we do. They wanted people to know that the Eternal Word became one of us so that we might know we are made in the image of God and become God.  And they wanted people to know that as the Spirit works in us and helps us reflect and meditate on the story of Jesus we might grow in wisdom and love, live lives of goodness and love, and work to build our societies on this goodness and love.

Some have suggested that rather than getting hung up on the mechanics of how the Trinity works, it is better to focus on the nature of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. Last week I talked about St. Augustine of Hippo naming God as Lover, Beloved and the Love between. What words then might we use to describe this relationship? What does Jesus teach us about the nature of the relationship? How does this help us read scripture and live our lives?