Trinity Sunday

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, BCP 228)

We could really rename Trinity Sunday to the Feast of the Paradox. How can God be one and three at the same time??? It doesn't make any logical sense. At all. Even all the analogies and metaphors we come up with to try to explain the Trinity fall short of the goal. It is a mystery through and through.

Thankfully, just because something is a mysterious paradox, does not mean it cannot be true. We celebrate the Feast of the Trinity precisely because we know it to be true. God is one in three. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Out of this mystery, life, love, and being all come into existence. We are an outpouring of the love involved in God, and we celebrate this in the Feast of the Trinity.

Trinity Sunday is also a reminder of the basic unity which we are striving for in the church. God, the one in three, is at unity. We, the church, strive to be in unity as well. Despite all our differences in the denominations of the church, we strive for peace and unity with those who also worship God. One of the many reasons we join together, Lutherans with Episcopalians, Episcopalians with Lutherans, this Sunday, is to celebrate this unity and to remind ourselves of the work still to be done to bring the church to unity.