Year A

Matthew 28:16-20

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Triune Community of God

The recent bestseller Unbroken tells of WWII veteran Lou Zamperini’s 47-day ordeal adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Instead of dirt and trenches, Zamperini was driven to prayer by two thousand miles of open water and circling twelve-foot sharks. Most of us come looking for God under much less pressure, but almost everyone comes. Eventually for most of us there is a moment of realizing our need for a higher power’s help.

As people of faith we have crisis moments, when life tumbles in, “faith is tested” and we find ourselves wondering what God is really like, how God works, and whether God really does hear our prayers. Author Anne Lamott says that there are really only two kinds of prayer, “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” For many, the time between the two is a time of wondering whether God is powerful enough, available enough, or willing enough to help. In this time of the pandemic and racial tensions, the need to understand the nature of God is even more important.

Answers to these questions and other similar questions can be found in the distinct natures of the three divine persons of the Trinity. Today on this first Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; the mystical unity of three divine persons in one God. Our first ideas about God as Trinity came about because of the experiences that God’s people had of God over many hundreds of years. God revealed Godself as Trinity by virtue of God’s dealings with us and with our world. 

In trying to explore the doctrine of the Trinity, we can take many of our clues from Scripture passages that are loaded with Trinitarian symbols, language, confession and illustrations. As in the passage from Matthew today, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And in the passage from 2 Corinthians today, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. “

From the scriptures and from our experience, Christians have come to understand that God not only made the world, as we heard read in the passage today from Genesis, but cared for it, kept in touch with creation and had an impact upon the world. God showed compassion and love for the world and its creatures. Then, at a critical time God sent God’s only begotten Son, Jesus into the world to save it.

After Jesus ascended back to the Father, God sent the Holy Spirit who was and is an everlasting source of strength and blessing for the world. Because of these acts of God, we come to know God as, God the Father, Creator; God the Son, Redeemer; and God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier. We came to know God as the Holy and blessed Trinity; a community, a relationship among Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

St. Augustine, a fourth century bishop in North Africa, probably developed this understanding of the Trinity as well as anyone. Augustine believed that, at heart, God is community. This community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not a static relationship but a dynamic relationship. The Father loves the Son. The Son responds in love to the Father. The bond of love that comes from the Father, and returned by the Son, is the Holy Spirit of God, which is always moving from the one to the other, and back again.

This giving and receiving of love, and the unity which that love creates, is the very heart, power and soul of God. This is what we mean when we say God is love. The very fact that the world exists at all arises from the loving nature of God. God loved the world into being and when God’s good creation suffered from sin and death, God was moved by this threat and sent Jesus Christ to save us. Through Christ’s life and ministry, death and resurrection, we are recreated through our baptism into a new eternal life. We are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And as we know and read in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ commissioning of the disciples, we are baptized into the Trinity to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We have been commissioned to do the work of telling others about this God of love that creates, redeems and sanctifies us, that is powerful enough, available enough, and willing enough to help.  The God who is community through the help of God’s Spirit calls people into community, and sends them out to build communities everywhere. We here at Annunciation are one of those communities.

And what is so very interesting, is that because we are a part of God’s community and created in God’s image, we are naturally equipped and gifted to go and build communities. We call this evangelism. Believe it or not, relating to other people comes naturally to us who are created in God’s image. To live our lives in solitude without social relationships is to be out of harmony with the social creatures God made us to be. Who knows what power may be released from us for God’s continuing work in the world? It will take some hard work of listening and respecting the dignity of every human being no matter their color to heal our nation of racism. Who knows what communities of God we may be able to bring into being for the God who is community once we come out of this pandemic.

Bishop Frank in a sermon he wrote for today says, “In this time of physical distancing to stop the spread of the virus, we are discovering more about how deep our human longing is for community. The essential reality of the love of the Trinity is all the more urgent in our present moment. And that love brings a loving response from us if we are open to it. The love we are created to show then must find expression in our reaching out to others in the ways available to us. This is not something we do to earn the favor of the Holy Trinity. Instead, staying in contact with others is how God blesses us.” 

Paul points out to us today that we have been gifted by the Holy Spirit, to spread the grace of God, in the end that all things will be caught up in the glory of God our creator. Maybe Trinity Sunday ought to be a bigger deal. It offers us the entire being of God in a relationship that we can celebrate. It is a day to celebrate the one to whom we belong, in life and in death, through the gift of our baptism. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit work though our imperfect words and actions to connect us in love to others and to the God who created and loves us into God’s community. Help us, help us, help us and thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord God.