Feast of the Holy Trinity
A college professor walked
into his classroom one day, went up to the board and he wrote on it the
numbers, 2, 4, and 8. Then he turned to
his class and he said, “Okay, what’s the solution?” Well everybody kind of looked at him and
scratched their heads. One student
raised his hand and says, “Well, 2 + 4 would be 6 + 8 would be 14. So the answer is 14.” The professor shook his head no.
Somebody else raised their
hand. And this person tried to multiply
them all together and came up with his answer, “2 x 4 is 8 x 8 is 64.” Again the professor said, “Wrong.”
The next one tried it as a
progression so he said, “Well you have 2, that’s doubled to 4, which is doubled
to 8, so 8 doubled is 16. So 16 is the
next answer.” And the professor said,
“You’re wrong again.”
And he turned to the class
and he says, “You see what happened.
Every single one of you rushed in to finding the solution before you
even bothered to ask what the problem was.”
He says, “If you don’t know what the problem is you’ll never be able to
find the real solution.”
I tell that story because I
think that’s what we have in the feast that we are celebrating today, this
feast of the Holy Trinity. We celebrate
the fact that God has revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And then all of a sudden we jump into this
game of trying to figure out, okay how can 1 equal 3, how 3 equal 1, how is
that possible and we play all of these mental gymnastics and hurdles in our
mind trying to figure it out as if God were a puzzle. That’s not the question. That’s now why God revealed the Trinity to
us, to have us caught up in this mental puzzle solving.
God did it for a very
particular reason. God revealed Himself
as Trinity so that we could realize just how special we were to Him, and are to
Him, and just how much He really loves us.
If you look at the reading
that we had today they kind of lay out the pattern of the Trinity that’s been
revealed. The first reading was all
about God the Father and His act of creation.
Sometimes we like to take God and pull Him apart from what He does and
try to get Him up here in His pure essence.
Well, with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit as a
matter of fact, what They do is who They are.
There is no difference.
You know in human terms we
always talk about, you know John. He’s a
wonderful good guy, and you know in that instance he may have really done
something stupid but you know he’s really a good guy. We take the two and we separate them out
quite often. Not with God. The reading talks about this beautiful world
that God has formed for us.
I remember one episode I
had. I was working with a group of
kindergartners in a school. I marched
them down one day into this little tunnel.
It was an underground tunnel that went from the school over to the
church basement where they would eat lunch.
And I stopped them right in the middle of this cold, concrete
tunnel. And I said, “Okay everybody look
around.” They kind of looked
around. And I said, “Describe what you
see.” And they were saying, “Water,
cold, rocks, all gray.” And I said,
“Okay, come on now.” So I took them out,
we went outside. And I stood them
outside and I said, “Now tell me what you see.”
And they started yelling out, “Green, gold, yellow, bird, rabbit, grass,
blue sky, white clouds.” They were
naming off all of this stuff. And I said
to them, “Now tell me, where would you be happier, living in a world like this
or living in a world that looked just like that tunnel?” They all looked at me like I was crazy and
they said, “Here, of course.” And I
think there is great truth to this.
God the Father could have
made the world any way that He had chosen to make it. He could have made it so that everything out
there was gray. Everything was made of
stone. Everything around us was all one,
no variance in temperature or color, or smells, or wind speed or anything. But He didn’t. He chose to create a world of great beauty,
of great rhythm, of great perplexity.
Why? Why would God choose to
create what He did and not what He could have?
Well the only answer I’ve only been able to come up with is because He
loves us. He knows that we would be
happier in a world of beauty and variance, more so than we would be in that
world where everything was gray and cold and hard.
Creation itself reveals to
us who God is. He is a God who loves
us. A God who is solicitous to the
wellbeing and the comfort and the enjoyment of His people. Creation showed a God reaching out to create
a world of love, of beauty, of peace, of goodness for His creatures to live in.
The second reading talks
about Jesus, Son. And it all centered in
on the fact of His death for us to that you and I could be redeemed and brought
back to the fullness of life. Have you
ever paused for even a moment to reflect on that? Really get into that mystery? How God could love us so much that He would
choose to give up the trappings of His divinity to become human? And that even wasn’t enough. He then went so far as to even give up that
human life that He took upon Himself in death.
What love God must have for us that He was willing to send His Son. And what love that Son must have had that He
was willing to die so that you and I could be better. We need to stop throughout our years and to
ponder that person of God the Son becoming human, going through death, coming
to resurrection. Because it’s only when
we spend time looking at what He did that we will ever understand who He is.
And finally the gospel
reading talks about the Spirit. The
Spirit who was going to come as Jesus leaves the earth and the spirit will
bring us to the fullness of truth. The
Spirit will be our advocate Jesus said.
Pleading our cause for us as we go through life. He will be out guide and our comfort. The presence of the Spirit among us should
convince us that even after all He did for us, God wasn’t through. God could not stand for even one second not
to be part of our lives, not to constantly reaching out to help us through the
struggles of daily life that we live as human beings, so He is present in the
Holy Spirit. Always a part of our life,
always surrounding us with His love and care and perfection. Always there to pick us up when we fall and
lead us back to holiness.
The Trinity was not revealed
for us to deal with in our minds, figure out how 1 could be 3 and 3 could be
1. No, the Trinity talks of a God who in
many ways reaches out to His beloved people, to offer His love, to offer His friendship,
to offer His very Self to us. And the
question is always the same, are we paying attention? Do we see it?
Can we find God in His presence in our lives” And will we open up our hearts and give Him
the love that He so much desires?