A sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025. The scriptures are Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15, and Psalm 8.
Most of you know that for the past week or so, 12 of us from Holy Trinity have been on pilgrimage, walking 100 kilometers or so to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Since the 9th century, Santiago has been a holy destination for venerating the burial place of St. James the Apostle, one of the first of Jesus’s disciples, and the first to die a martyr’s death.
Though the destination is part of the pilgrimage, the journey is equal, if not more important. And that journey continues, as we live out the idea that “El Comino comienza en Santiago,” or “the Camino begins in Santiago.”
One day last week, I felt the richness of that journey as Leona Fredericks and I met a young man from New Orleans named Vinod. As he and I walked on for a while, we began talking about where we were from, what we do, why we came on the Camino. And eventually, I said the name of our group, that we were from the Church of the Holy Trinity.
We then went on to talk about his upbringing in a secular Hindu family, and various aspects of Christian belief. At one point, Vinod said, “You know, Hinduism also has 3: the Trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the preserver, and Shiva is the destroyer.”
We talked about similarities and differences, both laughing that we were out of our depth, but enjoying the conversation.
As Vinod eventually walked on ahead, I kept thinking about our conversation. I eventually came to that point that lots of theologians must come to when thinking about the Trinity—that whatever the theology might be trying to express, the bottom line is that
The Holy Trinity is God’s love in community, and God wants to include us in that love.
For Christians, this is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or in language that isa little like Vinod’s, “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.” The Trinity is God’s love in community and God wants to include us in that love.
In Proverbs we meet a character hinted at last week on the Day of Pentecost. Wisdom is personified as a woman who goes through the city, who journeys throughout the earth, looking for anyone who will hear. And we learn Wisdom is not just a holy woman, but Wisdom is very closely related to God—before the creation itself, she already was. She was God’s “daily delight.” One version describes her as the architect by God’s side, playing happily in the presence of God.
In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we’re reminded that God has given us the Holy Spirit as a kind of second wind, a wind to lift us up when we’re down, to urge us forward when we’ve stumbled, and a wind to invigorate our faith whenever it’s grown tired or confused.
Jesus promises that the Spirit will continue to guide us even after Jesus has left this world. Jesus says that what is of God, is also of Jesus, and what is of Jesus, is also of the Spirit. The three are one and God’s intention is that we be absorbed into the life of God, the life of God in the Trinity.
One theologian (George Handry) has put it this way: in Christ we have God with us. In the Spirit we God in us. But while we have both of these, we also and always have God over us.
God the parent is over us, Mother, Father, the author of all life, the one who holds us, cares for us and sets out the plan in which we find our way.
God the Son, Jesus, is God with us, walking before us and beside us as an elder brother, a friend, a companion, a shepherd, a guide, and a support.
God the Spirit is God in us, giving us strength, probing our conscience, showing us where the world most needs God, which is to say, where the world most needs us to show God and be the love of God.
But even all of that can seem abstract.
As I was talking with my friend Vinod on the Camino, I was participating in the life and love of the Trinity as God the Creator was in the beauty all around me, and the goal of my walking. God the Spriit was the wind behind me and within me, compelling me onward. And God the Incarnate one showed up in the human form of a new friend, walking along with me.
Those who participated in yesterday’s “No Kings” demonstration may have felt this: God the Creator as the source of justice and goodness and truth that undergirds our being. God the Holy Spirit who turns up the fire in us because it’s part of God’s Holy Fire, and compels us to DO something. And finally, God the Incarnate one, as body-to-body, people make their presence known.
We have a reminder of God’s love in Trinity on our church pews.
On the edge of each pew at Holy Trinity there is a carved a “shield of the Holy Trinity.” Most of the ones we see in our church just have a design, but if you come up into the choir area, you’ll see pews with words added. They’re words in Latin, so they might also look a little like symbols.
But the Holy Trinity shield, popular in the Middle Ages, labels each of the circular points with a person of the Trinity: Pater (Father), Filius (Son), and Sanctus Spiritus (Holy Spirit). In the middle is the Latin word Deus, for God, and connecting each of the outer circles is a line in which is written, “Non est”, or “is not.” This shield is a reminder that God is movement, God is dance, God is never standing still—the Father is not the Son, is not the Holy Spirit. But each of the other circles, (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) “est” or IS God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The shield, whether with words or without words, is a little like those spinners that kids play with—a blur of action and energy, with direction that’s hard for us to predict.
God invites us to join in this community of love—the love of God that overflows into all of creation. It doesn’t matter if we always feel God’s presence in each of the Persons of the Trinity. It doesn’t matter if it’s all a little fuzzy. The point is that God is love in community, God wants to include us in this love.
May God the Holy Trinity bless us this day and forever; and may God help us to recognize the divine in one another and in ourselves.
In the name of that love, Amen.