Our 3-D God

In the tradition of the church year, the Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday. It marks the transition from the great seasons and festivals of Advent and Christmas; Lent and Easter; and finally Pentecost into the long season called “ordinary time.”

That may sound entirely boring until you understand that this is not “not special” ordinary but “ordinal” – like numbers. It is the season where we count the Sundays rather than link them to Sundays before or after our three high holy days.

Since Trinity Sunday often comes at the end of the school year, you can think of it as something of a recapitulation day. Who is this one God whom we have seen as God the Son and experienced as God the Holy Spirit? How can three be one and one be three? And the answer is: “It is a mystery.”

            The picture you see above graced my facebook page this week. I don’t know if it was sent as a challenge or a comfort. It takes all of us preachers back to our seminary theology classes where we discovered the dreaded truth: all those lovely analogies we learned as children about the Trinity are actually heresy. Think ice, water, and steam. Think three leaf clovers. The Three Musketeers may come close – “All for one and one for all.” Celtic knots may come even closer. But in the end, every explanation that satisfies one attribute risks losing another, hence heresy – which is why I am glad that faith is far bigger than systematic theology.

            When I worked with children, I would tell them that God is just so big that we cannot know God in simply one way, so we have three. That’s the mystery. God is gentle and God is strong. God forgives and God judges. God comforts and God challenges. God is near and God is far away. The key lies in our realization that God is not a multiple choice question. I cannot pick one “God” and neglect the others. That’s heresy, too.

            In the end, that’s the kind of God I need. Even if I can’t get my head around God the Trinity, I can try to get my heart around a God who is big enough to get those divine arms around all of me. I like the way Brian Wren says it (in Praising a Mystery): The living God is a mystery, not a secret: secrets puzzle us, but lose their fascination when they are revealed. A mystery deepens the more it is pondered and known.

That’s something of what I want to explore this Sunday when we gather for worship at Seneca Presbyterian Church. No kittens, just a 3-D God for my three dimensional world. You are welcome to come and join us.