Harvard, Humanity, and the Holy Trinity

John 16:12-15

[Jesus said,] “I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own but he will take whatever he hears and declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me and because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

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I have often lamented, even loathed, Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s never been my favorite sermon to prepare or to preach. From what I can tell, the Gospel reading we just heard was chosen by the liturgical police simply because all three persons of the Trinity are referenced by Jesus himself and we’re invited to wonder about and wrestle with what that means from a theological sense. But, I think the stuff of doctrine and dogma belong in the classroom, more than they do in worship, which many of you have heard me say before.

So, rather than snore our way through a bunch of 50 cent words and theological concepts and conundrums, I thought we’d watch a commencement address from Harvard University’s Class of 2025. Oftentimes, commencement addresses can be as boring as a sermon on Holy Trinity Sunday, but this one is different. I found it quite inspiring and full of connections to today’s liturgical calendar, believe it or not.

“We are bound by something greater than belief – [we are bound together by] our shared humanity.”

Now, smarter people than me have often said that the most important lesson, teaching, and meaning to be found in the Doctrine of the Trinity – what we call “the Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit,” because that’s the language of Jesus and in Scripture – isn’t so much the names and labels we’ve created to describe God. What really matters, they say … the lesson we’re to learn, the meaning we’re to find, the inspiration we’re to glean from it all … comes from the relationship it describes between the three.

Speaking of smarter people than me, St. Augustine is famous for saying something like, “If you see love, you see the three – the one who loves (the Father), the one who is loved (the Son) and the love itself (the Holy Spirit). Love cannot exist in the abstract; you cannot say “I love” without saying what or whom you love … in [the love of the Trinity, according to Augustine] there is both perfect unity and perfect relationship.”

Love. Love. Love.

Unity. Unity. Unity – with God and with one another.

At the heart of the Trinity, then – the essence, identity, and hope of God – is relationship — a perfect communion of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier; the lover, the loved, and the love, itself.

And this isn’t just about God. It’s about our call, hope, and joy as believers, too – to know God, not as some untouchable, incomprehensible, unfathomable power somewhere up there and out there and on the other side of eternity. It’s about our call to look for, to know, to engage, and to embrace God in our neighbor, too.

Again, as Luanna Jiang said it at Harvard, “We are bound by something greater than belief. [We are bound together by] our shared humanity.”

And for Christians who want to follow Christ, that humanity was and is shared in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, from Nazareth. In Jesus, who gave us this language for God; who showed us this divine love; who shared this amazing grace; who birthed this beloved community; who suffered, died, and who was raised … not so that we would merely believe all the right things, but so that we would behave in ways that share this love.

We are called to