Sermon - 6/15/25

Year C – Trinity Sunday – June 15, 2025

Pastor Megan Floyd

John 16:12-15

Athanasian Creed

 

Grace and Peace to you from our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is God and the Holy Spirit… the Three-in-One. Amen.

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday… now I have several clergy friends who prefer to gloss over this one, but given how cloudy our understanding of the Trinity is, I thought we should dig in, yes?

So today… Trinity Sunday… is a different sort of festival… in that what we are celebrating is actually… our church doctrine… it is the church’s explanation of God’s nature as three-in-one… one-in-three… or rather, we should say…

Today we celebrate our almost understanding of God’s nature.

I say almost, because… it isn’t perfect… no description we can imagine or create will truly capture who God is… and that’s also the point.

Nothing we can say about God will fully describe God’s being because God is massive and ultimately beyond our full understanding.

God is mystery… and wonder… and awe…

And yet… This massive and mysterious God yearns for a relationship with us… a personal relationship with humanity…

God wanted that so much that God came and walked with us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our great and powerful God… in a poor and humble human body.

God came and shared our joy and our pain… lived a human life with us… and submitted himself to our most incredibly violent actions… all to show us how much God was invested in this relationship.

And after Jesus defeated death, and was resurrected from the tomb… he continued to share life with us before ascending to heaven, but not before drawing our attention to the Holy Spirit…

Our advocate… the Holy Spirit of God… the very breath of God that fills our lungs and permeates our lives… God who surrounds us… and lives within us.

God, the mighty and powerful creator… Jesus… our humble redeemer and friend… and Spirit… the one who sustains us and saturates our world…

Distinct in their divinity but together as one… one God.

“One God in trinity, and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being… the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty.”

Makes perfect sense, yes?

As humans, in a relationship, we want to set parameters… we want to understand and know the other person… We like to believe that fully knowing another is actually possible.

For example… my parents have been married for forty-nine years. I’d say they know each other very well… they can anticipate each other’s reactions and moods. But occasionally, they still surprise each other…

And my husband and I have been married almost twenty-two years… we respond in unison so often that we suspect we might share a brain.

But we are still – all of us – separate people with different perspectives on life.

Think about your closest relationship… perhaps with your spouse… or a sibling or cousin… maybe a life-long best friend. You know this person through and through… you can describe and anticipate this person’s thoughts and reactions…

You have laughed together… cried together… and yet, you are not them… they are not you…

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