On a beautiful summer weekend, even though this is the feast of the Trinity, I think the last thing you are probably needing is a homily that tries to explain the Trinity. I went back and looked at my previous homilies over the years on Trinity Sunday, and once or twice I think I actually went a little in that direction, so I think I should start by saying that if you were around for any of those, I’m really sorry. So instead today, one thing to notice about the Trinity. And let’s take that one thing from the first reading.
So God the father is supposed to be unapproachable and invisible and living off in the heavens somewhere. We’re all still tempted to talk about God that way. And yet here in what we call the Old Testament, when we tend to think God was often not really very crazy about humans, God comes down for a conversation, a literal summit conference, where Moses, our great predecessor in faith, says, please come along and stay with us as we go through this life, we are difficult people, but we need you. Be close to us. And God does what Moses asks.
The one thing that the Trinity tells us is that above all, God wants relationship. God is a relationship, a relationship of father and son and spirit that is so deep it’s wrong to think of them as separate. And all God wants with us is relationship, it’s why creation exists, why we exist, God pursues us for this relationship. That’s the executive summary of the bible, if you never need one, God’s desire to be in relationship with us. God’s inner life is all love, and that is what God offers us.
The question for all of us every day isn’t whether we believe in God, but whether we believe God is love, that that is God’s being and God’s language and how we are supposed to see God in this world, and it’s all God wants to see here on earth, is us caring about and loving as limitlessly as God does. God isn’t a solo act, God is a loving community. All God wants to do is welcome us into that way of loving God and loving one another.
This is a difficult world for a God who only wants to see people draw close to one another and care about one another. It’s a place where mistrust and fear and separation and scapegoating are everywhere. We humans find people to blame for just about everything that we think is wrong, we want to separate ourselves from people we think are threats to our well-being. And yet God is constantly trying to draw things together, to make us relational people the way he is a relational God, the way God is separate but also completely one.
It is a challenge to live life with that kind of a desire for oneness, and that kind of a desire to gather people together into one. And yet that’s our prayer on Trinity Sunday, to be inspired by the God who is multiple persons yet completely one in love, and who only wants this from us, to realize that he has come to make us one, and to love the way God does.