Pastor John Wright

The church catholic has traditionally called the first Sunday following Pentecost, the "normal times" that celebrate the time between the giving of the Spirit to the church and the preparation for the return of Christ in Advent, the time in which we know live, as Trinity Sunday.

The Triune God is the only God, we confess. There is no God behind the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the One God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To celebrate Trinity Sunday is very important today. "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence" (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1), we recognize that the Triune God, The Lover, Beloved, and Love, does not merely love as an act of the will, but IS Love in God's very nature as Triune.

We must remember this so that we don't get confused when someone drops the G word (God) on us to think that they are necessarily speaking of Triune God -- remember that early Christians were called atheists because they did not confess the gods of the Roman empire. The passages therefore take us into the particular universal, the Mystery, that is God as God has revealed Godself for our salvation.

Exodus 3:1-6

It might be fun to trace the story of Moses before Exodus 3. How much instruction does he have in the traditions of the sons of Israel? For whom is he working? Why must the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" reveal God's self to Moses? Could Moses know this God just by "thinking himself" there? Why the location, both in general and in the particular? Why is the ground holy? Most importantly, whom does God reveal God's self as? Why? Why would Moses hide his face and be afraid?

Romans 8:12-17

Go through the Romans passage. Who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Spirit "do"? To whom do we cry out? What is the relationship between the One to whom we cry, and the Spirit? Whom is Christ? How does Christ relate to the "Abba" and to the "Spirit"? What role does Christ play for us in our salvation? How is God revealed to us for our salvation?

John 3:1-16

In relationship to the specific Sunday, let's again not focus on Nicodemus or even the sayings of Jesus in this passage as we usually do. Let's look at the characterization of God. What is the relationship that Nicodemus sees between Jesus and God? To be born from above, Jesus says, is to be born of the Spirit -- whose Spirit? What is the relationship between the Spirit and God and Jesus in the passage? Whom did God "send"? If God sends the Son, what does this make God? What then is the role of the Spirit in the kingdom in bringing about belief? Belief in whom? When one believes in Christ, in whom does one believe? By whom? What is the goal of the sending of the Son and the Spirit?

Now this can all be terribly confusing, but let's try and pull this stuff together to understand that Christians confess God as Triune because God has revealed God that way for our salvation. The Trinity is not about speculating about God, but about God's own revelation and the relationships within God's own Life that IS God. The Oneness of God is confessed clearly in the Exodus passage, but still the God who speaks God's Word from the bush to call Moses to the God of the ancestors of Israel. In the NT passages, whom is the Source? Whom does the Source send as the Revelation of the Source? How is the One sent from the Source as Revelation made known as the revelation of the Source? Do these Three that are One differ as God? What does this tell you about the nature of God?

Finally, if God is Triune Love, what is it to participate in God's own Life? What would eternal life be? Is the Christian life chiefly about life in this temporal world? What do we learn about the termporal world as the creation of this Triune God?

Wow, if this doesn't give Kaz something to talk and think about for awhile, nothing will!!!!