Trinity Sunday

North Star News column
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Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday on the church’s calendar. This day, which always comes on the Sunday after Pentecost, is a day to ponder the divine mystery that there is one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whole books have been written on how this can be; lengthy church councils and conferences have debated how best to describe this reality; and the unwieldy Athanasian Creed was written to proclaim it in public worship. St. Patrick famously used the shamrock with its three leaves to explain the Trinity to new Christians in Ireland. And yet, to mature Christians the Trinity remains a profound and beautiful mystery.
Saying that it is a mystery does not mean that it is a riddle or a puzzle. Neither is it a wall that human reason comes up against but an ocean in which the human soul swims. The one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all at once is so wonderful and magnificent that no human being can fully comprehend him. We will never fully understand the Trinity “till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise!” as the Methodist writer Charles Wesley put it so beautifully in the conclusion of his hymn “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Some people get a headache trying to explain the Trinity. God intends that meditation on the Trinity leads to being “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”
The better one gets to know God the more there is a sense of his unfathomable divine nature. Isaiah the prophet was told “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) St. Paul, in Romans 11:33, was led to exclaim, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?”
The response of those who glimpse the depth and breadth of the nature of God is worship and praise. In Isaiah 6 the prophet has a vision of God’s divine presence where the angels sing God’s praise saying “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” In Revelation 7 the apostle also has a vision of God’s divine presence where the elders, angels, and all creatures worship God saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
And so the people of God on earth observe Trinity Sunday by worshipping the God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. There may be sermons and lectures that try to explain the divine mystery. There may be questions and quizzical expressions. But the most appropriate and satisfying thing to do on Trinity Sunday is to join the worshipping assembly in singing, “holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of thy glory; Hosanna in excelsis” and be “lost in wonder, love, and praise.”