A blessed Holy Trinity Sunday to you, from God our loving parent, Jesus Christ our Brother, and the Holy Spirit who binds the world together in love!
Holy Trinity Sunday is one of those weeks in the church year where the theme of the day is difficult to follow. The message is all about some doctrinal statement of the nature of God. Everything is a bit cerebral and lofty, with no simple or concrete idea to comprehend. You may have heard many sermons and children’s sermons trying to give some example of how something can be both 3 and 1, or 1 and 3—every example falling short to explain the mystery. No, the triune nature of God is not something that can be explained, but only believed by faith. It is truly beyond us. But one does not need to explain HOW God is Trinity to experience the good news in a Trinity kind of way. Here’s what I’m thinking on that today: God is, as we know God to be, absolutely relational. With us, within God’s very self, and with all creation. God is always in motion, always in relationship with us, never distant or absent. And that is a wonderful thought. Before anything, we can say, God exists in beautiful diversity and relationship as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” When the story of the world began, our God of relationship sung a song of creation—a song which created and invited more voices to join: yours and mine, and creation itself! The beginning pages of the Bible tell us that God spoke a Word and everything came into being. I like to think of it, rather, as singing. The Bible tells us, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Spirit, or Breath of God, hovered over the face of the deep. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together working so intimately that they are one, so relationally that they are three. God sung, and with the breath of God, that Word rang out into the universe and everything came into being! The Singing God—Voice, Breath, and Word—shared God’s self in a way that the universe began ringing, and in joy joined, itself, in the song. All the world was created in love and in joyful song; and humans arose as chief co-harmonizers with God, tending and keeping the creation that was so lovingly sung into existence. But, as anyone who’s ever sung in a choir or hummed along to the radio knows, sometimes humans can get a little out of tune. The harmonious garden, paradise of creation, was tainted with the harsh dissonance of a self-centered human song. But God does not give up on our pitchy existence. The “face of Trinity” as one hymn puts it, the Word made flesh, vibrated into our plane of existence. He lovingly came to drag our wayward harmonies back into consonance with God’s magnificent song. Jesus was a force of love, inclusion, justice, and reconciliation. But humanity’s dissonance with the creator clashed with Jesus’ song and sent his melody to the cross and tomb. God’s song cannot be stopped. With a breath and a song the Word sang again, springing from the grave and beginning another melody among us, one that cannot, will not, be overtaken by the wayward song of a fallen humanity. The Breath of God blew fierce and powerfully on the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. Suddenly those present joined the song in full harmony, singing of God’s deeds of Power in language every nation under heaven could hear and understand, as their own. That song continues today, as we are called to sing the song of justice, love, and power in Christ. Our world longs for the melody of Jesus to bring it back in harmony with God and among itself. Where outcast voices, oppressed people, long to brought back into the song, God is working in us to Let [those] voices rise and interweave, by love and hope set free, to shape in song this joy, this life: begun by Trinity. That’s where we stand today, amid the story, the song, of God’s love. Universe sang into being, Jesus leading the melody that connects everything—the earth, God, us—back together as notes of beautiful, God-breathed song. The Holy Spirit gives us breath, as she did the apostles at that Pentecost, to sing that reconciling melody, that melody of Jesus that saves, redeems, gives infinite value and worth to you, to your neighbor. We sing that song, not just in church—but with our very lives: everywhere we breath, we are singers, co-harmonizers, of that melody Jesus put in our soul, the song the Holy Spirit breathes out of us, the music of God that is life, and love, and eternal. That’s how I think of the Holy Trinity today. A dance, a song, a ceaseless love that binds us, creation, and God together in eternal and creative life. Comments are closed.
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AuthorRev. Chris Sesvold is currently the pastor at Halfway Creek Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Holmen, WI. Archives
October 2021
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