Almost every culture has looked into the world and concluded there is a higher power at work to create the wonder of nature, the change of seasons, storms, and everything we experience in this life. It is as St. Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans: “For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them” (1:19). Every culture has come to different conclusions and I have always wondered if there is a correlation between culture and the perception of God. I am sure there is an academic treatment of the topic that has studied the culture and its mythology. For example, is we were Vikings we’d have Odin (wisdom, knowledge, war, and more), Frig (Marriage, Family, and Motherhood), Thor (Odin’s son: thunder, storms and strength), Loki (trickster, and tempter, father of Hel), Hel (guardian of the underworld) and Freya (goddess of fate, love, beauty, gold, war and fertility). If they made up the pantheon of our deities, what should we the people be like? I suspect it makes a difference.

But then we worship God revealed in Sacred Scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – One God in three Persons. We certainly celebrate that on Holy Trinity Sunday, still it is quite the mystery.

A long time ago in a Bible Study I was explaining something or another about the Holy Trinity, supplying all manner of analogies that didn’t quite work, when someone asked, “Why should we care? God is God and that is all that matters. What’s the difference?” Hmmm…. What is the difference? Good question.

After the Last Supper, Jesus is preparing his disciples for what will unfold on Good Friday and beyond. There is so much to tell, but at this point the disciples are already shaky knowing that Jesus is leaving them. So, he doesn’t burden them with more than they couldn’t handle.  But he promises them the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of ongoing revelation.  The Spirit would slowly guide the disciples — and all of us — into a fuller knowledge and comprehension of everything Jesus said and left unsaid. In time, when we’re ready and able. The disciples didn’t have to understand everything right then. And we don’t have to find the perfect analogy or metaphor to explain the three-fold fullness of God.  All we can do is seek the truth with our whole hearts, and trust that Jesus’s promise holds.  All we can do is await the Spirit who will come and reveal God’s truth to us in God’s time. But we can help out by continuing to be curious! and looking at it differently. We think in terms of one and try to move to the three. So, here goes… what does the Trinity in being a Trinity tell us?

God is diverse.  If God exists in three persons, then each person has their own way of being and expressing love, truth, goodness, beauty, and righteousness.  There is an intrinsic diversity in the expression of goodness that lies within that divinity – allowing each one of us to experience the presence of God in unique and yet common ways.

God is communal.  It’s one thing to say that God values community.  Or that God thinks community is good for us.  It’s altogether another to say that God is community; that God is relationship, intimacy, connection, and communion.  Can’t do that with just one.

God is hospitality. Being communal is one thing, but more than that God is hospitable. One of the great icons of Christianity was created by Andrei Rublev, known as the “Holy Trinity.” In it, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit sit around a table, sharing bread and wine.  Their faces are nearly identical, but they’re dressed in different colors.  The Father wears gold, the Son blue, and the Spirit green.  The Father gazes at the Son.  The Son gazes back at the Father, but gestures towards the Spirit.  The Spirit gazes at the Father, but points toward the Son with one hand, and opens up the circle with the other, making room, inviting others to join the sacred meal. There is intimacy and openness. There is room for you at the table; room for all. There is an invitation for us to join the intimacy on full display in the Eucharistic setting.

God is love. Beyond the words in John’s Epistle, there is something different about love when expressed in the Trinity. When we think about love in our experience, there is something “off” when one person is totally in love with themselves. Similarly, if two persons are in love with each other to the complete exclusion of all others, again, there is something “off.”  The medieval thinker Hugh of St. Victor wrote that three makes all the difference. When one has to give full attention to the other and the other is two, divine love begins to swirl among Trinity. Hugh describes it as a “divine dance” of love that can not contain itself and so bursts out into the world in a creative force that creates life.

God is dynamic and creative. Creating the world in love, sending the Spirit as a dynamic force in our loves, and sending His Son to create a redemptive way home to God.

I am sure there is more than can be said, but for now it is enough. What is the difference? It seems to me that when we consider the nature of God and are led by the Spirit to these insights (and more), we also need to recall that we are children of God, adopted children, children of inheritance.  The children of the diverse, communal, hospitable, dynamic, creative, and loving God.  Children sent into the world to reveal God with lives that reflect the truth and beauty of the Triune God.

It makes all the difference, so that we can make a difference.

Amen

Image credit: “Trinity” by Andrei Rublev | Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow | PD-US