Understanding Mystery

In the Christian year, the Sunday after Pentecost is designated Trinity Sunday and has been observed by Christian churches for over a thousand years. Yet Trinity Sunday differs from most of the other high holy days in the church calendar. Most of the Christian year is organized around days which recall and celebrate events in history that have to do with salvation: the birth of Jesus, his baptism, his public ministry, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the early followers of Christ at Pentecost. All of these events have corresponding days in the church calendar.

Trinity Sunday, however, is not so much about an event as it is about an idea, the idea of God and how we experience God. So let’s reflect on our experiences of divine reality by reading a text from Matthew’s Gospel that is quite familiar, a passage typically called the Great Commission. Let’s read it at Matthew 28.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

My title today is “Understanding Mystery” and if you think about that for a minute you’ll realize how preposterous it is. The Trinity has been discussed and debated for almost two thousand years. Understanding the mystery of a triune God has occupied some of the best minds ever. It is funny and maybe even a little arrogant for me to suggest that I have anything worthy to contribute, especially in the few minutes we have this morning. So if my title sounds pretentious to you, substitute for it something like “A simple-minded preacher’s unremarkable reflections on a subject too big for him.”

The Trinity may, in fact, be too big for anyone. How can we ever presume to understand God? We cannot even understand ourselves very well. We do not understand the world, at least not how to make things right in the world. How, then, can we ever understand the mystery that is God, especially when that mystery is about a God who is One and yet Three? The mathematics of the Trinity means that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1. How can we ever understand that? So this sermon is less about understanding and more about experiencing the Mystery that is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I want to say first that understanding God, even to the limited extent that we can, is never complete. We never come to the point where we can say, “Oh, now I understand God completely.” Learning about God is not like learning the multiplication tables. Once we learn those, we don’t have to relearn them. When we learned the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12 or 15 x 15, we were done. Our knowledge was complete. Even when we learned to ride a bike, we came to the point where our knowledge was complete and we would never have to relearn again. We can always improve our bike riding skills. But we never have to learn the basics again and in that sense our understanding of riding a bike is complete.

That is not the case with God. We never get to complete knowledge. Did you notice something in the text I read? It said the eleven disciples met the resurrected Jesus in Galilee at the mountain he had indicated. Then it said, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Some doubted! Can you imagine that? These were not ordinary people who didn’t know Jesus. These were not even average disciples. These were the eleven apostles. They were with Jesus from the beginning. They heard his teaching. They saw what he did. They witnessed his crucifixion and they saw the resurrected Lord. Then they saw Jesus on a mountain where he said he would meet them and some of the eleven worshiped and some of the eleven doubted. In fact, they all did a little of both.

The point is that even the first followers of Jesus had trouble understanding. Their understanding of God was never complete. Even with all they saw and did with Jesus, there was room for doubt. That’s so important because we all doubt. We cannot completely understand God. We doubt. But like the eleven, we also worship. Doing both is what it means to be a disciple. Our knowledge of God is never complete and as we struggle with God — fluctuating between our worship and our doubt — we experience what being a Christian disciple is like.

To say that we never completely understand God leads to a second thought which is that understanding God is a journey which means we experience God over time.

Something else you may not have noticed in the text was the next phrase after it said some doubted. The text said “And Jesus came … to them.” Isn’t that strange? He came to them. Wasn’t he already there? The text implies they were all there together. But then it says that Jesus came to them.

Only two times in Matthew’s Gospel does it say that. Normally people come to Jesus but twice he comes to his disciples. The first time is at the transfiguration when some of the disciples saw Jesus in his divine glory. (Matthew 17.1-13) Then in today’s text, just before his ascension, it says that Jesus came to his disciples. Both instances describe the disciples at the edge of the Mystery. In both cases, the disciples are at that point where the human world and the divine world are touching and there is a mystery that cannot be explained.

There are moments in our human experience when we know we are at the edge of where this world intersects with divine reality. In those moments, we can almost go up and touch the place where different worlds come together. I call this life’s “edginess.” We’ve all experienced moments when it feels as if we can almost turn the corner or reach a little further and enter into a wholly different and deeper reality. Sometimes music creates those moments, sometimes a beautiful sunset or a baby’s smile or amazing relationship. But as soon as we try to reach that edgy, deeper reality, we realize there is mystery we cannot enter. That’s why Jesus came to them. There is a point beyond which we cannot go and divine reality must come to us and speak to us.

What does the divine reality say? “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity.” At the edge of the mystery, we are told to go, to go baptizing and teaching in the name of the Trinity. The point is that understanding God is not an intellectual exercise for the classroom though we must use our intellects. Understanding God is not something to just chatter about although we must talk about it. Understanding God is something we experience as we journey through life, baptizing and teaching in the name of the Trinity.

Do you want to understand the Trinity? Go. Be about your journey of life and you will know that God whom we name Father is the Creator not just of all that is but of your way in life. Do you want to understand the Trinity? Go. Be about your journey of life and you will know that God whom we name Jesus Christ is the Redeemer who saves you from yourself and all that there is to fear. Do you want to understand the Trinity? Go. Be about your journey of life and you will know that God whom we name Holy Spirit is with you and in you and prays for you even when you don’t know how to pray yourself. Do you want to understand the Trinity, the Mystery which cannot be understood? Then, go, and the Triune God will come to you in the journey of your life.

Which leads to a final thought this morning. The text ends with Jesus saying, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end.” In other words, our journey with God isn’t just plodding along, one dreary day after another. We journey in the constant company of God, a circle of fellowship with the Lord.

This is why an ancient scholar known as John of Damascus (676-749) came up with a unique term for the oneness and threeness of God — perichoresis — which loosely translated from Greek means “circle dance.”[1] In other words, the Trinity is not an abstraction. The Trinity is an active, ongoing dance. “I am with you.” It’s a circle of dancing, embracing love. To see one person of the Trinity is to see all and to dance with one is to dance with all. We are invited into the circle and into a relationship of love where we see God face to face, as children hold hands and dance with loving parents. So the only way to understand the Mystery is to join the dance, to be embraced in the circle of God’s love, which is why church is about being together and not about being alone.

Jesus told his followers not only to baptize in the Trinity’s name but also to teach. We teach to remind our children as well as ourselves that we are always embraced in the circle of God’s love. Today is the last day of Sunday school until September and after the second service we are having a luncheon to honor our Sunday school teachers and helpers. Christian education, whether for children, youth, or adults is where we see that the Triune God is God of the journey. To teach is to make disciples. To teach is to learn and grow and to realize that our knowledge is never complete. To teach is to realize that God is always the God who comes to us along the way of our journeys in life. And to teach is to realize that God always invites us into a dancing, embracing circle of love.

So I close this morning with one other image. There is a painting called the Rublev icon where the three Persons of the Trinity are depicted as the three angels who were entertained by Abraham and Sarah way back in the Old Testament. (See Genesis 18) The faces of the Three are identical; they differ in dress and posture. This painting hangs in the refectory of a religious community of women in France. When asked why they chose that icon for their dining room, the hostess replied, “They sit at three sides of the table, and we are invited to join them. This is where we are in life: invited into the circle of holy love.”[2]

Understanding the Mystery of the Trinity is that experience. It is being embraced in the circle of holy love, joining together in the divine dance with One God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[1] Timothy F. Merrill, ed., “What’s the Difference?” Homiletics 18.3 (2006): 48-49.

[2] Cynthia Campbell, “Matthew 28:16-20,” Interpretation 46.4 (1992): 404-405.