Trinity Sunday B

June 11, 2006
The Rev. Kristie Hennig

"All for One and One for Three!"

It is altogether fitting that one of the most recognizable symbols for the Trinity is the Celtic knot. It is fitting because, quite frankly, preachers and teachers in the Church get ourselves all tied in knots trying to explain that article of our Christian faith. We feel Nicodemus' pain: Like him, many of us have been to seminary and we still don't get it: How can it be that God is Three Persons... yet only one God at the same time? It's a tough knot to untie: the idea of the Trinity defies all logic, leaving us with more questions than answers.

Why does God need three names? How does God inhabit three forms simultaneously? How can God be both three and one?

Maybe you've noticed that the Bible often compounds the problem by making it sound as if all three -- Father, Son, and Spirit - operate independently of one another. How can God the Father be His own Son? And if Jesus is God, then whom is he speaking to when he prays?

And where does the Holy Spirit come in? Is that the Spirit of God, the spirit of Jesus, or someone else altogether? If they are all one, then why do they come and go at different times, and how can one of them send another of them?

In trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, pastors and teachers have tried a number of object lessons. We've compared the three Persons of the Godhead to a three-leaf clover. We've likened the Three-in-One to water in its three incarnations: water, ice, and steam. And we've worked the God-as-apple analogy, too: the stem is apple, the flesh is apple, the seed is apple: three distinct forms - all apple: diverse in function, united in apple-ness. Like God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.

Clover, H2O, and Honeycrisp give us something to sink our teeth into, so to speak...something to wrap our heads around. But the mystery of God's nature does not yield to facile comparisons, and in trying to reduce it to understandable terms, we end up tongue-tied.

Maybe it is best to keep it light on a day like today. Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor recalls one Trinity Sunday when she found a lumpy envelope on the hood of her car. Inside was a Three Musketeers candy bar with a note that read, "All for one and one for three! Happy Trinity!"

Instead of attempting an explanation of the church's doctrine of the Trinity tonight/today, I thought I'd give you a peak through a window we Lutherans don't look through nearly often enough: the view of God offered by Celtic spirituality.

Celtic Christianity has its roots in the pagan religions of ancient Britain (with ties to the druids of Stonehenge) and it offers some unique access points by which we may enter into the mystery of God's being and doing in the world.

The ancient Celts had a strong sense of community and of place. They viewed their family, household, and kin as a community of persons co-existing in an equal and harmonious unity ... and they understood God in the same way. They experienced God as a trinity, three distinct persons living in community. But this Trinity was not otherworldly or out of touch. The Celts were alert to the presence of God in everything; there was no real division between this world and the "other." The whole created order was evidence of God's presence. The natural world held the power to recognize the sacred and the holy, revealing God in everything.

Since the earliest days of the Church, Christians have worshiped in the name of the Triune God. I encourage you to pay attention to how often we call upon God in our own worship service, using God's three names: Father, Son, and Spirit.

The ancient Celts took that invocation of the Trinity to another level. They lived all of life under the mystery and authority of the Three-in-One. That mystery was woven into each daily chore. Since there was little time for long formal prayers in the lives of these hard-working peasants, they prayed as they worked. Ritual prayers invoking the Trinity were sung or chanted each day as folks stirred the porridge, tended the fire, washed themselves, and made the beds. A rhythm of prayer grew out of these daily routines...a rhythm of doing-and-praying, praying-and-doing that infused a person's daily activities with a sense of the immediate presence of God. God-beside-me, in contrast to the distant, transcendent, unapproachable God of the Milky Way. A God who is not remote but connected. One learning we can take from the Celts is this sense of the God who is immanent, God-with-us. So that we may truly live as we worship, in the presence of the Holy One who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

Of all the riches of Celtic spirituality, it is the Celtic sense of place that especially resonates for me. In these days of relocating my family from the home and community our children grew up in, to our new community here in Chanhassen, my own sensitivity to sacred space, holy ground...to the indwelling of God in house, river, lake, and garden is heightened.

As Gene and I and our grown children shuffled from room to room at 1870 Bayard the week before last, unearthing memories as we said goodbye...as I scrubbed each of those rooms for the last time...and then, as we drove down the driveway of our new home, branches of shrub roses brushing past us...and later as we walked through the lush shade garden to our fish pond...I had a profound sense that I was not alone.

Past, present, and future interlaced. And it was good.

I think I understand now in a way I didn't before what the Irish mean when they talk about "thin places."

Thin places are spots where the veil between this world and the next is tissue-thin, so sheer that it is easy to step through. To discern the difference between an ordinary place and a thin place one must look with spiritual eyes.

"Thin places are all about connection - with God, with the Other world and with all who have lived, are living and will live in generations to come."

To stumble upon a thin place is to step onto holy ground. The very earth itself seems to call out, "Come here and be transformed." You can look for thin places -- especially in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, where the landscape is littered with monuments, markings, and ruins that once boldly stated, "This is a thin place. God is very near." But frequently thin places find you.

You may not have the British Isles in your vacation plans or a monumental leave-taking from a childhood home scheduled any time soon. But there are thin places to find wherever our summer travels take us. As a writer on the subject of thin places has observed, "There is an intrinsic, mystical spirit woven into the fabric of nature, landscape, and sky that calls out to every human heart - if only the heart is willing to listen."

May I suggest: Be still and listen. Respond to the invitation to rest, renew, reconnect during these summer months. Be available to the mystery of the thin places waiting to find you.

Cemeteries are thin places. Battlegrounds are another. Crash sites. Rooms that cradle those who are passing from this life to the next. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Family cabins. Rickety old rowboats. Communion. And baptism! Mountains, buttes, and river bluffs. And the Boundary Waters. Surely the veil between this world and the next is whispery-thin in the BWCA.

Thin places are ports through which we can move closer to God, the three-in-one...stopping places where we can leave that which is familiar and journey into the divine presence, into the very heart of God. Thin places open pathways that lead to satisfying the familiar hungers and yearnings we share in common with all people on earth - to rest our bodies, renew our spirits, and connect to something greater than ourselves...to be awake, to be loved, to find peace. To take in the nourishment we are offered so that we may turn and feed those around us who are hungry in body, mind, and spirit...to serve in the power of the Holy Spirit the world God loved and sent the Son to save.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen.

1 Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way, "Three Hands Clapping", 152.
2 Ibid, 154.
3 Roddy Hamilton, a minister for the Church of Scotland, writing for Seasons of the Spirit Congregational Life Pentecost 1, 24.
4 Mindie Burgoyne, www.thinplacecs.com/openingarticle.htm.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.