“Circle of Love” – June 12, 2022

Rev. Dr. Faith J. Conklin

Sunday, June 12, 2022 at 9:30 am
Livestream Worship

church from front

           This Sunday is designated in our Church year as “Trinity Sunday”. We’re invited to celebrate and reflect upon the understanding of God as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”) and what that means for our faith and practice.

           The doctrine of the Trinity is a complex concept.  We can’t fully comprehend it. We don’t have adequate language to explain it. That’s OK. That’s part of its meaning and message. The Trinity is a statement of faith.  It offers us a way of describing our experience of God and reminds us that the Creator of the universe loves us, saved us, and will continue to bless us.

           God is “Three in One”; diversity held in unity. If that’s what God is like, and we’re created in God’s image, then we’re to be like that also. God created us for relationship; with God, with one another and with all creation. God sent Jesus to reconcile and restore us when those relationships were broken. God continually sends the Holy Spirit to unite us and make us whole.

As I look around our world today, I see how much we need that reminder and that gift. I find in it a word of hope, assurance, and challenge.

           Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my favorite writers and preachers. She has a sermon on the Trinity entitled “Three Hands Clapping”. (Now there’s an image to play with in your mind!) She concludes with these words: Preachers tie themselves into knots trying to explain what all this means. One Trinity Sunday I found a lumpy envelope on the hood of my car. Inside was a Three Musketeers candy bar with a note that read, “All for one and one for three! Happy Trinity!” All I know for sure is that if human beings were created in the image of God, then a) God is wonderfully diverse and b) we are more alike than we think.

           Meanwhile I do not know why we hold ourselves responsible for explaining things that cannot be explained. Perhaps the most faithful sermon on the Trinity is one that sniffs around the edges of the mystery, hunting for something closer to an experience than an understanding.

           Join me this week as together we “sniff around the edges”. We’ll acknowledge what we don’t know. We’ll celebrate the One who knows us.

Leave a Comment