The Holy Trinity
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Someone pointed me to the recording of a TED Talk by Robert Waldinger from 2016. Dr. Waldinger is on the research team of the longest study of people ever undertaken. In 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development enlisted 724 men, half of them Harvard students, the other half boys from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods.
For 75 years, the researchers contacted these men every other year and asked about their work, their homelives, their health. They did interviews, accessed medical records, did brain scans, videotaped their interactions with their wives, talked to their children.
Some of these men grew up to become factory workers or brick layers, some doctors and lawyers. Some developed alcoholism or schizophrenia. It was a complete mix of people.
With all this research, the team wanted to find out what keeps us happy and healthy throughout life. After 75 years of work, the finding was this: It is not wealth or fame or hard work. What keeps us happy and healthy are good relationships. Period, Dr. Waldinger says.
People who enjoy and cultivate warm, trusting relationships, who are connected with family, friends, and/or community, can deal better with pain, maintain good brain function later in life, are happier, physically healthier, and live longer.
We human beings apparently are hard-wired for community. We do better in all aspects of body, mind, and soul when we are in community with other people. We suffer and decline faster when we are lonely.
Trinity Sunday reminds us why we are hard-wired for community: We are created in the image of God, and God in God’s self is a God of community. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. God is Three-in-One and One-in-Three.
When we teach the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, we often make it sound heavy and static. I found this reminder from Professor Matthew Skinner helpful: “The doctrine of the Trinity did not come about because the early church had a lot of time for sitting around and engaging in theological navel-gazing. It came, rather, out of the lived experience of the church.”
When the believers gathered for worship and fellowship in those weeks after Easter, they experienced that they were guided by the Spirit, and that they were accompanied by Jesus, and they had peace with the Father. Their experience of God in three persons was not heavy or static. It was, instead, comforting and moving and loving and hopeful and relational and communal.
The teaching about the Holy Trinity was the attempt of the early church to understand their belief in one God on the one side, and their experience of God in three powerful ways on the other side.
Our holy scriptures proclaim a God whose love and care we experience in three ways.
God the Creator brought this whole universe into being. In the beauty of a mild summer evening, in the power of a thunderstorm, we experience God. The Bible stresses that God did not just make this world and then stepped back to see what would happen. Rather, God cares about creation, stays involved with it, wants a relationship with his creatures.
God walked with Adam and Eve in the evening breeze in the Garden of Eden; God chose Abraham and Sarah for a covenant relationship; God accompanied the people of Israel out of slavery to the promised land. God loves everything he has made and desires to be in relationship with us, his creatures.
In Jesus, God became human. The moment Jesus’ ministry was launched in his baptism, Jesus began gathering people. He called disciples; he invited people to follow him; he sat at the table with saints and sinners; he broke bread with 5,000 people on a hillside; from the cross he made sure that his mother and his beloved disciple would have caring relationships to sustain them.
On the last night of his life, Jesus blessed his friends with a special meal that would relate his ongoing presence to them and that would bind them together in community. “Holy Communion”, we call it, because is binds us together in a sacrament of Jesus’ love. Today, Natalie and Titus are joining us in this meal of blessed relationships with Jesus and among all of us.
Through the Holy Spirit, God calls, gathers, and enlightens us. In Holy Baptism, God’s Spirit descends upon us and blesses us with faith. It makes us part of the people of God, where it offers us opportunity to grow in faith through worship, Bible study, fellowship, faith conversations, service projects, mutual care and comfort, discipleship challenges, and so much more.
In today’s gospel, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth.” That “you” is plural. Jesus is speaking to his group of disciples. The Spirit will bless the group of disciples together with ever more truth and faith. The Spirit gathers us into a community where we discern together and discover together what God’s will is for our lives and the life of the church.
Our faith grows in the community of believers. That’s why we would really like you all to join our summer program “Journey Together”. In relationship with God and each other, we will journey into deeper understanding of God’s love and God’s call for us.
From beginning to end, the Bible proclaims a God who is a God of community. God is communal in his very nature as a triune entity, three persons in one unity. And God is communal in his desire to be in relationship with us. And God is communal in his mission to create relationships among God’s people.
What the TED talk presenter discovered in 75 years of study, God has known from time immemorial: Humans are made to be in relationships. For human beings to be happy and healthy, they need to have caring relationships in their lives.
We have all experienced the truth of this during COVID. The pandemic interrupted the majority of our relationships. It didn’t take long before we noticed the negative impact of it on our mind and soul.
Even my introvert husband noticed. The first couple of months of the shut-down, he was in his element, able to stay up late into the night, sleeping in the next day, holed up in his basement office, not having to interact with people – for a while he was loving it. But then even he began to feel a craving for company, for interaction, for seeing real people, for touching and hugging and laughing with family and friends.
A lot of research is being done right now into what the church of the coming years will look like. We are all noticing that people aren’t coming back as we had hoped they would. What will make people want to reconnect with Calvary or other congregations? According to research, what will pull people into a faith family is their need for connection.
As the Harvard study revealed, a scripture teaches, we human beings are created with a desire for relationships. We need caring contact with others in order to thrive. COVID has interrupted many of these relationships. Modern culture makes it very hard to build such relationships. The possibility of working from home is very convenient, but has made us even more isolated.
Where can people find caring relationships? Here. Among the people of God. Within the community of believers.
Our LEAD Team has been working on Calvary’s new mission statement for years. Through Bible study, interviews in congregation and community, research, seminars, and hard work, we arrived at our mission statement, and it’s one of those God moments: It could not have been timelier.
As followers of Christ, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.
The wisdom of scripture about God being a God of community, the research findings of the Harvard study, our experiences during COVID – they all completely support our mission statement. At this time in the life of our congregation and our world, with the gifts God has given our members, we are called to bless people with something they need in order to be well: connection with God and other people.
This is something Calvary is good at. Visitors and new members consistently tell us how welcoming and warm this congregation is, and how easy it is to get connected to groups and ministries. We offer caring conversations about mental health; Stephen Ministers and Caring Touch visitors bring personal care to people in trying times; Jumpstart and book club provide a forum for faith conversation; Sunday school Bible study, Small Bites, and “Journey Together” invite everyone into growth in discipleship; coffee hour and Top of the Hill luncheons build fellowship connections; service projects and property workdays allow people to get to know each other while working together; uplifting worship gathers us around God’s table in joyful and hopeful community.
Yes, we do community well. Our new mission statement calls us to keep doing what we are doing, but to be more intentional about it. Talk about the blessing it is to you that you worship a triune God who has made you a part of a caring congregation full of life-sustaining relationships. Invite people you know into this community where they can get connected in meaningful ways and where their wholeness of mind and soul is fostered.
By extending that invitation, you can make a huge difference in a person’s life. Here is one example from my own life.
I arrived in the United States as an exchange student at the seminary in Gettysburg. At first, the experience of living and studying in a foreign country was exhilarating. But after three months, when the newness and the adrenaline had worn off, I became very sad. I felt lonely. I got depressed.
My classmate Robert saw my sadness and invited me for dinner. He brought me to his family’s crowded apartment, where they squeezed an extra chair around their dining table. We talked. We shared stories. We said grace. We prayed and acknowledged God’s hand in bringing us together. Robert offered me compassionate community, reminded me of my connection with God and connected me with his family, and thus fostered wholeness of my body and soul. This happened 34 years ago, but I have never forgotten the impact of Robert’s kindness that night.
As the children of the triune God, blessed by the community of this congregation, you have the power to make that kind of an impact in someone’s life. How awesome is that?! Amen