2 Corinthians 13:11-13                                        Trinity Sunday

 Americans have one third fewer close friends and confidants than just two decades ago. The number of people who have no close friends has more than doubled. Many of us are leading lonely lives. We may be surrounded by phones and televisions and computers, but real community is lacking. We are created in the image of a triune God, which means we need community. We need circles of friends, who nurture and care for us, who challenge us to be the best we can be.

 When I was a kid, my dad would do anything for me. I was Daddy’s little girl. I received unmerited favor, otherwise known as grace. I could do no wrong that wasn’t quickly forgiven. My much older siblings said he treated me like a grandchild.

 Not so with my mom. She was a nurturer, full of love, but she also had high expectations and she doled out consequences for my bad behavior because she was the judge. She loved me and wanted the best for me.

 I have never known a closer, more faithful companion than I have in my husband Richard. He offers me the steady loving gift of presence and support. I experience a wonderful communion with Richard, my life partner.

Today as you reflect on the relationships that have mattered in your life, I hope you will begin to see that you have a great circle of God’s trinitarian love around you – loving, forgiving, and encouraging you in three different, yet consistent ways. The people in our life often give us conflicting, imperfect messages about love. They may show us only a meager measure of God’s love, but the triune God gives us everything in full, all that we need. The Triune God is your circle, your three in one, surrounding you.

 Karl Barth, important 20 Century th theologian, said the Christian name for God is Trinity. There are a number of references in the Bible that suggest Trinity. Two of the most important we will read today – the end of Matthew 28, which we will read as our Call to Discipleship, and the end of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, which we will read in just a moment.

 Yet the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. Only after several hundred years of reflection on the Bible and early church life did the Christians unite around an explicit understanding of the Trinity. And this is where the Church landed with trying to understand the Trinity. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. All three are God. They are one, but they are each distinct, not the same. That’s what Athanasia said in the 4th Century and what is still accepted by most of the Church. Accepted but not fully grasped. Accepted but still debated.

 We debate the issue of speaking of God in three persons because God is not a person, as we know person, a separate individual. We wonder...does the Spirit, the ruach, a Hebrew word with a feminine ending, bring gender balance to the Trinity in the Church Universal, which has been dominated by Father-Son language? Do women understand the communion of the Trinity better than men because we naturally find our identity in relationship to others, not so much in  individualism? A Greek monk of the 4th century once said, “God cannot be grasped by the mind. If God could be grasped, God would not be God.”
(Evagrius of Pontus)

 Conversation about the Doctrine of the Trinity is endless, but I have a inkling that any debates we have ought to take us to the heart of the matter, not just pique our mental curiosity. How is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit operative in our lives? How we can we live more deeply within it with God and with each other.

 “Grace, love, and communion... It all sounds so beautiful,” says Marie, “but I live in the real world of bitterness, selfishness, and broken relationships.” Maybe it helps Marie and the rest of us to know that Paul has had a troubled relationship with the Corinthians. They question his authority. He’s put on the defensive. They vie with one another for power. They use their gifts to elevate themselves over others. Paul hangs in there with them to encourage them. Paul in his relationship with them lives out grace, love and communion.

 Hear now how Paul encourages the Corinthians into relationships of grace, love, and communion with himself, with one another, and with all the church. Hear his words of promise that the grace, love and communion of God is with them.
 

 ^NRS 2 Corinthians 13:11  Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. ¹² Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.
 ¹³ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
 

 This is the real world we live in, a triad of natural disasters. (Image on screen of May 2008 natural disasters) Some would call it a random world of suffering, violence, and disaster. But I believe it is also a world of grace, love, and communion. We need a God powerful and strong enough to hold all people traumatized by cyclone, tornado, and earthquake in a healing embrace of love. We need a God forgiving and merciful enough to extend grace to any of us human beings who have contributed to the pain of the world in places like the Congo, where 5.4 million people have died in the last ten years, due to warfare and preventable disease. We need a God relational and intimate enough to walk through the valleys of death with us, not to be removed from us, but our handholding advocate. I saw a beautiful but poignant image of a Chinese man holding the hand of a teen buried in the rubble.

 We have that kind of God in the Trinity. We have that kind of God, who invites us into a an intimate relationship of grace, love, and communion. We belong to each other in this our life as Trinity people. Gretchen’s and Barbara’s and (Nancy’s) cancer diagnoses belong to us. Your hurt over a painful divorce is my hurt. My joy over a daughter home from college is your joy. Your struggle with parenting is my struggle, not just because I can relate to it, but because I have a responsibility to care for your children, especially for those in the family of faith, but also to realize my connection with all the children of the world – in China, in Myanmar, and in the Congo.

 It broke my heart the other day when Catherine told me of the response of a teen at Lakewood Ranch to the earthquake in China. This youth said, “China...maybe it’s good they had an earthquake. They have too many people anyway.” That horrible comment reminds me of Nazi attitudes toward the Jews and of bigoted responses to the AIDS crisis as a problem of the gay community. I don’t want to be part of a church that demeans any group as less valuable to God. The only people Christ condemned were the ones who thought they were righteous. Grace is unmerited favor.

 Let’s think about the Trinity in terms of worship. God gives us water in the Baptismal font, as a sign of grace. Baptism is the Sacrament of inclusion. There is no merit.
Don’t you have to be good for God to love you? No, God loves you from the start. That’s grace. And that’s where it all starts for Paul, and for us in the Christian faith. It starts with grace, with baptism, with the welcome home of forgiveness. The prodigal goes off, wastes his life and all his father gave him, turns home and is welcomed with a party. That’s grace.

 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ helps us to comprehend the love of God. Love – the story of God’s loving relationship with us, God’s people is found in scripture. The good news is that God loves you, but also loves them. The summary of the commandments is to love God and love your neighbor. Love is our primary proclamation. Love is wanting the best for someone, wanting them to be their best self. This reciprocal, sometimes called mystical, "living in God" belongs to the trinitarian life: "those who live in love, live in God and God in them" (1 John 4:6)

 Communion – at this table we are one with each other and one with God. We call it Eucharist, which means thanksgiving. The word “grace” (charis) is in Eucharist. To say grace is to give thanks for a meal.

 Hear these words of the great German theologian Jurgen Moltmann as he reflects on our communion in the Spirit. “Jesus’ prays these words, "In this you may all be one, as the Father is in me and I in him that you may be in us" (John 17:21) This communion is not just with each other or for each other but in each other. The trinitarian unity of the Son and the Father through the Spirit is a model for the relationships of men and women in the Spirit of Christ... This trinitarian community is so wide and so open that the Church and the whole world can "live" within it. The prayer of Jesus that "you may be one in us" is a prayer that is answered. Whether we know it or not we not only believe in the triune God, but also "live" in the triune God.” That’s what happens when we come to the table. We are living in the triune God, not just believing.

 I have associated the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Sacrament of Baptism. I have associated the love of God with the proclamation of the Word of God. I have associated communion of the Holy Spirit with our experience of Presence at the Table.

 But of course, there is grace at the pulpit and there is love at Baptism. There are both grace and love at the table of communion. So you see, Trinity is one continuous circle, going round and round. God creating, redeeming, and sustaining us in life and in death. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, one God-Mother of us all. God the power, God the person, God the presence.

 Paul’s last wish for the Corinthians, people who had given him a hard time, was that they would understand the circle of grace, love and communion that holds them together and unites them to God. He wanted them to know that God is that circle and that God invites us to live within that circle for others, with others, even in others.

 Peace will soon offer you an opportunity to join a small group, You will be tempted to avoid it, thinking that you lack the energy or the courage for truly knowing and being known by others. Nurture groups, covenant groups, discipleship groups. They could be called Trinity groups or Great Commandment groups, because they invite us to draw closer to God and to one another in love. I hope you will give serious thought to being part of a group where real problems are shared, real support is given and real prayers are offered, a trinitarian relationship with others. God, others, and you – in grace, love, and communion. Charis, agape, and koinonia. Every church should be filled with interlocking small circles of charis, agape, and koinonia.