Thoughts on the Trinity

(on Trinity Sunday)

(June 7, 2009)

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other of the “founding fathers” of the country believed that God set the universe in motion and then withdrew. Now, from day to day, God has no interest or involvement in what happens.

This is God as the Great Programmer. God programs the universe and it runs itself after that.

That kind of God is not a Christian God. The Christian God is not the Great Programmer but the Great Story-maker.

The difference between a program and a story is that with a program, you know exactly how things will turn out. With a story, you don't. Even though stories almost always follow a story line or plot, the interest in stories lies in the fact that the story never follows the plot exactly. There are always new twists and turns.

A story creates freedom. A program creates determinism. The story escapes the program.

The story of God and the people begins with a God who calls Abraham out of his old home and tells him to set out into an unpredictable future. It continues with a God who tells Moses to lead the people out of slavery and into a desert, where they wander until they finally reach the promised land. “Has any other god ever taken a people and made them a nation peculiarly his own?”

Then the story takes a dramatic turn. God is not content with making a story that involves a people, but God enters the story personally. God becomes one of that people.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Stories are made up of words. Words are physical, sounds located in space and time. God created a universe of space and time, and became part of that universe. The most physical thing in the universe was God become human, Jesus Christ.

Jesus showed us God, not as the Great and disinterested Programmer, but as a God who desires passionately to be involved with people respectfully, vulnerably, and faithfully. Such a God was already implicitly present in Abraham's call and Moses's leading a people out of slavery, but now we see a God who not only calls a people, but each individual person, and not just one chosen nation, but every nation. Every person ever conceived is part of the story of this God who wants such passionate involvement.

When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, he was describing a world with that kind of God.

The story of God's involvement with the world begins with the first words of the book of Genesis. “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland. . . .and a great wind [or spirit—the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit and wind are the same] swept over the waters.”

God's spirit was sweeping over the formless wasteland before creation began.

In the beginning was the Word.

You can't have words without silence. Words without silence are just noise.

The Holy Spirit is the silence of God.

The Spirit of God surrounds us, bathes us, no matter where our individual stories go. Our stories can become part of the story of Jesus because our stories are surrounded by the silence of God.

Even if our stories veer away from the story of Jesus—and they always do—we are a sinful people—the Spirit of God draws them back into a story where God is lovingly involved.

On Easter Sunday evening, Jesus appeared to the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven.” I have always wondered why Jesus mentions the Holy Spirit and forgiveness in the same breath.

The reason must be that God wants to be involved with us even when we sin. God's Spirit surrounds us even when our stories are taking a wrong turn. Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them—that's what the kingdom of God is. The story of Jesus includes stories about a woman caught in adultery and a good thief.

God is not just the Great Programmer, even though God has programmed much of the universe. God is above all the Great Story-maker. In Jesus, God becomes part of the story, and the story includes each one of us. The Spirit of God is God's silence, surrounding us and all of humanity as we live the unpredictable stories of each of our lives and of the whole human race.

We don't know where the human story is going. Our future may be wonderful, or it may be tragic. The human race may even die out. The story of Jesus included joy, grief, health, sickness, and even death—and resurrection.

We do know that no matter where the human story goes, God wants to be part of that story. Jesus is and will be part of that story. The Spirit surrounds and will keep surrounding us.

We live in the presence of the Great Story-maker, the Word made flesh, and the Spirit who surrounds the word and the story with love.