Trinity Sunday 2026 Courtney Whiitington

Christo Senesti, hallelujah, Christ is risen.

Vito Senesti, the Lord is risen indeed.

Hallelujah.

Together, Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Bense the fathers of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us your servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine majesty to worship the unity.

Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory.

O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Please be seated for the lessons.

I now invite all of our kiddos with grade and under to meet Miss Emery in the back, and she's going to take you off to godly play for a good time.

Rock and roll.

When Israel was a child, I loved them, and out of Egypt I called my child.

And they, in the bowels, called to them.

They went out to the bowels, they sacrificed, and to the idols they offered incense.

Yet it was I who walked upon with Ephraim, taking them by their arms.

Yet they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with human ties, with bonds of love.

I was to them like those who live babies to their cheeks.

I bent down to them and fed them by the word of the Lord.

We read Psalm 130 by the half verse.

I wait for the womb of creation, my soul waits.

My soul keeps watch for the creator more than those who watch for the mourning.

Israel, open the mother of creation.

For with the creator of all there is faithful love.

It is she who will redeem Israel.

I do not keep company with things.

Rather, I have soothed and quieted my soul like a wean child with your mother.

Rather, and I think of his majesty, from Christ from God, received our glory.

A voice came to you from the majesty glory, saying, This is my son, my God, with whom I have done.

And we ourselves heard this voice, and it came from heaven while we were with you on the holy mountain, the word of the Lord.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to which Jesus sent them.

And when they saw him, they bowed down and worshipped him, but some doubted.

And then Jesus came and said to them, saying, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

Now look, I am with you always to the end of the age.

This is the gospel of the Lord, and the greatest word.

It's been a privilege to get to spend time thinking about our scripture readings for today.

So I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to share my thoughts about them and about Trinity Sunday, which we celebrate today and every year, the first Sunday after Pentecost.

Trinity Sunday was designated hundreds and hundreds of years ago as a time set aside to give thanks for and celebrate the doctrine of the Trinity.

A doctrine that points to our God being a God of relationships.

But of course, we aren't just here to celebrate that doctrine, but to celebrate God.

So it's Trinity Sunday, but I'm not going to try to explain the Trinity to your brain this morning.

Theologians have been trying to do this for thousands of years, but when they do, they often end up losing crucial details and distorting what they're trying to describe.

Some of the most common analogies for the Trinity that are supposed to help us understand what it is, the ones I grew up hearing, are in fact ancient heresies.

So, for example, you may have heard the analogy that the Trinity is like water, ice, and steam.

But the problem with this analogy is that water is never all three forms at once.

The water analogy is actually a heresy called modalism.

There will be a quiz.

The idea that God is one actor changing costumes.

But God is not a shapeshifter, God is simultaneous.

Community.

Another example you may have heard is that God is like an egg with three parts: the shell, the white, and the yoke.

The problem with this is that on its own, a shell isn't an egg.

This is another heresy called partialism, which is the idea that each person in the Trinity is only a part of God, like a puzzle piece, instead of fully God on their own.

These simple models don't capture the essential nature of God, and while more complex models exist, they tend to be pretty brainbreaking and head spinning, at least for me.

So if trying to define what God is hurts our heads or lands us in heresy, maybe this morning I'll put aside the mechanics of the what and instead look at the relationship or the how.

In 2 Peter, we read, we did not follow sophisticated mythologies when we made known to you all the power and coming of our Redeemer Jesus Christ.

Thank you, author of 2 Peter, for naming that the good news isn't a complex intellectual exercise.

What a relief! Mental gymnastics are not required.

Rather, the writer says we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty, which is to say they were writing and telling the stories of their experience and relationship with Jesus.

These stories weren't mathematical proofs or thought experiments.

Instead, they tell about an embodied experience of flesh and bone in the world.

It was sensory.

They heard a voice, they tasted bread and wine, they felt their feet being washed, they saw things happen that they thought were impossible, and they were stunned and amazed and pained and filled with joy.

But sometimes I find, and maybe this is true for you too, maybe because I'm not a first-century eyewitness, or maybe for another reason, at times I found myself interpreting that flesh and blood incarnational life to mean that my job is to try to get an A in being a good Christian.

As a kid, I was raised in a tradition that emphasized performing your faith correctly.

I had to think the right thoughts and do the right actions and have the right quilted lace cover for my well-highlighted gel pen annotated Bible.

Maybe you did too, where maybe this idea of our value and worthiness being tied to our performance seeped in another way.

That message is out there everywhere you look, that we have to do something to be lovable.

And if we do enough, we'll be safe.

And we do have some responsibility, so I often ask, what's my job?

What role do I play?

And I thought about that.

So maybe we can imagine that each of us is a sunflower in a vast field of sunflowers.

And God is the sun, and the way our relationship with God works is analogous to the way a sunflower turns to face the sun as it moves across the sky.

Maybe our job is to notice and turn and stay in alignment.

Or maybe we can imagine that God is a radio signal, constantly being broadcast through the air around us.

The air in this room is thick with signals, with music and voices, but we can't hear them unless we turn the dial.

Maybe our job is to turn the dial of our hearts, to tune out the static until we find the frequency of God's love and resonate with it.

But then, when I read Hosea, I get a totally different image.

One I like better, frankly.

Reading Hosea makes me think, what if it's reversed?

So what about this?

What if instead we imagine that we are the sun and God is the sunflower, attentive, attuned, following our path whether we realize it or not?

Or what if instead of God being one blanket radio broadcast signal for everyone?

What if each of us is a radio signal and our frequencies are unique?

What it takes for God to connect with me is different from what it takes to connect with you.

What if God has the ultimate steady base station and is permanently tuned into your specific frequency, adjusting when you shift, doing all the work to find you, and hold on to the connection even when it doesn't feel like it?

And Hosea shows God doing this even when we mess up.

Hosea was writing to the Northern Kingdom, who was worshipping Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility, rain, and agriculture.

And this wasn't just a random pagan god, which we know is a no-no.

It was also a highly performance-based, transactional religion.

It wasn't about a covenant relationship or God's love for his people.

If you wanted your crops to grow, you performed the correct ritual, paid the correct price at the altar, and Baal sent the rain.

The rituals weren't about communing with the divine who loved you.

They were about coaxing a deity into action.

Baal was like a cosmic vending machine, and there was something that felt safer and more satisfying to that on some level.

This idea of doing something to get the formula right, to ensure security and feel in control.

It was tempting.

It is tempting.

But I love this image in Hosea.

That in spite of the people turning away, seeking control on their own, God remembers them.

Even when they're worshiping another god, there's this beautiful image of taking a toddler by the arms and teaching them to walk, healing them and providing for them in ways they don't even realize, and leading them with human ties, with bonds of love, anyway, even when it didn't feel like it, even when they messed up.

So this brings us to the top of a mountain near Galilee in Matthew.

We read that when the eleven disciples see Jesus, they worshipped him and some doubted.

Some translations say hesitated, doubted, hesitated.

Have you ever had the experience of something so incredible happening and you couldn't believe it was actually happening, even though it was definitely for real happening?

Two Januaries ago, I took a trip to the five national parks in Utah, and some days it was so beautiful I was in tears, which, like I'm a sensitive person, but not usually that sensitive.

On my last night of the trip, after watching the most incredible sunset from on top of this huge plateau, I was the last car to leave.

And it was a bit of a drive back to the park entrance, so it got completely dark.

And I'm looking up at the sky and I'm noticing how bright all the stars are.

And this was when we had that planetary alignment thing and a full moon.

So every night up until then I'd been looking at the sky and it was beautiful and amazing, but the moon was really bright, so the stars were dimmer, and I was kind of bemoaning the moon's presence throughout the week, ruining my view of the stars.

But here I am on this plateau, and it's weirdly extra dark.

So I decide to pull over and admire the stars.

And it's below freezing outside, so I just roll down the window and sort of shitty out and hang my head out and look up at the sky.

And it's so dark, and there are so many stars.

And I can't figure out where the moon went.

Like, where's the moon?

This is really weird.

Really beautiful, but what's going on?

And after several minutes of feeling so small and in awe in the best way, and puzzled, I pull myself back in the car, and through the windshield, I see this tiny sliver of light right at the horizon directly in front of me.

And it gets bigger and brighter, and I realize it's my own personal, gorgeous, huge, extraordinary, awesome moonrise.

And without really meaning to, I hear myself say, no way, shut up! Like this is happening to me.

This shock of grace that seems too good to be true.

And obviously, I wasn't on that mountain with the disciples, but if I had been, I think I would have had a moment like that.

Like who the what now?

So they doubt or hesitate.

And Jesus goes to them and says, basically, yeah, this is really happening.

Everything I've told you is true, really, really for real.

And then he tells them to go make disciples, to take what he's given them and pass it on, to baptize in the name of the Trinity, the God of love and relationship.

Jesus asks them to spread this love and community.

And there's a definition of discipleship that I really love.

It says that discipleship is living and learning into the shape of Jesus' life and teachings together.

Together with each other in here, out there, with God, and in community.

So why do you think our ancestors set this day aside?

We say God is love and the Trinity is a relationship, but how can we not just think about, but experience and share in God's love and story?

What does it look like for us to be in relationship with the triune God?

What does it mean for our community to wrestle with and practice it?

I love how Matthew saves the best for last, when Jesus promises, I am with you always to the end of the age.

The creator of the universe, the word made flesh, the still small voice is with us always.

So maybe God's connection to us is entirely secure, even when we don't feel like it, even when we mess up, even if we hesitate.

Amen.