On Not Explaining the Trinity
May 31, 2026
TRINITY SUNDAY
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Psalm 8; II Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20
“On Not Explaining the Trinity” by Rev. David J. Wood
Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026
Psalm 8 & Matthew 28: 16-20
N.T. Wright “In the church’s year, Trinity Sunday is the day when we stand back from the extraordinary sequence of events that we’ve been celebrating for the previous five months—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost—and when we rub the sleep from our eyes and discover what the word ‘god’ might actually mean. “
Without losing the unity of God, how could the early Christian community account for the divine life that had been revealed to them through the saving activities of Christ and the Spirit?
Jesus and the Spirit had done for them what only God can do: heal, save, forgive—even overcome the power of death. Did that make Jesus and Spirit divine? And if so, what did that multiplication of divine persons do to their belief that God was one? Jesus had told them, “I and the Father are one.” But it would take centuries to agree on what he meant.
Trinity is the name early Christians gave to this effort to make sense of their experience of God. The word was First used by the early church theologian, Tertullian around the year 200.
Not found in Scripture…but was intended to convey the God revealed in Scripture and history…and beyond history.
“Don’t explain the Trinity…Trinity is an explanation…” So, where to begin a sermon on Trinity?
Psalm 8…good place to start….out under the stars caught up in wonder and praise…and the heavens are magnificent!
The Hubble Telescope was launched into orbit in 1990..the first of its kind. In 1995, the Director of the Telescope had an idea. What if we turned the telescope on a part of the sky that appeared to have nothing in it. Just a dark spot. Up to this point they had only focused on objects that were observable.
So they chose a spot just above the Big Dipper…about the size of a pin head held at arms length and took a picture of nothing…beginning Dec. 18, 1995, for 10 straight days for 10 hours a day….picture after picture more than 300.
The picture on the TV screen is what they saw when all was seen and done
The patch of dark sky was actually ablaze with light and objects never before seen. (Only 25% of the actual image).
Let me say word about what you’re looking at. There are a few stars— perhaps 5 in all. Almost everything else we see are galaxies….scientists counted 3,000 galaxies…all shapes, sizes and colors…spiral, elliptical, irregular….red, white, blue and yellow….when all this was calculated, it meant there were over 100 billion galaxies in the universe…a number that more than 5x what anyone had previously thought.
These images from Hubble forever changed our view of the universe! Obviously, they did not appear that day…it was the first time we discovered they were there. The universe did not expand, only our perception of the universe…our understanding….what we even meant by the word “Universe”.
Since then, with even more powerful telescopes, astronomers think the number of galaxies is probably more on the order of 2 Trillion in the observable universe….
O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.
For the Psalmist there is a direct connection between the expanse of the universe and the mystery of being in relationship with the God who created it—who is over all, through all and in all.
The majesty of God causes him to recognize the mystery that is his own being…nature of his own existence…
“You have made them a little lower than God.” And with that position comes the responsibility of stewardship.
As author, Marilynne Robinson put it, “dominion, “ as ths Psalmist puts it, “is not our boast. It is our burden.”
To believe in God, the God of the Bible is to be grasped by the mystery that is God…revealed in the splendor of the natural world…to be astonished by it…to be brought to ones knees in reverence…
To say, as Christian do, that this God, has taken on flesh and lived among us is not to reduce the mystery to a human being…but to make more explicit than ever the mystery of what it means to be human…a mystery that is bound up with the very being of God, the Creator and maker of all that is.
To be sure, it’s a stretch to believe that God is mindful of us who abide on this magnificent planet that is orbiting its way through the myriad of galaxies of the universe….but better that our thinking about GOD stretch our imagination instead of shrinking it into a tight little bundle of prejudice and who legitimates our self-serving projects.
GOD gets tossed around so casually…. these days…
Like and empty concept that gets filled with small, petty sinister and vile purposes that have nothing to do with the God of the Bible in whom we live and move and have our being.
It doesn’t take even a mustard seed of faith to believe in a God like that—a God who doesn’t encompass the heavens let alone ones neighbor…
To speak of God as Trinity is to speak of believing in a God Is to speak of a way of believing that
• Relates you to the world BEYOND & ABOVE you..in all its mystery and majesty
• Relates you to the world AROUND in you—in faces and places—with mercy, compassion, wonder… and love…
• Relates you to the world WITHIN you…the mistakes as well as the magnificence that is you.
Trinity: three ways of talking about the One God.
Since the earliest days of the church, the traditional Trinitarian formula has been “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” For many it is impossible to disentangle that formula from its masculine orientation…over the centuries, other ways of naming Trinity have arise…
“Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,” “Source, Word, Spirit,” “Creator, Liberator, Comforter,” “Parent, Child, Paraclete,”
“Mother, Lover, Friend” all have their particular assets and liabilities.
If we think if God is more verb than noun, one could say “Love who loves us, Word who saves us, Spirit who revives us.”
All our speaking of God should situate us…at the center of the mystery that is God who can be known… who knows us…is mindful of us…who redeems us, raises us up and abides with us…
On any given Sunday, we never say it all…we always say only in part… We are always saying less than we know..and more than we know…all at the same time… we know the inadequacy of our words and gestures….but in saying them and making them, we aim ourselves toward that which is true and holy and over all and in all.
At its best, talk of God as Trinity aims us in the right direction. Let me go back to the Hubble telescope for a second… Telescopes don’t magnify objects. Telescopes work by capturing more light than the human eye can capture on its own. The larger the mirror, the more light it can collect. Telescopes like HUBBLE are essentially Light collectors. Hubble as a mirror that is a little over 7 feet in diameter.
Who would have thought that turning a telescope toward a dark patch in the sky would reveal so much light? Essentially, it was only because Hubble’s mirror was exposed as long as it was…its aim focused as constantly as it was in that one direction, that the light that was there was able reach it.
Maybe that’s what being a part of a community of faith that confesses God as Trinity means…: it how we keep our hearts and eyes open long enough for the light to get in…even when it feels like you’re not looking at anything, or feels like there is nothing to see…but we keep company with one another, singing and praying and passing the peace as we go…
We keep looking and stay open long enough, reality in all its depth and fullness comes into view…we come to know the God who knows us and has been there all along…
Which brings me to the words of the Apostle Paul from I Corinthians 13…with which I will close:
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Amen.