Sermon for Trinity Sunday, Year A (5-31-26)
One of the surprising things about modern science is that the more we learn about the universe, the more mysterious it seems to become. Quantum physics — the study of the tiniest parts of reality — has revealed a world that doesn't behave the way we expect it to.
Scientists have found that energy can act like either particles or like waves, and that the state of energy often isn't determined until someone or something observes it. Even stranger, this same line of study has determined that if you measure the state of one particle, you instantly know the state of its entangled partner—no matter how far apart they are. They are somehow connected in ways we just simply don't understand.
And discoveries like these seem not to have made scientists cocky. On the contrary, according to many of them it's been quite a humbling experience. The deeper they go into this science, the more they realize how much they still don't know. They actively embrace this state of mystery.
I think faith can work that way too. We often want God to be clear, and predictable, and easy to explain. But maybe wonder, and awe, and unanswered questions aren't signs that something is wrong. Maybe they're signs that we're standing in front of something bigger, deeper, and holier than we first realized. Something true.
So perhaps mystery, it turns out, might not the opposite of truth. Sometimes mystery is what pulls us deeper into it.
Those of you who are current with the liturgical calendar can probably guess where I'm going with this. Yes, today is Trinity Sunday — the major feast day of the church year on which we celebrate one of the most mysterious of all Christian beliefs: that God is three and yet one, of the same substance and unified, yet different persons.
Not three different modes of one God. Not one third of one God three times. Not one Father and a created Son with a dove flying around. One, holy, tri-unified God in three divine persons.
When we're thinking about the Trinity, it's often easier to say what the Trinity is not, rather than try to grasp all that it is. Nerds like me call this apophatic or negative theology. To think about God by considering what God is not. It sounds trippy, I know. But I find it to be quite a lot of fun. But again — nerd.
Admitting that we don't fully understand something is pretty unpopular in our society today. Modern culture tells us that with enough thought, or time, or resource, or social media "research" we can figure everything out. We can master our reality. Society calls this many things: progress, advancement, success.
Scripture —from time to time — calls it something else: idolatry.
Because when we think that with just a little more understanding we can become masters of our reality, that's the moment we begin to cosplay as God. And by giving our attention mostly to what we can measure, explain, and control, we end up worshipping knowledge instead of worshipping the God who forever exceeds our understanding.
This is why mystery isn't a problem God asks us to solve. It's not a bug in Christian faith.
Mystery is the very atmosphere in which we meet God.
Recently, I heard a Christian writer named Belle Tindall Riley tell a story about how one day an old classmate messaged her on Instagram to simply ask: What does the love of God feel like?1
Now, as a priest I love to think about questions like these, but I hate having to answer them. Belle felt similarly, I think. She told us that she turned this question over in her mind for hours and hours - trying to be able to convey something that she knew and understood. But eventually she sent the following reply:
"It feels like I live my life stewarding the ultimate mystery. Like I'm somehow living in reaction to something that I trust completely, even though I understand it barely. It feels safe and it feels sure. It makes no sense to me, yet somehow makes complete sense of me. It feels so real that it makes everything else feel like a facade. And it feels like the heart-melting nearness of God."
What strikes me is that not one word of Belle's answer was about certainty. And yet it's overflowing with confidence. She barely speaks of understanding, but she speaks constantly of trust. Belle goes on to call this "unknowing". She says:
"And unknowing is not the same as ignorance...Unknowing is what you have after you’ve passed through the illusion that you can fully know it...Knowing becomes measuring, reducing, calculating, mastering. And when that becomes everything, we end up only being able to see what fits inside that frame. And while knowing has its place...[unknowing] is where reality is most fully encountered. Unknowing is not ignorance. Unknowing is wisdom. It is attending so deeply...to God—that we realize we will never exhaust what is there. It is wonder. It is curiosity. It is awe."
About two months ago we witnessed the most exciting crewed mission of US astronauts to the moon since the 1970's. Upon their return one of the crew said in an interview: “I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain or experience anything. So, I asked for the chaplain to come and visit us. And when that man walked in, I saw the cross on his collar and I just broke down in tears. It’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through. I don’t think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we were looking at, because it is otherworldly.”2
Otherworldly indeed. And maybe that's exactly the point. Sometimes reality is so much bigger than our categories that our explanations collapse before our wonder does.
I do think at times God allows us quick peeks behind the curtain of our comprehension. Maybe for you it's been in nature, or in witnessing a birth, or maybe even a death. Perhaps it's been an inexplicable peace in realizing
that you are the tiniest part of something unfathomably larger than what you see around you in your daily life.
However it comes to you, know this: mystery is not the absence of God. Mystery is often the place where God is closest. It's the very language of the God of the universe—a handwritten note from an infinite God to finite creatures.
The Triune God may never completely make sense to us. But in Christ, and through the Spirit, and by the love of the Father, God is the one who makes sense of us.
Amen
1 https://vimeo.com/1191237112
2 https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXPNhBEjRuO/
