We come to the feast of the Holy Trinity this week. It might feel a little uncomfortable for the preacher, but that is a good thing. Preaching is inherently a rational exercise. We are proclaiming with words to people who are listening and thinking about what we say. But today, we must cast a measure of rationality out of the window in the narthex of the church. The Trinity defies our understanding. It stymies the greatest of human minds when we would explain it. All we can do is describe it, and even then, admit that we have failed to capture it.
In truth, however, we have always been in the business of proclaiming the irrational, gracious, merciful God. He should not love sinners or forgive us. But He does. If Trinity makes us too uncomfortable, I wonder if we have not tamed our Christianity to fit inside our rationality. God has come in the flesh, taking up humanity to Himself. That interchange between our humanity and His divinity, will have some preternatural things boiling off the surface. In Jesus, God has given us an insight into His very being. Remember, Jesus is the exegesis of the Father (John 1:18). Don’t expect that to fit into our rules of physics or mathematics. God is the writer of those rules, not the one who is subject to them.
This means the preacher will have to have some humility in the pulpit this week. Stand with your people in awe of God and what He has done. We proclaim simply that this Trinity, this Father who sends a Son, a Son who obeys and dies for us, has risen to give us new life. The Spirit poured out upon us connects us to this God and we are saved by the revelation of the Trinity.
