What is God like? As Christians, we say a lot of things about God. On Trinity Sunday (last Sunday), we pay particular attention to what God is like: and so we may say that God is simultaneously three persons in one. Not three persons that seem like one, or one person with three aspects. Rather, we acknowledge something that is mathematically impossible: three equals one.

Tradition has reduced statements about God to writings such as the historic creeds. The problem with reducing God to something we can write about is that we end up confusing what is written with the truth itself, the letters with the meaning. Words are finite, but the truth of God is not. The writing merely reflects the truth that has been experienced. In this sense, our words simply cannot contain the whole truth of God.

When we are searching for truth in written or spoken communication, we would do well to remember this: experience always goes before the words. In the case of the Trinity, the experience of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit came before the word ‘Trinity’ was ever spoken or written on paper.

The word ‘Trinity’ may express some semblance of a description of the church’s experience, but it can never be the experience itself. So, one person might identify God as ‘Father,’ while another person might identify God as ‘Parent,’ or perhaps ‘Mother.’ It is the experiential relationship being described that matters, not so much the actual words used. But we instinctively use words to share our experience of God, words like ‘creator,’ ‘redeemer’ or ‘sustainer.’ Some prefer different kinds of words like ‘energy,’ ‘wisdom,’ ‘light’ or ‘justice.’

People of every generation have attempted to use words that accurately describe their experience of God. There is a deep desire in the human heart to want to know God. But, of course, it is and always will be impossible to fully comprehend God or to satisfactorily describe what God is like. This is why the Hebrews refused to speak the name of God, because words are always going to be insufficient. They wouldn’t speak the name of God because they felt that speaking the name would somehow limit God.

And if you think that the concept of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has always been a part of church doctrine, it took centuries to get to the point of being able to reduce the concept to three-in-one and committing the concept to creeds. The church itself actually split because it couldn’t agree on specific elements of this idea. To this day the church is split, east from west, because of a fundamental disagreement over the nature of the Trinity.

So, what is the point of all this? Christianity, at its best, has never been about trying to discover God by reading and learning, but by experiencing what God is like, and then using our words to describe those experiences. And so the important question is the same as it’s always been: how do we find God? Where do human beings find perfect love, acceptance and redemption?

As humans, in one sense, we are just a finite bunch of chemicals contained in mortal bodies. We probably each occupy about three cubic feet of space. Three cubic feet, and yet we tend to expect all the truth of the universe to find a home inside our unique brain and soul. God, on the other hand, is infinite.

The Trinity is not a scientific description of God. The Trinity is a mystery. They say that our skies are clearer because of lockdown. If we wander outside on a cloudless night and look up, there are many stars and constellations, there may be a sliver of moon and the Milky Way. And these are the few elements of the universe we can actually see, that we can discern with our eyes.

But what about all the things we cannot see? The night sky is a bit like God. We look up to the lights of the heavens and in those we can see, or perhaps (more accurately) perceive, something of God, but what about all those things in the infinite universe that we can’t see? Paul writes to the Corinthians that now we see in part; our current knowledge can only ever be partial. But in those parts we can’t see, in that velvety black sky beyond the stars and the Milky Way, there is also God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Energy, Wisdom, Light, Justice, Hope, Perfectionb ... We know a little of God, but in what we cannot see, in what we do not know about, there God is also; hidden, yet eternal.

There is both a smallness to the human person, and a largeness. The smallness is our finite structure, but our largeness is the capacity to dream and imagine. Mystery is about the dream and the imagining. There, in the mystery, is all of God: the perfect love, the peace beyond our understanding, the grace that is sufficient for us, the joy beyond measure, the goodness, the gentleness, the kindness… of the one, the three, who simply cannot be captured by our words...

So now, in an attitude of prayer, sit quietly and recall your personal experience of God … how has the mystery of God been made real for you?

KEEP SILENCE

Then, thank God, and praise God, and worship God … in whatever ways are appropriate for you.

Nick Lakin