Clergy Notes — June 15, 2025

There is a joke amongst clergy that the curate or assistant clergy often end up preaching on Trinity Sunday because it’s the one the rector doesn’t want to do. And, quite frankly, I can also understand why the congregation might be tempted to skip it because even I don’t think I could bear hearing one more time how the Trinity is like an egg, or like the sun, or like a family.

The problem with talking about the Trinity is that allegory can slip very easily into cliche, – or worse, heresy – even with the best of intentions. And alternate language to invoke the Trinity can do the same. So then one might be tempted to resort to throwing one’s hands in the air and saying, ‘Well, it’s a mystery!’

The thing is, God IS a mystery, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek a deeper understanding of God. As one theologian puts it, “The community of faith must struggle to know more fully the God both disclosed and profoundly inaccessible.”

The fulness of the Trinity of course is a mystery, but we can say a few things about God’s nature: it is creative, inherently communal, and is a constant outpouring of love. And if these things are true of the God we worship, then we are called to be a church whose nature is also creative, inherently communal, and a constant outpouring of love.

Each time the breath over our lips invokes the Divine Trinity; each time we make the sign of the cross; each time we are blessed or absolved in trinitarian form; we are given an opportunity to recall our own call to be triune in nature: creative, communal, pouring out love.

God our Mother is constantly calling her Church to birth new things; God the Word made Flesh is constantly calling the Church to be remade anew; God the Divine Fire is always pouring in and through the Church the gifts we need to do the impossible.

May we hear and respond, today and always.

Mother Amanda

 

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