Photo by Ronan Furuta on Unsplash
Karen Hollis | June 15, 2025
Trinity Sunday
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Does not Wisdom cry out,
and Understanding lift up her voice?
On the hilltop along the road,
she takes her stand at the crossroads.
By the gates at the entrance to the town,
on the road leading in, she cries aloud,
“I call to you, to all of you!
I raise my voice to all people.
“The Lord formed me from the beginning,
before he created anything else.
I was appointed in ages past,
at the very first, before the earth began.
I was born before the oceans were created,
before the springs bubbled forth their waters.
Before the mountains were formed,
before the hills, I was born—
before he had made the earth and fields
and the first handfuls of soil.
I was there when he established the heavens,
when he drew the horizon on the oceans.
I was there when he set the clouds above,
when he established springs deep in the earth.
I was there when he set the limits of the seas,
so they would not spread beyond their boundaries.
And when he marked off the earth’s foundations,
I was the architect at his side.
I was his constant delight,
rejoicing always in his presence.
And how happy I was with the world he created;
how I rejoiced with the human family!
John 16: 12-15 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
Do you ever talk with people about God? I mean, other than inside this building? We live in the land of people who don’t claim a faith or are done with faith. If we were to go out and ask people what they think about God, what do you think they would say? Think about it for a minute and then call out any thoughts you’d like to share. (spirit, nature, other religion, not sure, don’t believe)
I think (as you have also indicated) that while many people may not have the words to describe what they believe, they do have a felt sense of something larger than themselves. This is very human. Our faith tells us that humans have been in relationship with God since the beginning, because God initiates relationship with us. All of us.
Who is this God who relentlessly invites us into relationship? Trinity Sunday invites us to wonder about the shape of our God, the various aspects of God. We might wonder about God’s gender or nature or size.
What we know about God we have learned from creation, from stories written by our ancestors, who also responded to God’s initiating presence. And we have access to what is within each of us and shared among us. Since the beginning, we have been drawn in by God’s invitation and have responded with wonder about who God is.
As Jesus says in this morning’s reading from John, we cannot always bear to hear what God has to share about God’s self or anything else – sometimes we’re not ready, or it’s all too much. God shows up with us in every age, and their nature continues to become known through our human experience, so our images of God tend to reflect the times in which we live, what we can wrap our minds around, and where we find meaning.
What we know about God in the Judaeo Christian tradition goes back to ancient Israel, which developed within polytheism. While the Israelites didn’t deny the existence of other gods, they worshipped their God, the God of Israel.[1] They saw God as creator of all, mystery, all powerful, perfect, and demanding of their complete devotion.
The common Hebrew names for God, like Elohim, communicate reverence for God’s power and greatness. Adonai is also commonly used, though it is more of a title, meaning Lord or my Lord, used as a substitute for the divine name of God, which is too holy to be spoken.
In the Jewish imagination of the time, God is supreme spirit, creator, all powerful, and also has a home. For many years God’s home is in the tabernacle, which was carried through the desert by the ancient Israelites, eventually brought to live in Jerusalem, and finally into the completed Temple.
While the dominant story of the God of Israel was central, there have always been further imaginings about the divine life.
For instance, the poets of the Jewish tradition imagined a companion with God in creation, called Lady Wisdom. She is not a part of God, but they are inextricably linked. Lady Wisdom existed with God before creation was formed and bore witness to the acts of creation. The text implies that wisdom remains present in all those places she witnessed come into being. She has intimate knowledge of the sky, sea, earth, the boundaries between them, and the beloved creatures of the world. She is in a position to speak to creation and offer her unique perspective.
Modern scholarship strongly suggests that Jesus was formed in the wisdom tradition within Judaism, and he brought that tradition to the public, to those he encountered during this ministry. Wisdom turns conventional understandings upside down and often upsets the status quo. In his wisdom way, Jesus upset the notion that one had to go through the temple system to access God. He taught us that that holy and the kindom of God are within us . . . perhaps that was God’s home all along!
Jesus famously referred to God as Father. He honoured the Creator of all there is as an intimate, using the phrase Abba God, meaning papa or daddy. There are a handful of references in the Hebrew Bible to God as father of Israel, but it wasn’t a dominant theology Jesus’ tradition. He seems to have brought it into focus in a new way.
This name for God really worked for Jesus, and it was largely adopted by those who followed in his Way. Eventually the Father was known as the first person of the trinity, but that took about 300 years after the resurrection to develop. Through the ancient texts that have been recovered and studied, we have a window into the theology of the early church over the first 2 centuries after the resurrection. Here are some samplings from texts mostly unknown to us.
In the first century text, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Thecla proclaims she is the slave of the living God.[2] For her the Living God is one who is active and in relationship with the world.
Consider also the Odes of Solomon, which have many different authors and were perhaps also written in the first century. Many of the poems are loosely trinitarian, in that they include all the persons of the trinity, without describing their relationship. They often name the Most High, Lord or Christ, and the holy Spirit.
In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a text written a little later, between 80 and 160 CE, God is referred to only as the Good. So simple – I always want to take a moment and breathe into that one.
Around the same time the Gospel of Truth was written with the most complex image of God I found. First, God is creator and originator of all of creation. Jesus or Christ emerges from God’s fullness as the Word (also referred to as the Child), who teaches people about the Father. The Word walks in creation – wisdom meditates on it – the Word “bears all things and chooses all things, and it receives the face of all things and purifies them, bringing them back to the Father, to the Mother, Jesus of boundless sweetness.”[3] I’m not sure if they’re saying Jesus is the Mother or if the Mother is yet another aspect of God. The text continues: “the Father opens his (sic) bosom and his bosom is the holy Spirit.”[4]
Finally, in a second century text, called The Letter of Peter to Philip, the author imagines something like the now-traditional male trinity: Father of light, Child of Life, and the Holy Spirit. The text also includes an inferior Mother who is mentioned separately.
Since the doctrine of the Trinity – one God with 3 distinct aspects – was formalized, it was made central in Christian teaching and has really carried the church through the ages – it even has its own feast day. Still the doctrine is notoriously difficult to explain and painful to try and understand. Even today it kind of slips past language. The only description that consistently makes sense to me comes from my theology professor, Fr. Mike Raschko. He writes: “where the Holy Spirit moves at the will of the [Creator], the Word becomes incarnate in history.”[5] For years I have been drawn to this idea of God bringing potential and possibility into being through us – this description of the trinity brings that to life for me. God’s way is to create with us, and in every age we come to understand that in new ways. Perhaps wisdom even plays a role, by turning our theology on its head and making room within us for the holy spirit to bring us something new.
I invite you to think for a moment about what is resonating for you these days. Think about the emerging or steadfast names and images of God that are alive for you in this season.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Startalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson and the more I dip my fingers into the cosmological world, the more I think if God’s creation is that wild and crazy and wonderful . . . I wonder about our Creator . . . God must be truly mind blowing. Over the ages, God keeps feeding us these little bits of insight that keep us busy for years . . . and (the bits of insight) continue to affirm that God is with us and for us and loves us beyond compare. Thanks be to God.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monotheism/#MonOri
[2] Thecla 37:3 ANNT 343
[3] ANNT p. 232, The Gospel of Truth 10:1,6
[4] Truth 10:7
[5] Raschko. A Christian Understanding of Human Nature. p. 182