God’s essence is a relationship of grace, love, and communion, which then is the essence of the whole universe, and our promise and joy is that we also live in this relationship.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year A
Texts: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Genesis 1:1 – 2:4
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Grace. Love. Communion. That’s it.
That’s all you need to know about the Triune God. Not Greek philosophical terms or centuries of systematic theology attempting to define the boundaries of who and what God is, no driving out those people whose definitions don’t fit.
Just grace. Love. And communion.
Only twenty years after the resurrection, Paul blessed his friends in the Corinthian church with these words that say everything: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Are with all of you.
And that’s enough. It’s all you and I and the world need to know about God.
Grace starts it all.
In Jesus we meet the grace of God in person, in our own humanity. And, as Jesus himself taught us, if we know Jesus, we know God.
In Jesus, God-with-us, is endless grace, constant forgiveness, welcome for all who stray. Jesus, God-with-us, entered our life, our suffering and death, loving us even when we rejected God’s love. Everything Jesus taught, commanded, called us into, is wrapped in this grace.
We couldn’t have imagined such grace. Only the Triune God could show it in person, embodied in the Son of God.
And this grace brings you to the love of God.
The cross of Christ as the Scriptures actually show it leads to the certainty that the center of the heart of the Triune God is love.
The idea that God needed a substitute for punishment, needed appeasement, had a wrath that couldn’t be quenched except by death, just doesn’t hold up in Scripture. It’s not the grace Jesus revealed, nor the truth Paul proclaimed so powerfully.
The grace of Christ Jesus fully reveals the undying, self-sacrificing love of the Triune God for you, for me, for the creation. This is how much I love you, God says at the cross. I will die to show the universe my love. To draw all things back into my heart.
The grace of Christ Jesus leads you to the love of the Creator for you. You are beloved of God. All creation is.
And in God’s Spirit we share this grace and love in a communion with God.
The grace of the Son, which led you to the heart of the one Jesus called Father, now joins you into God’s life with the communion of the Holy Spirit.
In the Holy Spirit, God’s new life that gives birth in you and in the world is a life of relationship, communion with and in God, shaped by this grace and this love the Triune God has poured out on the world.
Because grace, love, and communion can only exist in relationship.
You can’t have grace by yourself. Grace can only be received and given in relationship. You can’t know love by yourself. Love can only be received and given in relationship. And communion, by definition, is relationship. You don’t have communion by yourself.
So God exists as relationship: the Creator, the Word, the Spirit, all present before the dawn of time, as we prayed today, all at creation, all still living and moving in the world. Grace. Love. Communion. In an ancient dance between the Three, a relationship that makes God one.
And into that relationship, Paul blesses you and me. “The God of grace and love and communion is with you,” Paul says. Paul claims you and I are blessed to be in God’s divine dance, in the relationship that is grace, love, and communion.
But relationships are challenging, even though they give life.
Relationship means risk and vulnerability. At the cross, the heart of God’s self-revelation, the Triune God is chiefly known to us not as Almighty but as All-vulnerable. To be in relationship with God and each other is to be open to being wounded, to risk for the other. The cross is not only where we find life, it is, as always, the path we walk to live the joy of abundant life in relationship with God and each other and the creation.
Relationship also always involves responsibility for the other. The Scriptures tell us that God’s love for us and the creation is so great God cannot walk away. Will not walk away. No matter how angry, frustrated, disappointed God might be, God’s love means God stays with us. God is responsible for us.
If God, or the other person, or part of creation isn’t related to me, I don’t have to be responsible for it. But once you matter to me, and I to you, once we belong to God and each other and the creation, all things matter. All creation matters and belongs. All our suffering neighbors matter and belong. That’s why we’re responsible for each other, for our neighbors, for this creation.
Grace. Love. Communion. That’s all you need to know.
The deeper mysteries of God’s nature, how the Trinity exists within Godself, we can never know.
But that this Triune God is with you and me and all creation in astonishing grace and infinite love, calling you and me to communion with God, with each other, with the creation, that’s everything this world needs to come to God’s healing and life.
And it’s enough. It’s more than enough.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen
