Faith-God-Trinity

HOMILY – TRINITY SUNDAY – YEAR A

Faith in Our God Who is Poor, Humble, Powerless and Relational

(Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9; Daniel 3; 2 Cor 13:11-13; Jn 3:16-18)

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Some years ago, I was privileged to tour a Hindu temple in Chennai, India, with an Oblate missionary stationed there. Made of solid rock 1,500 years before Christ, this ornate structure towered pyramid-like at least twelve stories into the heavens. It and the devotional activity within its bowels, spoke strongly of humanity’s age-old quest to communicate with the deities, to communicate with God.

Trinity Sunday flips that around and speaks of how God communicated with us: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Today, we are invited to put our total faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, so that we can enjoy even now that eternal life our Triune God wants to share with us, and live the values Jesus showed us.

All of the world’s great religions, as well as the more primitive religions, can be seen as humanity’s attempts to connect with a spiritual power in the heavens. The Muslims speak of God as Allah, who is a majestic absolute master. The Hindu religion seeks to arrive at Nirvana, an experience of nothingness. The Buddhist’s strive for Detachment as a final goal. The Indigenous of our own country speak of a Creator who is Great Spirit. The Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous speaks of a Higher Power. The Judaism of Jesus’ time and even today uses only the consonants YHWH to indicate God, considering God’s name too holy to be spoken out loud.

Within this context of humanity wanting to reach up to God, the first reading presents us with a significant high point in the theology of Judaism. Moses is a great Prophet, a friend of God, one we are told conversed with God in person. In this story, Moses asks to see God’s face. God responds by telling him no one can see the face of God and live. God’s energy is too over-powering for a human to experience. However, God tells Moses he will pass before him, and Moses will see God from behind. Thus, even Moses, the great Lawgiver, the dispenser of the Torah, can only catch a glimpse of God from behind, so to speak. Such is the limitation of even Judaism.

Turning to the gospel now, we find Nicodemus, a high-ranking Jew, an elder, well versed in the teachings and tenets of the Jewish faith, conversing with Jesus.  Though steeped in Judaism, he is restless and thirsting for more – searching, inquisitive, questioning, symbolic of all humanity. He comes to visit Jesus by night, for fear of his contemporaries, looking for answers to his unrest.

He has come to the right person, for in Jesus we do not have someone who like Moses only glimpses God. We have someone who in himself is God, is with the Father and the Father is in him. In Jesus, Nicodemus found someone who constantly sees the Father’s face, who is always with the Father and who can reveal to him who the Father is.

The answer Jesus gives Nicodemus points to the intervention of God in the history of the world, the sending of God’s own Son, who alone can give the fullness of life through belief in him. To Philip Jesus would say, “Anyone who has seen me as seen the Father” (John 14:9). The Father, who is love, sent his own Son out of love for the world, to redeem and heal the world, through the power of the Holy Spirit who raised him from the dead.

The second reading puts our belief in the Trinity, our relational God, in liturgical form: the grace or power of the Lord Jesus Christ; the love of God the Father, and the communion or presence of the Holy Spirit, is with us, is with all those who believe the Father sent the Son among us.

Our task is simply to respond in faith and love. We are to believe in Jesus, the Son of God, and keep his commandment to love one another as he has loved us. We are invited to enter into a life-giving communion with our loving God who is relationship, family and intimacy.

I was seated next to a young Hindu computer programmer on that flight to India. We entered into a lively conversation that was really a rich experience of inter-religious dialogue. Here was my first opportunity to learn about Hinduism from someone who grew up with it. The programmer shared with me his experience of the way his family lived out their Hindu faith: the temples they frequented, the number of gods they worshipped and to whom they offered sacrifices and offerings.

When I asked him what kind of a relationship he had with these various gods, he admitted the concept of a relationship with these gods wasn’t really much of a factor. They were just there when they were needed, as objects of petitionary prayer for the most part. He himself rarely prayed except when he had some urgent need.

I then shared with him my experience of living my own faith in a Triune God, who was for me very personal: a God who was Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, a divine dance of love, family, intimate relationship, and how my relationship with this relational God helped me to be reconciled with my father, and helped me live life to the full. I was actually filled with joy, peace and excitement as I shared all this. It was an invigorating experience that I believe left this young Hindu computer programmer something to think about. Had I perhaps even evangelized someone? The thought was there.

Were we to fully live our faith in a Trinitarian God who is family, and our faith in Jesus as the Son of God, I believe racism and discrimination in our societies would disappear. The false gods ruling our world are money, fame and power. Power, I believe more than ever, is the supreme false god. Racism is ultimately more about power over another vulnerable human being. Jesus came to reveal a God who is just the opposite of these false gods, and that is, poor, humble and powerless (the powerlessness of unconditional love which in the end is the only power that lasts). Those who truly believe in Jesus have to take up and espouse these same values of detachment from wealth, prestige, power and control, and begin to see all other human beings as brothers and sisters in Christ. That would be the death knell to racism, rather than what we see now – the vulnerable and marginalized killed by racism.

The Eucharist that we celebrate now gathers us in the name of the Trinity. We celebrate God’s love revealed in Jesus and made present through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we are empowered by that same Spirit to go out to proclaim that message of unconditional love to the whole world.

So, to enjoy even now the eternal life that Jesus speaks about, let us put our complete faith in Jesus who reveals God as love, relationship, family, even intimacy, and live the values of love Jesus showed us.