Trinity Sunday
The Rev. Rob Fisher
St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

So, apparently it is Father’s Day today.

Just a few days ago, Zoe and I were hanging out, and she was being the silly, charming, and surprisingly wise person that she often is.  We were looking at tadpoles in a pond that were beginning to grow tiny legs.  And I was all of a sudden moved to say: “Zoe, you’re the coolest person I know.”

And she responded by saying, “Daddy, your the coolest person I know!”

Then a slight pause, and:

“Daddy, you’re the poopiest person I know.”

Four and a half is such an interesting age.

Well, because it is Father’s Day, and also because it is Trinity Sunday, I am thinking about the concept of relationships today.

And I want to tell you about a man who opens that concept up.

***

Many years ago, in 1923, an Austrian Jewish philosopher named Martin Buber wrote a book in German called Ich und Du.  In English, it has been translated I and Thou.

Martin Buber was a very short man with a formidable white beard like the kind of beard a wizard would wear, and with incredible eyes that were famous for piercing into you, which you can see in photographs of him.

He defied definition.  Many called him a philosopher, a poet, a theologian, or other labels along those lines, but he rejected having a title like that.

When you read I and Thou you can see that he was writing about the essence of life, clearly on a spiritual plane.  It is not dry and exacting as much German theology is, but it opens up your world.  It paints a picture that is creative, but that you immediately recognize as the truth of really being alive.

The critical observation that he makes is that we have two ways of being.  Every encounter you make in your life is either one or the other.

The first he calls an I-It relationship, because you relate to your object as something that is merely a means to an end.  This microphone to me is an “it.”  People can be in this category of “it” as well.

The person who checks you out at the store, the guy standing in front of you at the bank—these are I-It relationships.  Buber does not say that this is wrong.  It is common to our lives and always will be.  It is neutral.  An I-It relationship is not life changing.

But the other primary relationship is very special.  He calls it an I-Thou relationship.

Perhaps against my better judgment I want to let Buber speak in his own words here.  I hope you don’t think I am crazy.  I am sharing with you something that for me, when I first read it, was life changing:

And so here are his own words:

“If I face a human being as my Thou…he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things.

“Thus, [this person] is not He or She, bounded from every other He and She, a specific point in space and time within the net of the world; nor is he a nature able to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities.  But with no neighbour, and whole in himself, he is Thou and fills the heavens.  This does not mean that nothing exists except himself.  But all else lives in his light.

“Just as the melody is not made up of notes nor the verse of words nor the statue of lines, but they must be tugged and dragged till their unity has been scattered into these many pieces, so with the man to whom I say Thou.  I can take out from him the colour of his hair, or of his speech, or of his goodness.  I must continually do this.  But each time I do it he ceases to be Thou.

“…I do not experience the man to whom I say Thou.  But I take my stand in relation to him….”

“No deception penetrates here; here is the cradle of the Real Life.”

His point is that life is about relationship.

And some relationships are of a higher quality than others.

Some relationships bring you to the point of touching holiness.

When you see another person, and you see him or her as Thou, you are blessed in that you see the person with the very eyes of God.  You see how precious that person is.  You get to see for a moment what God sees when he gazes upon us his children.

In that moment, God comes and completely fills the space between you and the person.

Each of us has had these experiences.

These are the eyes of love.

This is what Jesus was talking about when he asked us to love one another.

This way of looking cannot be achieved, but rather comes by grace.  And we cannot participate in it unless we do it with our whole being.

And doing so, it is deeply healing, for us and for the world.

*** 

The scripture today points to God’s life as Father, Son and Holy Spirit because it is a special day in the church year, called Trinity Sunday.

Trinity Sunday has stumped many because it is hard to speak about the mystery of the Trinity.

I remember being in Sunday School in about sixth grade, and my Sunday School teachers were very fired up about their faith.

I remember them saying to us, “Look, God is three parts—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and at the same time he is one God!  You see, he is both three and also one, isn’t that just the most awesome thing?”

All of us kids wanted to understand, but we looked at our Sunday School leaders with expressions that said, “What?!?”

Our teachers got the mystery, and they were pretty excited about it, but to us it was still out of our grasp.

But I want to propose to you today that in God being the Trinity, he is painting in not one color but three.  And most importantly, God as the Trinity is living as relationship.

He is in relationship with himself in his three persons, and it is the kind of relationship that Buber describes as “the cradle of Real Life.”

If Buber is right, and all real life is relationship, it begins with God.

How then are we to live?

Each of us is built for relationship and for love, and grace is waiting at the all too often closed doors of our hearts.  We cannot force ourselves to love one another, but we can surely block the grace that makes it happen.

And this is why we gather here in communities like this one—to garner strength from one another and to open up a way for God’s grace to allow us to see the world as God does, even if it is in brief moments only.

Life is not about possessing knowledge.

Life is not about possessing things.

Life is about being in relationship—with God and with others—and that only comes about in its truest form when we are brave enough to give our whole selves to it.

It requires us to let go of ourselves.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was talking about when he said that we must lose our lives to gain the life that is the most real life of all

—Amen.