Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
Trinity Sunday
May 30, 1999
Volume 44, No. 22

Trinity Sunday - What Does it Mean for Us?
Next Sunday, the first Sunday after the great Feast of Pentecost, is the day we celebrate as Trinity Sunday. Somehow, of all the great Feast Days of the Church, this one has always been for me the hardest to enter into and know that it has somehow changed my life. Perhaps it's because all of the other Feast Days are biographical, if you will, celebrations related to the life of Christ, while Trinity Sunday alone is a celebration related to the establishment of a doctrine. Yet, it is an occasion of profound significance to the Church, and therefore, inevitably, significant to you and to me as the people of the Church.

So I ask the question: what does it mean for us and for our lives? In one sense, I think we could say that even the dynamic of the Trinity is itself an expression of the genius of God. (Do you ever think about the genius of God? It's really quite extraordinary!) We know the sequence: God came to earth in the human form of the man called Jesus, in whose life we could see God's unconditional love made manifest. Yet although this Jesus was crucified, the presence and power of God among us was not to be ended. Jesus rose from death and ascended into eternity, set free, as it were, from the limitation of a single human life. God's love for us wasn't to be ended either, but continued through the Holy Spirit, given to be present for us and within us always - without boundaries - embracing and including even us in that dynamic of love which continually flows so powerfully within the heart of God as Father, Son and Spirit.

All of this is what has been summed up and expressed in what we know as the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet don't forget that it's a living doctrine, one that brings the history of God right into the heart of Christian life today. It affects our lives even now, because it includes us in its continuing dynamic. So once again, let us stand in awe of what God is doing - even here, even now - still reaching out and enfolding each one of us in that vital blessing of unending love.
~Margaret Gunness+