Trinity Sunday
Sermon
Sunday May 31st, 2026
June, even though we’re not in June yet, the month of June is usually filled with all kinds of great feasts, reminding us that the spring is here and spring also means renewal of our own faith, our own life of faith. So a great opportunity as we see growth all around us, hopefully we also desire for growth within us, returning to those things that we believe that are sacred to us, the gift of revelation.
And there are many feasts that commemorate what we believe, who we are. But today’s feast is very unique. Today the church invites us to consider the doctrine or the teaching of the trinity, holy trinity that as Christians we believe in one God in three persons, father, son and holy spirit. And this is a unique doctrine or unique teaching of the church because as one theologian put it, all the other doctrines tell us about what God did for us. Whereas this particular doctrine tells us who God is. Who God is.
It’s very helpful to know someone, isn’t it? Often when we meet people, inevitably people want to know who they’re meeting. And so they will ask us, “Who are you?” They’ll ask our name. And very often, pretty early on, they will ask this question, “What do you do for a living?” People want to know us. And in order to know us, they want to know what we do. What is our profession? Because so much of who we are is tied in with what we do. But I think here we have to be careful because if we only knew God based on what God did, we would not know the depth of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
We know that God created. We heard that in the first reading today. What else did God do? We know that God came and became one of us in his son Jesus, the incarnation. We know what God did. God also redeemed us, paid for our sins by the blood of the lamb. As it says in scripture, we know what God did. But here, here in the Holy Trinity we go beyond of only what God did and we say, but who is God? If you take away everything God did, who is this God that I am called to be in a relationship with?
Moses posed this question again in the Old Testament. In particular, in these old traditions, much about the person was revealed in their name because the name was given very, very specifically to highlight who the person was. And so when Moses asked the burning bush and the voice that was coming out of that experience, “Who are you? What is your name?” God’s answer was, “I am who am. Tell them that I am sent you.” And in the name is revealed the essence of what that person is, who is God in the name that God reveals to Moses. And consequently, in the name that God reveals through the Holy Trinity, we know that God is being itself. God is not only the source of all existence. God is existence itself. Nothing came into being without him. As we read in John, and in him everything has life.
So practically speaking, what is this revelation of God in three persons—this being not only source but “I am”? Who is this God and what does it mean in terms of our own lives? How does our knowledge of who God is actually help us? Well, I believe that it helps because we are made in God’s image and likeness. And so to know God is to know ourselves. The more we know the mystery of God, the more we begin to understand the mystery of humanity made in God’s image.
So this is not just a theological exercise so we can feel good about ourselves, like, well, we know how to define God or how to name God. This has practical applications. Anglicanism is known for practical theology. They are practical people. Those British people, they want to know, “What do I do with this? How do I make it work for me?” And this is what happens in the Trinity. In this theological insight about the revelation of God who is father, son, and holy spirit, we actually get practical application for our lives. We are made in God’s image. So let’s get into the practical stuff.
The holy trinity is explained in scripture by theologians, by early church fathers like St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and others. It is explained through analogies, but they themselves say don’t worry about analogies because they fail at a certain point. They’re just comparisons based on the things we know. So you could say if you go outside and you sit in the sun for too long, you get a nice brown suntan. And then you can say, well, the sun can be divided into three parts: the sun itself, the ray of the sun, and the heat that lands on your skin or wherever. Which part gave you the suntan? Was it the heat? Was it the ray? Was it the sun? Well, you say all of them. And yet we can distinguish individual parts. And yet, so this is one of the analogies. There are others, but they fail at a certain point because we’re comparing God’s very existence to created things.
Here is what I like to say. God the Father speaks the word, which is a thought of God. And that word, because it belongs to God, takes on life. The word of God is Jesus. God’s thought, the father’s thought, becomes a living being, Jesus. And the love they share between one another is the Holy Spirit. So you could say that within the holy trinity we have two elements. We have the thought and we have the heart. The word, which originates in the thought in the mind, and the love that unites the father, son, and holy spirit is the heart—the movement of the heart.
And so God, in his very way in which God exists as the Holy Trinity, reveals to us what we already know about our own life. Everything we approach in life is either approached by reason or by feeling and emotion. And the perfect balance between those two is what we are called to live. We are called to be rational people, but we are also called to be affective. Affectivity is important. If we err too far in terms of our thinking and do not feel what the other person feels, we can be classified as not humane. Well, this makes sense rationally, but maybe not emotionally. But if we make all our decisions based on our feelings alone and do not consider things in a rational way, we can also err. You see, so within the Holy Trinity already we have a map of a balanced human life that allows us to realize that we have to engage in all our relationships with both our mind and our heart, and the two of them have to balance each other out and blend each other together. So often we have been told that the longest road sometimes to travel is between the mind and the heart, isn’t it? But this is how God wants us to grow in harmony with him and also in holiness.
Holiness simply means wholeness working the way it’s supposed to work. You know, when I take my car to a mechanic for a tuneup, all he’s doing is helping it work properly, balancing all the systems so that one doesn’t overpower the other. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on carburetors, but this is what you do when you work on old cars or old motorcycles. A carburetor is a simple mechanical device that measures the amount of air and fuel coming into the engine. And you need the right proportions of those two elements to come in in order for the combustion of the engine cylinder to be just right. Too much fuel and it’s going to choke. It’s not going to have the power you need to propel that engine properly. And too much air creates what’s called a lean condition, which means you’re going to hear some popping from your exhaust system. So, have I confused you enough? Carburetors, yes.
But this is, again, a creation of humanity that reflects a deeper truth about who we are, and it’s rooted in God: the perfect blending of mind and heart. The mind of God is Jesus. The heart of God is the Holy Spirit. Not in competition with each other, but working perfectly—so perfectly together that we say it is one God in three persons.
Another way of looking at this beautiful balance within the Holy Trinity that actually has applications to how we live together as a community in this world is to realize that the Holy Trinity has the perfect blending of individuality and community. And to me that is an incredible insight, because what is it that we try to do, especially in our political systems, which are ways of trying to figure out how do we live together as a community? We always try to highlight or elevate individuality over community, or community over individuality. We’re always competing with those two realities.
So in more socialist political movements, you have the common good becoming the most important thing. Helping the poor, helping communities, helping those who need more help. And so that often becomes most important. But sometimes that happens at the cost of individual rights and individual goods. But then you have other systems that say, “No, the individual right of an individual is the most important thing,” but that can also overwhelm the system so that we’re not caring for those who have needs, social needs, justice, and so on. So how do we blend the two instead of having to choose which one is the better system?
Well, we look at the Holy Trinity, the way God is and the way we are called to live. The Holy Trinity is the perfect blending of individuality and community. You have one God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not in competition with each other for our attention. They’re not trying to outdo each other. They are individual, unique persons. And yet, everything happens in communion. Everything happened. Whatever the son wants, the father wants and the holy spirit wants. That’s why we hear the story of creation, because in creation the father creates, but the son and the holy spirit are right there accompanying that movement. When Jesus dies on the cross, the father and the holy spirit are right there participating in that great gift of salvation. It is the perfect blending of community and the needs of the community with the individual dignity of each person. The father does not lose any of his personhood in being part of that oneness we say in the holy trinity of God.
So how do we apply this to our lives? I think first and foremost, for me at least, it’s important to realize that our faith plays a very crucial role in how we live in this world. It’s not just an add-on. You know, I heard someone say the other day, they said, “You know, whatever work I’m involved in, I want it to make a difference in the world.” And then I thought to myself, well, my work is reading the scripture and leading people in prayer. Do I believe that that is an essential part of making our world a better place? In other words, do I believe I’m doing meaningful work because I want to do that? And I believe I am. I believe that what we do as Christians is so essential for the well-being of our world because it teaches us how to be with each other and how to be with ourselves the way God created us.
God’s revelation is not just an insight that helps us to feel good about ourselves. It’s the map for how we live in our society, in our world. These doctrines of our faith, they have practical application to our daily lives. Why? Because God created us and God sustains us. And in the way God is, we are called to be. On this feast of the most holy trinity, I pray that we will continually deepen our understanding of the faith. Not so that we can explain it away and feel, again, smart about things, but so that we can gain a better pathway for our humanity, for my family, for my congregation, for my neighbors, for myself.
Amen.
Father Wojtek Kuzma