the truth must dazzle gradually

Trinity Sunday presents a challenge for the preacher. It’s not because a brief sermon is an inadequate form to convey the mystery of Triune God. The sermon alone is an inadequate way to express anything. It is one movement in the dance of worship in which the people of God offer praise and gratitude. The whole dance – music, prayers, silence, song, sermon and the sharing of a common meal – is important. No, the pastoral challenge is to talk about the Trinity at all because it is considered by many to be so obscure as to be irrelevant. But to neglect conversation about the Trinity is to ignore the core of what the Christian faith uniquely teaches about God. This is one reason why the Church designates one Sunday of the year, following Pentecost, as Trinity Sunday during which we are reminded of the this great mystery of God’s way of loving us. 

Let me plunge in with lines from Emily Dickinson, the enigmatic and mysterious poet of Amherst.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or everyone be blind--- 

The Trinity is truth of God that is best told slant, allowing us to be dazzled gradually, caught up in wonder, praise and gratitude. Otherwise, I think we go blind attempting to explain what is a mystery to be experienced. To let ourselves be dazzled by the truth of God told slant, is akin to that advice of that other poet, Rainer Marie Rilke, “Live the questions now, someday you may live into the answer – when you are ready.” 

To live with the questions, allowing ourselves to be dazzled gradually by God’s mystery is to live openhearted, humble in the face of all that remains necessarily beyond our grasp. After all, if I could grasp God so fully as to relieve all my questions, then what kind of god would this be in the end? Puny indeed. And would become of faith and wonder? Vanished; squeezed away in my tight grasp.

I think those folks had it right who said, the primary purpose of humanity is to praise God and enjoy God forever. (Like many Presbyterian in confirmation, I learned this at an early age from the Westminster Catechism. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever.) In whatever form it comes, the wisdom is the same: praise and delight in God are the primary ways we humans are to experience God. Praise and wonder. 

Consider love. Whenever you try to explain it, love loses something. Why? Because love is to be experienced, enjoyed, even suffered but not explained so that you grasp it. Once I try to explain how someone could love me, with all my faults, failures and shadows, then I’ve lost something of the truth of love. 

Consider God, whose name is love and whose way in the world is love. I think this God is to be received, experienced and enjoyed over a lifetime. I think to adore God – who comes to us a Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is to allow the truth to dazzle gradually. It is to experience the Truth at a slant, rather than be blinded by our attempts to control the mystery of love. I believe this is what it is to live lightly on the earth with wonder, praise and gratitude toward God, holding our questions until we live into the answers. It’s the way of faith. 

Some folks argue argue that doctrine of the Trinity was imposed upon the Church by narrow-minded, cranky old men. I disagree. Not that the Church hasn’t had its share of narrow-minded, cranky old men; that is certainly true. But they didn’t impose the Trinity on us. The notion of the Trinity came from the experience of people with God, and their reading of scripture, that could best be described as a mystery in which God comes to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Jesus declares all that the Father has is mine. Then he sends the Spirit of truth who in turn speaks all that is true in Jesus and the Father. And so we see this undivided dance of God whom we experience as a parent’s love, as a Son who accompanies us in forgiveness, and as the Spirit who sustain us in all circumstances. It’s this experience of God that leads to a doctrine, but doctrine is deadly unless it leads to devotion. Devotion is self-indulgence unless it leads to discipleship in the world, living with faith, wonder and joy. The fruit of such wonder is compassion.

This is Trinitarian way of life, that grows from our experience of God, is one of gratitude and self-giving love that mirrors the One whom we praise and adore. 

May this wonderfully mysterious dance be yours and mine, gradually dazzled by the truth of love, made visible here in this feast of forgiveness.

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

John 16:12-15
the way of wonder
Trinity Sunday June 15, 2025
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church

It’s not the Trinity, but it is three new born Red-shouldered Hawks.