Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8 
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

This morning we will welcome Jack Antonios Chamberlain into the community of Jesus’ followers.  Jack’s mother, Juliaette, has worshiped at St. Mary’s for nine or ten years.  When I first came here, nearly eight years ago, she was Juliaette Lamond, and we would see here occasionally at the 8:00 Eucharist.  Her job had taken her to England, but she returned to Kansas City occasionally to check in with her company and when she was here, she came to St. Mary’s.  A year or two later, Juliaette returned from England and made her home in Kansas City.  She brought three people to church with her on Easter Sunday:  her aunt Angie Stanland, who is now our Sr. Warden, her uncle Cy Stanland and her beau Jerry Chamberlain.  Not long after that, Jerry and Juliaette were engaged.  They married a little over five years ago.  I traveled to Virginia to help officiate at their wedding.  Juliaette’s grandmother, whose name was Juliaette Kerhulas, was living in Kansas City by then and worshiping at St. Mary’s.  Her health prevented her from traveling to the wedding.  A month or two after the ceremony in Virginia, Jerry and Juliaette renewed their vows at St. Mary’s with family members, so that Mrs. Kerhulas could have a part in the celebration of their marriage.  By then, Cy and Angie were parishioners.   The following spring, Cy and Angie, Jerry and Juliaette and their family and Kansas City friends gathered here for a memorial service for Mrs. Kerhulas.    

Later that year St. Mary’s had two couples within the parish who were expecting babies.   One of those children was William, Jack’s older brother.  The parish organized a baby shower after the Sunday Eucharist.  Around that same time, Jerry and Juliaette were notified of a job opportunity for him that they could not pass up.  We said goodbye to them in mid-August as they headed for Wisconsin, where William was born only a few weeks after their arrival.  Two years ago Easter, they came back to Kansas City for a visit with six month old William, and we celebrated his baptism.  His brother Jack, whose baptism we celebrate today, was born a little over a year ago.  Last fall Jerry and Juliaette and their boys moved back to Missouri.   Another job opportunity has brought them to Springfield.  Distance keeps us from seeing them as often as we would like, but they are with us today, to celebrate another important moment in their family’s life.

In a few minutes Jack will become the world’s newest Christian with the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  It is fitting that we celebrate this central rite of Christian initiation on the feast of Trinity Sunday.

The church’s teaching on the Trinity and its three persons was intended to resolve conflict and unify belief.  It grew out of two of the great councils of the church – meetings that gathered together bishops from all over the world.  One was the council of Nicaea in the year 325 and the other the Council of Constantinople 56 years thereafter.  The two councils affirmed three things: 

§  the essential unity of God

§  the complete humanity and essential divinity of Jesus

§  the essential divinity of the Spirit

          The Trinity – as three distinct and equal persons who cannot be divided from one another – is not mentioned in the Bible, but scripture had an important part in formulating this Christian expression of God.   It comes to us from a time and place where the language and conceptual framework are far removed from anything that ordinary people have been familiar with for hundreds of years.  As a result, there are centuries’ worth of everyday analogies and illustrations of the Trinity.  Among those are an orange – the peel, the fruit and the seeds; an egg – the white, the yolk and the shell; and the famous one attributed to St. Patrick – the shamrock – three leaves growing together in the same plant.  Should you be inclined, google search can find you a hundred more. 

One thing that the Trinity says to us is that God is about relationship.  Within God there are three persons who exist in a perfectly balanced relationship that will never end.  Our relationships are not so perfect, but the Trinity is our ideal.  We Christians who understand God as Trinity exist in community.  No matter where we are, no matter what our manner of life, we are united by our baptism in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  With great joy, we come together today to bring a new member into that community.