When I think of the Triune God, I think of community and the invitation into radical transformation. What do you think of?
Isaiah’s vision, with the triple “holy” of the seraphs, reveals how powerfully transforming a true encounter with the triune God can be. The psalm supports this with its celebration of God as king over all, including the heavenly beings. In the letter to the Romans, Paul reveals how the triune God works in our hearts and lives to make us, both in identity and action, true Spirit-led children of God.
Finally, in John’s Gospel, Jesus makes the same point in his call for seekers of God to be born again – transformed, by God’s Spirit, into believers in, and practitioners, of the values and purposes of God’s Reign, that was revealed, taught and demonstrated by Jesus.
God is revealed, then, as the King and Creator, who seeks an intimate relationship, as of parent and child, with human beings, and all of creation. Then, God is also revealed in Christ as the one who shows the true nature of God’s kingship, and who invites us to be participants in God’s work in the world, by giving us an example, and by opening doors to God’s life through his death and resurrection.
Finally, the empowerment we need to enter this relationship with God, and live as kingdom people, is God’s Spirit who is given to us and through whom we are born from above. The key for this week, then, is how God encounters us, in God’s Triune nature, and transforms us into Christ-like, kingdom living, children of God. The Trinitarian celebration is not just a fascinating theological exercise, but a moment of opening ourselves, in worship, to this transforming encounter with our majestic and mysterious God.