Names
/
O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world! -Psalm 8:1
The Sunday following Pentecost is Trinity Sunday, and it always strikes me that the readings are strange and mismatched. The only common thread is some kind of reference to the different persons of God, otherwise known as the Trinity.
In the portion of Psalm 8 we will read together, however, there is no overt reference to God in three persons. However, it starts and ends by praising God’s Name. God’s name, in our Christian faith, is tricky. Because you can name our trinitarian God in so many different ways. Here are just a very few trinitarian references:
Father/Mother/Creator/God
Jesus/Christ/Redeemer/God’s Word
Holy Spirit/Wisdom/Sustainer/God’s breath
God is like a Father, like a mother hen, like a teacher, a friend, a baby, a criminal on a cross, like the wind, like a mountain, like an everflowing stream, like a tree by a stream, like a shepherd, like a refining fire. I could go on for many pages referencing the Biblical descriptions of God.
Judaism and Christianity, two traditions that claim that there is only one God, nonetheless ascribe many different identities to that one God. I see this as a sign of the inherent diversity of God. Our Creator has boundless imagination, and names everything that God has created good. And we, as God’s creatures, are called to have boundless imaginations, as well. We cannot simplify God’s infinite diversity in order to feel in control of the big things of life. God simply will not be boxed like that. God is in everything God has created - every human being as well as every creature and plant and rock and atom. There is no book that would be able to catalogue the immense diversity of God. And there is no way to deny the immense diversity of ourselves
God is one, but God is also a community. God is complete mystery and yet we come to know God through a regular person born in the usual human way. God is transcendent and far away and yet God is as close to us as our own breath - as close as the words in our own mouths. God is not a thing as much as someone that we discover between us. In and between and among us.
The Trinity is not an easy idea and people have lots of different ideas about it. This Sunday we’ll consider this triune God we name, love and follow. Hope to see you in the park!
