TRINITY SUNDAY

May 31, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

 

On the occasion of this wonderful celebration, it seems well to begin by saying what the Holy Trinity is not. It’s not a puzzle to be solved; it’s a mystery to be adored. So my goal this morning is not to “explain the Trinity,” as if that were possible. (A wise priest of my acquaintance once said that the classical Christian doctrines are not what require explanation because they are the explanation.)

 

In any case, a good clue as to what we’re really about today comes in the Collect of the Day. If we listen carefully, we hear four words repeated. Each is said not once but twice. And these four words are: faith, worship, eternal, glory. So let’s listen up for these four words as I read the Collect again:

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

To paraphrase, we praise God for having revealed himself as one God in three Persons, and we ask him to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, that we may share with him in his eternal glory. So, today’s feast calls us to faith, worship, and eternal glory!

 

Our calling to eternal glory comes from our creation in God’s image and likeness. Today’s reading of the Seven Days of Creation in the Book of Genesis includes these verses: “Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

 

Notice how the text switches back and forth between the singular and the plural. On one hand, the text speaks of one God who speaks and creates. But, on the other hand, this one God doesn’t say, “Let me make humankind in my image,” but rather, “Let us make humankind in our image.” 

 

Here, the Christian tradition understands the “us” and the “our” as expressing the three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But again, it’s not “the gods” who speak and act, but God. So, right there, the Genesis text’s grammar is consistent with the Trinitarian doctrine of one God in three Persons.

 

Furthermore, the human race, created in God’s image, is likewise both singular and plural. On the one hand, the noun translated as “humankind” is in the singular. It’s the Hebrew Adam, which earlier translations rendered as “man” but could also be translated as “humanity” or “the human being.” But then the pronouns shift immediately to the plural: In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 

 

The point is that we human beings are simultaneously one and many. We’re many individual persons; still, we’re one in our common humanity, our shared human nature. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are, as human beings created in God’s image. It provides the underlying basis of both our unity and our diversity.

 

The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are traditionally described as having three attributes: coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial. (Consubstantial simply means sharing the same nature, essence, or being. So, we might instead list the three attributes as coequal, coeternal, and of one nature.)

 

We human beings are similarly coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial. Coequal: we all share in equal dignity as bearers of the same divine image. Coeternal: we’re all called to the same eternal life. Consubstantial: we all share in the same human nature. 

 

It follows that racism and other ideologies promoting human inequality and domination of one group by another are not only sinful but blasphemous. Such ideologies disregard and dishonor the divine image in our fellow human beings. For Christians, then, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a powerful weapon in the struggle against injustice and oppression. And this vision of human beings created in the divine image may be the unique contribution that Christians can make to public discourse at this challenging time in the history of our nation and the world.

 

Today’s Gospel reminds us that just as in the beginning we were created in the image of the Trinity, so in Holy Baptism we’ve been recreated in the name of the Trinity. The risen Lord appears to the eleven in Galilee and commissions them: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

 

And so we live confidently in the present and look with joyful hope to the future. As baptized members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we have his promise that he is with us “always, to the end of the age.” 

 

In today’s Epistle from Second Corinthians, Saint Paul bids us, “agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” And then he gives a trinitarian blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.” That is, by the way, the traditional concluding sentence of the Anglican Prayer Book offices of daily Morning and Evening prayer.

 

A basic tenet of the Christian faith is that it’s precisely as the Holy Trinity that God is the God of love and peace, or more simply, as St. John puts it, that God is love. The perfect love that the three divine Persons eternally share among themselves, in total mutuality and total self‑giving, is the very same love with which God loves us, and which God invites us to share with one another, both now and in eternity.

 

And so, to end where we began, we pray that God will keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, so that we may share in eternal glory. For he is one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom be all worship, praise, dominion, and power, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.