“Trinity is Reality”Main point: BLESSING THE CHILDRENSERMONA special greeting to all of the Fathers and Father figures present with us today. May all of your golfballs fly straight; may all of your neck ties stay in fashion for at least as long as it takes you to dribble food on them at your next formal dinner; and may your nap this afternoon be interrupted only by the noise of your children arguing in the hall outside your bedroom door.IntroductionI would like to explore with you this theme of Trinity on this Great Feast Day. Let’s begin this way…Around the year A.D. 418, St. Patrick was assigned to be a missionary to the people of Ireland. He used language and symbols familiar to the people of Ireland to explain the Christian message. Perhaps most famous among those symbols was the use of the shamrock to demonstrate how God is both three and one. God is three like the three leaves of the shamrock. God is also one like the stem of the shamrock. The three is the one; and the one is the three.In generations since, many others have tried to use other symbols to explain how the three are also one and the one is the three. Water was the main illustration that was used when I was a child. I still remember being a small child in my Sunday School class and the teacher bringing in a boiling pot with steam rising out of it, a glass pitcher of plain tap water, and a tray of ice cubes to demonstrate that God was three similar to the way water can be a solid, liquid, and gas. But God was also one because each of them is still water. Last night a person at our Saturday service reminded me of another illustration that I had forgotten: an apple. An apple has the white flesh, a peel, and a core. Three parts that are all apple, but the three fit together to make one apple.These illustrations each have their value to make a picture of the way God has revealed Godself through history. Always three. Always one. Always in unity; always in harmony. Three persons limitlessly bonded together in perfect unity to such a degree that there is no distinction between them. They are one person: Father, Son, Spirit.ComplicatedThis dynamic puzzle - 3 is 1 is 3 is 1 - has broken the mind of countless generations of people since the dawn of time.Before the first humans, God was there in Trinity and Unity.Before the first atoms, God was there in Trinity and Unity.Before there was light or energy or any other thing, God was there in Trinity and Unity.This puzzle has broken many minds - as it should. God is infinite and we are finite. God is very, very big and we are very, very small. As our Psalm tells us this morning:O LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?Our minds cannot grasp limitlessness. Our minds cannot grasp infinity. God true essence cannot even be known. God is too big. God is beyond us.And yet, God shows us a glimpse of himself. What we are shown is 3 but also 1 but also 3 but also 1. Which leads me to my first point:When we start by contemplating God who is infinite and limitless, we realize…Trinity is actually the simplest way God could reveal God-self to us, not the most complex. Yes, it breaks out minds, but, remember, we are glimpsing eternity.Some would say this idea of Trinity is ridiculous because there’s no way 3 can be 1 can be 3 can be 1. But when we understand we are glimpsing limitlessness, we stop asking, how is God who is one also three? And we begin asking, why did God who is infinite stop at 3?Trinity is the simplest way God could reveal God-self to us, not the most complex. 

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