Episode Transcript
Hello friends and welcome to this week's episode of Gritz and the Gospel. My name is Reverend Katie Griffiths and I'm so excited to be with you on this Trinity Sunday. It is my hope that This message brings you as much joy as it brought me to write and to research and to look back through some of my class notes. And so It's a big idea, this idea of the Trinity. And so I hope that this brings clarity and meaning to you as we read and study today. Let us come together now on a time of worship. The Lord be with you and also with you. Today's Psalm is the eighth Psalm. It is about the Creator who we should praise for all that he gave us in his creation. Let us hear now the words of the Psalmist. Oh Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name and all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants, you have found a bulwark because of your foes to silence the enemy and the Avenger. 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? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under their feet. All sheep and oxen and also the beast of the fields, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. Oh Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name and all the earth. Here ends the first reading. Let us say together those words that describe our God and our faith as we pay close attention to the words that represent the trinitarian nature of God. Friends, what do we believe? I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and married. The third day he rose from the den. He ascended into heaven and cited at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From then see shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen. Let us pray. Do your words we come together today to reflect on your majesty, your power and your might and your tenderness and your hope. Let us reflect all of those parts of you that make you holy and unknowable and mysterious. Here now as we pray the words that your son taught us to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as you forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever. Amen. Today's lesson is from the letter to the Romans from Paul. Here now the word of the Lord. Romans 5 chapter 5 verses 1 through 5. Therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through whom we have obtained access to his grace in which we stand and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. The word of God for us the people of God. Thanks be to God. John Wesley once said, bring me a worm that can comprehend a man and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the triune God. So let me go ahead and tell you that I will say every time Trinity Sunday rolls around the train of Terry nature of God is a big thing. It's hard to preach about without missing part of it or limiting the power and majesty of God. So for all of you well read theologians out there, just know that I'm going to draw my best not to be a worm. I'm going to try to speak about the Trinity in the way that it deserves knowing full well that I'm never going to be smart enough to comprehend the full and complete nature of God. And I think I'm totally okay with that. I like a little mystery and life. Would you pray with me? Dear Lord, you are bigger than any of us can comprehend. And yet with your fingers you created us all. I'm so thankful that this word was given to me today, this understanding, this depth of understanding. Let it flow through me and be a comfort and a hope to those who hear it. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in my sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. I am the oldest of my generation on both sides of my family. I'm also the oldest grandchild of my grandmother's bridge group. What that means besides being totally spalled and the most loved insert laughter here is that I was borrowed often when my cousins or my mother's peers in the bridge group wanted bridge group world wanted to get their kid fix. They came and got me and took me on adventures. My cousin Molly and her siblings were some that did it most often. Her sister Beverly took me to the high museum and the quarter center. Her brother Fred took my brother and out, brother and I out in his Jeep and taught us the joys of mudden. And since the statute of limitations has run out on anything that I did when I was five, he taught us how to aim and hit a stop sign and a moving vehicle. Molly gave me the gift of the Okmoggi National Monument. Now, George is only national part by the way. If you've ever been there, you will know that it is a sacred space. A place on this earth that much like right here at the campground is a it has a thin veil between God and those that have inhabited it since almost the beginning of mankind. Their website tells me that they have been there have been people continuously on that land for 12,000 years. The park is only a small fraction of the ancient community that used to live around the river. There are mounds for miles along those life-giving waters. One of the mounds that is found inside the park is known as the temple mound. It is where sacred rituals and meetings occurred. There are graduated seats around the outside of the space and the shape of an eagle is formed in the middle in the red clay floor. One of the ways you can tell this space was special to its builders is how you enter the temple. You have to bend down to walk through the tunnel that leads to the temple space. It's as if you are being forced to bow down as you enter. Everyone when they enter and when they are in the small glass room for viewing the space is quiet. It is dark and almost haunting. You can feel the millennia of worship sit heavy on your shoulders like it's pulling you in. The first trip there with Molly I was about age three. It's one of my core memories. You know the ones that are almost like a picture of a moment? It's like a snapshot in time but one that has shaped my whole life. I'm not much taller now than I was then but at age three I did not have to bow to get down the tunnel. I remember the feeling I had walking down the dark tunnel with Molly right behind me. I remember turning to look at her right in the eyes and saying does God live here? Out of the mouths of babes indeed. The idea of the Trinity is really big. It is complex and wide and vast but at its core it is a feeling. It is a presence. It is the presence of God at the beginning of creation is the presence of God on earth as the person of Jesus and the presence of God as the Holy Spirit who is with us now and always. It is the childlike spirit that I felt that day and Molly witnessed. Does God live here? Since the beginning of time since the first people step foot on the land that is now on national park the answer is yes. God the Creator made the heavens in the earth. We know Jesus was part of that because of the beginning of the book of John. You know these words I'm sure in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He wasn't the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light that shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overtake it. The word or as theologians call it the logos was Jesus and Jesus was and is God and has been there since the beginning. You can find yourself talking in circles about it but that's part of the trinitarian nature. I've got it as one big circle but it is the spirit. The third part of the trinity that inhabits the earth still that I felt so strongly that day. Does God live here? The answer is always yes but it is the childlike faith that really gives it meaning. I may have been talking about the temple mound specifically at the time but it was really that inspiration and feeling that was the spirit I felt that day. I knew it was sacred because something made me feel that way. God made me feel that way. I studied systematic theology with one of the great thinkers of our time. Reverend Dr. Kindle Sohman did his best to make me a systematic theologian but my brain doesn't work that way. I'm more of a practical theologian. I experienced God more fully in the everyday moments of life. I have pages of notes from his class about the trinity. Notes on how each theory of the trinity falls short capturing of capturing the full nature of God. I want to think I like the best despite not being complete is God above us the Father. God beside us Jesus got among us the spirit. Tell me heart best to understand. But it's the mystery of God that is really what makes him all powerful all encompassing and all inhabiting. It is the mystery that my three-year-old heart felt when I went for the first time to the sacred temple mound. It is the mystery of God that I feel and Molly and I go back there together and I actually have to bow down to walk in. God radiates from the heavens and the earth. God is not just did not just create them. God still exists there. God exists in every single one of us. Kindle Sohman used a word that I really think he made up but I think he's earned the right to do it. The mystery of God he told us is uncircum-scribable. The infinity of God is an unpacking of the fullness that you can never define. Never finish unpacking. Never wrap your head around. I think I like that about God. I like that God is so big that he can cover anything and everything. God is bigger than any problem I have. God is bigger than the earth and everything in it. Seen an unseen living and elemental. O Lord, our sovereign, the Somas says, how majestic is your name in all the earth? God is bigger than the heavens. The Somas continues when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have inhabited and established. I love that God has fingers and yet he is beyond the need for hands. And what that mystery and that majesty and that power help me see is what Paul wrote about. Because God is bigger than our humaneness can comprehend. There is hope. The inability for us to understand does not and should not bring us shame. It should bring us hope. Paul says hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been forward into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God's love for us is bigger than all of the hurt and struggle and lack of understanding and trials and tribulations and that is where the hope lies. That is where our hope can be rooted and fruitful. It is where our hope can live and thrive in our hearts. The Trinitarian God is bigger than all of us. We are not alone. There's always hope. Molly now both love to tell the story in my first time at the Temple Mound. It's a sweet story. It's a story of the love of family. It's a reminder of how connected she and I have been since I was a very little girl. We are tied together at the heartstrings. And while her brother taught me some very useful skills, I tend not to throw things from a moving vehicle at stop signs as much as I look for the spirit filled moments in life. I think it is very fitting that God chose to lead this sweet memory for me. A reminder of just how big he is and just how small he can be when he needs to show himself to me. God, it seems, can come down and pull it our heartstrings anytime he wants. God can remind us that no matter how big the world gets, his love is also the small spark of a child's imagination of just what it means to be loved. Just God live here. Yes, he does. Amen. As we go throughout our week, let us remember that. That God is bigger than anything we can imagine. It is both comforting and unimaginable. And we are better for it. Because in life and death and life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.
