You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the “three-ness” of our One God. Why three? Why not two, or four, or one – which would have been so much easier to explain. Yes, we believe God is One, but Christians also assert that God is three persons within the One Godhead. Why three?
The shortest answer is, because Jesus said so. He spoke of his Father in heaven, he spoke of himself as Son of God, and he referred in personal terms to the Holy Spirit, who would be sent when he was no longer bodily present. And there were stories, like the voice heard at his baptism, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” and the Spirit descending upon him. Early apostles and thinkers, trying to interpret collected stories and teachings, had to wrestle with these references. We might say seeing God as triune was unavoidable, given how Jesus refers to these three distinct persons as God.
Unavoidable does not mean simple. It took centuries to sort out and articulate Christian doctrine about God, and some of the process was torturous, as it is any time we try to talk about the Unity and the Trinity of God (read the Athanasian Creed sometime…) On the one Sunday each year when we highlight not an event but a doctrine, preachers twist themselves into pretzels trying to clarify a spiritual mystery. Sun, ray, beam…. Orange, peel, juice… Mother, wife, sister… Water, ice, steam…. Or the image I suggested a few weeks ago: sea, water-fall and spray.
A good formula for the Trinity does not allocate different functions to Father, Son and Spirit, but affirms their sharing in the full life of God. It conveys distinction between persons and the unity of the whole – and so affirms the principles of differentiation and wholeness that are so important for human health and thriving. It communicates the core Christian belief that God is One and also more than One; that God is so big, God could not be contained as just One but exists in eternal relationship of persons.
We are invited to join this ongoing, active, relational life of God. The Christian life is not about assenting to a belief, but actively joining a relationship already in full swirl, and somehow richer when you and I join in. Some liken it to a dance, in which we are swept up, folded in, made whole.
What difference does understanding God as Trinity make to us? It gives us different ways to connect with God. Some relate to God as Spirit, unseen but powerful and present. Some connect better to God the Father, transcendent and holy, unknowable and yet perfect love. And some find their connection to the Son who left his heavenly home to enter our world as a human being, making God knowable to us.
Who do you find you most connect with in prayer? Have you ever consciously tried to address another Person of the Trinity just to see how you might experience God differently? You might try it today...
I will leave us with a great formulation written by my friend Willy Welch in a song for children:
God is one person, and he’s also Three.
God is a person, and He’s a family.
One, he is the Father; Two, he is the Son;
Three, he is the Spirit, and they’re never done.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label Holy Trinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Trinity. Show all posts
6-12-25 - The Sharing Economy
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus uses a lot of possessive pronouns when he describes the life of God, at least, the way John’s Gospel renders his words. He speaks of what is the Father’s, what is his, what the Spirit gives. And he indicates that all this richness shared by the three-personed God is also shared with us: “He [the Spirit] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
What has been declared to us? The future of God’s reign. The fullness of Life. All the key pieces of information and insight we sometimes feel we’re missing. God is not holding anything back for later – it’s already ours. It's just that we don’t have the capacity to receive the whole signal; our systems would crash.
So, does it do us any good if we have it but don't “get it?” So often we operate out of human understanding and make choices based on fear or self-protection rather than faith. Here’s what I think: a part of us does get it. All of it. Has received the Good News of Life without end, here and in the world to come, and has been set free by that Good News. As we grow spiritually, that part of us is able more and more to share this knowing with the rest of us, until the faith-receiving self is in command, and the fear-responding self has been integrated and converted. Then we look more like Jesus. We are in a sense our own first mission field.
It’s not only God who incorporates three persons in his being; perhaps we incorporate a very different kind of trinity: our true, God-given, spiritual self; our world-shaped natural self; and the energy it takes to navigate life from that dichotomy, which can take on a life of its own.
The good news about the Good News is that what belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and what belongs to the Son has been declared to us by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings about our integration and conversion, as we allow her/him access. And as we receive the fullness of God-Life we share that God-Life with the people around us and within ourselves, and that feeds back into the Triune Life of God, an infinite loop. It is the original sharing economy, and it never, ever runs out.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus uses a lot of possessive pronouns when he describes the life of God, at least, the way John’s Gospel renders his words. He speaks of what is the Father’s, what is his, what the Spirit gives. And he indicates that all this richness shared by the three-personed God is also shared with us: “He [the Spirit] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
What has been declared to us? The future of God’s reign. The fullness of Life. All the key pieces of information and insight we sometimes feel we’re missing. God is not holding anything back for later – it’s already ours. It's just that we don’t have the capacity to receive the whole signal; our systems would crash.
So, does it do us any good if we have it but don't “get it?” So often we operate out of human understanding and make choices based on fear or self-protection rather than faith. Here’s what I think: a part of us does get it. All of it. Has received the Good News of Life without end, here and in the world to come, and has been set free by that Good News. As we grow spiritually, that part of us is able more and more to share this knowing with the rest of us, until the faith-receiving self is in command, and the fear-responding self has been integrated and converted. Then we look more like Jesus. We are in a sense our own first mission field.
It’s not only God who incorporates three persons in his being; perhaps we incorporate a very different kind of trinity: our true, God-given, spiritual self; our world-shaped natural self; and the energy it takes to navigate life from that dichotomy, which can take on a life of its own.
The good news about the Good News is that what belongs to the Father belongs to the Son, and what belongs to the Son has been declared to us by the Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings about our integration and conversion, as we allow her/him access. And as we receive the fullness of God-Life we share that God-Life with the people around us and within ourselves, and that feeds back into the Triune Life of God, an infinite loop. It is the original sharing economy, and it never, ever runs out.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-11-25 - The Gift of Three
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Trinity Sunday often inspires questions like, “Why is God three persons? Why not four or two or eight?” To which we might answer, “It’s a holy mystery!” But we could come up with better reasons: There are three because Jesus referred to a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. No one else is mentioned.
And there are three because there are two persons in a father/son (or parent/child) relationship, and the connection – the spirit – which flows between, through, around and from them. The reason we cannot “divide” the Trinity too sharply, the reason we insist on One God in Three, is that the Spirit is the spirit of the Father and the Son. We can’t take the Spirit out of the picture any more than we can lose our shadow.
Does it matter that God is triune? What does it get us, besides a headache from trying to figure it out? I find it precious because it tells us from the get-go that God is about relationship and relatedness. God is not a concept; God is a being with capacity for giving and receiving, loving and being loved. So when we say we are made in God’s image, that’s where we begin.
In some sense, all our relationships have a triune quality – ourselves, the other, and the spirit of connection that flows between us, which we might term a third entity created by our connection. We see this with couples – we know each partner as his or her own person, say, “Mary” and “Joseph,” but we also know them as “Mary and Joseph,” whom we think of in a slightly different way as a unit than we do Mary or Joseph individually.
In the same way, there is you, and there is God, and there is “you and God,” a product of being united with Christ. All God wants from us is to help grow that relationship. That is one thing God cannot do without us. And we do not have to do it without God. Come, Holy Spirit!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Trinity Sunday often inspires questions like, “Why is God three persons? Why not four or two or eight?” To which we might answer, “It’s a holy mystery!” But we could come up with better reasons: There are three because Jesus referred to a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. No one else is mentioned.
And there are three because there are two persons in a father/son (or parent/child) relationship, and the connection – the spirit – which flows between, through, around and from them. The reason we cannot “divide” the Trinity too sharply, the reason we insist on One God in Three, is that the Spirit is the spirit of the Father and the Son. We can’t take the Spirit out of the picture any more than we can lose our shadow.
Does it matter that God is triune? What does it get us, besides a headache from trying to figure it out? I find it precious because it tells us from the get-go that God is about relationship and relatedness. God is not a concept; God is a being with capacity for giving and receiving, loving and being loved. So when we say we are made in God’s image, that’s where we begin.
In some sense, all our relationships have a triune quality – ourselves, the other, and the spirit of connection that flows between us, which we might term a third entity created by our connection. We see this with couples – we know each partner as his or her own person, say, “Mary” and “Joseph,” but we also know them as “Mary and Joseph,” whom we think of in a slightly different way as a unit than we do Mary or Joseph individually.
In the same way, there is you, and there is God, and there is “you and God,” a product of being united with Christ. All God wants from us is to help grow that relationship. That is one thing God cannot do without us. And we do not have to do it without God. Come, Holy Spirit!
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
6-10-25 - The Holy Translator
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
If we were to set out to build a profile of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to attend closely to the things Jesus said about him before he took his leave of his disciples. We might learn, for instance, that the Holy Spirit functions as a sort of spokesperson for the Godhead, aka the Holy Trinity. Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
More than once, Jesus says that it is God the Father whose Word matters – who uttered a Word that became flesh in the Son, a Word that creates worlds and holy occasions through the Spirit. The Spirit gives voice to what the Father says – and declares what the Father purposes, “the things that are to come.”
When we hear the voice of God, then, it is the Spirit we are hearing. And when God hears our voice, it is the voice of the Spirit. “… that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” Paul told the Christians in Rome, adding that the Spirit intercedes for us. (Romans 8)
What a way to think of the Spirit: as a divine translator facilitating the communication between us and God. We don’t need to pray on our own, or be prophetic on our own; in fact, we cannot. The Spirit does that in us, as we invite God’s Life into our lives.
What if we too were able to cultivate that practice – not to speak on our own, but to speak only what we hear from God? How might our churches, our relationships, our lives be affected by inviting the Spirit to speak to us and through us, not speaking unless we felt it was God’s word? I wonder if I could do it for an hour, let alone a day.
We can start by being more aware of the Spirit’s function as communications intermediary, taking the thoughts we have on our wavelength, and interpreting them into the heavenly realms; and taking God’s thoughts – which are on a spectrum virtually impossible for us to comprehend – and articulating them in us. Just asking to receive the translation is a prayer I believe God will answer.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
If we were to set out to build a profile of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to attend closely to the things Jesus said about him before he took his leave of his disciples. We might learn, for instance, that the Holy Spirit functions as a sort of spokesperson for the Godhead, aka the Holy Trinity. Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
More than once, Jesus says that it is God the Father whose Word matters – who uttered a Word that became flesh in the Son, a Word that creates worlds and holy occasions through the Spirit. The Spirit gives voice to what the Father says – and declares what the Father purposes, “the things that are to come.”
When we hear the voice of God, then, it is the Spirit we are hearing. And when God hears our voice, it is the voice of the Spirit. “… that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” Paul told the Christians in Rome, adding that the Spirit intercedes for us. (Romans 8)
What a way to think of the Spirit: as a divine translator facilitating the communication between us and God. We don’t need to pray on our own, or be prophetic on our own; in fact, we cannot. The Spirit does that in us, as we invite God’s Life into our lives.
What if we too were able to cultivate that practice – not to speak on our own, but to speak only what we hear from God? How might our churches, our relationships, our lives be affected by inviting the Spirit to speak to us and through us, not speaking unless we felt it was God’s word? I wonder if I could do it for an hour, let alone a day.
We can start by being more aware of the Spirit’s function as communications intermediary, taking the thoughts we have on our wavelength, and interpreting them into the heavenly realms; and taking God’s thoughts – which are on a spectrum virtually impossible for us to comprehend – and articulating them in us. Just asking to receive the translation is a prayer I believe God will answer.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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