Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday where we reflect on our unique understanding of God to be three distinct persons, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. While it’s a famously difficult concept to understand, we should maybe see the Trinity as more like a mystery to marvel at rather than a problem to be solved. While there are a number of aspects to the Trinity, one aspect is how it reveals God to be highly relational. The three persons dwell with one another and exist in a perfect relationship with one another. Just as God exists in this way, so we are invited to join in this relationship, and it is this invitation that we are reflecting on today. This is just one reason why God is unique, inviting us to share in the life and mission of the divine.
In our reading from Isaiah, we see that the prophet was called into the presence of God to address an issue on God’s behalf. God has need of someone to go and tell God’s people what God’s will is for them. While Isaiah knew that he was unworthy for this task, God nonetheless called him and, through the activity of God, cleansed him. In response to this amazing act of grace, Isaiah willingly takes on the role of going to the people and being God’s prophet among them. In our second reading, we see how a similar invitation is extended to us. Thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit, we are also cleansed and brought into a new relationship with God. Through this “adoption” we are drawn into a deeper relationship with God and in gratitude for God’s grace shown to us, we go out on mission to witness to God, participating in Christ’s mission to reconcile the world back to God.
God made the world and sent Jesus into it to begin the work of establishing the kingdom of God. When Jesus returned to God, God then sent the Spirit to continue with the work of advancing the kingdom across the world. We can see how each person of the Trinity has a distinct role to play in this mission. What is more amazing is that through Jesus we can see who God is and understand how God longs for us to be in a relationship with God. Through the Spirit we are drawn into this relationship and offered the chance to participate in the mission of God. We are able to have as close a relationship to God as each person of the Trinity has with God. We are encouraged to live within this unity with God and with others. It’s an appropriate message for us this Reconciliation Sunday.