I posted this on Holy Seasons, but it also belongs here as we draw near to the Trinity Sunday. It was originally posted in 2020:
THE FEAST OF THE HOLY TRINITY / TRINITY SUNDAY
The first step in the dance is wonder.
Pentecost is a crowning moment. It is full of drama and power. It exalts that small band of believers as emissaries to the world. Three thousand people are baptized following that first sermon. It would be easy to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and march out in glory.
But we don’t go there. We cannot go there. This is not a crusade. This is a servant people bearing the cross.
This is a people born of outstretched arms and the washing of feet.
This is a people who see holiness not in gilded temples, but a cup of water shared.
This is a people whose teacher walked away when the crowds would make him king, who welcomed the outcast and touched the unclean and answered hate with lovingkindness.
This is a people whose command is to love.
The Sunday after Pentecost goes immediately to mystery. The divine power at the heart of all things stands out beyond our grasp, beyond our imagination, beyond our power to comprehend. The God who called forth the world and opened the grave is revealed yet unknown. Somehow the pierced one is the eternal one, yet the eternal one is not only the pierced. The voice that called forth the universe blows life through all things and lies amidst the straw of a manger. The hand that touches the leper is eternal. The fingers that draw in the sand, while outraged men wait for judgment, are holy. The hands that lift the bread, the hands that bless the child, the pierced hands held out to Thomas – these hands are the first whisper of the cosmos and its life-giving breath.
It is mystery. It is wonder. Eternal yet bound into time and living still in every act of mercy.
There is a reason that, after we step beyond Easter and before we step into the everyday, we pause and remember the mystery. The first Sunday after Pentecost ponders the Trinity.
The God of Christian faith will always be bigger than we imagine. More daring, more loving, more wondrous, more strange, more present, more absent, pushing and pulling the world towards wholeness, but never captured, never limited, never under our control.
God is what God is. God will be what God will be. We can only take off the shoes from our feet and stand before the wonder.
O God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
of Moses and Miriam,
of Ruth and David,
of Mary and Joseph;
God wrapped in mystery and wonder,
who breathed life into our first parents
and your Holy Spirit into all creation;
God who loves and fathers and sends
and is loved and begotten and sent;
help us to praise you rightly,
love you fully
and walk with you faithfully;
Prayer of the Day for the Feast of the Holy Trinity
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Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Peter_Basilica_light_streams.jpg James Bromberger (Jeb) / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
© David K Bonde, 2020, All rights reserved.
Watching for the morning 
