“The doctrine of the Trinity that is this convoluted, Hellenistic, philosophical thing where they fight about five words that all mean the same thing…it has something larger behind it than that, something more important than that. It is the church in the 3rd and the 4th centuries’ attempt to express the Christian experience of God, and to safeguard its integrity. So what this day is about is yours and mine, our, experience of God. “What our forebears in the faith had to say is that Yahweh God, the source of all that is, in whom we live and move and have our being, the primordial life force who became the god of the children of Israel, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Sarah and Elizabeth and Rachel-that reality, whatever its cosmic, infinite, beyond our minds’ capacity to understand, reality-that thing which people fell on their faces and said ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ to—that God somehow was distinctively and decisively present in Jesus of Nazareth, who walked in the midst of human experience and human history, not as some third thing, but as one of us. That there was something distinct and unique about the way god was present in him, and which got extended to all of us. And it was decisive because now history could be divided up into all that went before him, and all that comes after: Anno Domini. “And even more exciting and more unbelievable is that this Yahweh God who was decisively and distinctively present in Jesus of Nazareth is present in you and me and in the community of faith in which we live, as Holy Spirit. “That experience, that incredible, intimate, Trinitarian experience, that hope that someday we will see what John of Patmos saw, not as a vision, not in a dream, but as reality, we will stand face to face with God and share the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—that’s the Christian experience of God. Something mystical. Something cosmic. “Yes, Christianity is fundamentally a mystical religion. But we’ve turned it into an ethical religion. “I’ve always been amazed by that. If you find something that you have to fall down in front of and say ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ it’s going to change your ethics. But changing your ethics may never bring you face to face with something you’re willing to say ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ to.” Less