Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today we mark Trinity Sunday. A funny thing I find about Episcopalians in particular but many Christians more broadly is our willingness to treat the Trinity like the extended warranty we’re offered on electronics or a car.

You’ll know that moment when the salesperson asks, “Would you like the extended warranty for additional protection?”

We quickly say, “No thank you, I’m good with the standard package.”

Most of us are good with a Creator God. That force of God’s nature has been revealed as Father to us by Jesus and the prophets. Of course it’s impossible to ascribe gender as we know it to God but that’s the personal relationship with God we’ve been welcomed into by Jesus.

Now with Jesus, it gets a little complicated for some. You see, many can get on board with a kind of cosmic force God — but God coming among us as a baby, growing with us, saving us, and returning from the dead begins to take us to some mind-bending places.

But, many folks can say, “I believe in God and I think Jesus was pretty great — with the peace and forgiveness stuff.”

But then we get to the Holy Spirit and into the realm of three Gods in One and One in Three. This is where folks start to say, “I’m good with the standard God package — not sure I need the three, or one, or three as one or whatever.”

But here’s the incredible thing about Christianity. It is not an all or nothing deal and it does not depend on our intellectual assent.

You don’t have to believe or know how to give voice to every doctrinal truth. You get to live the truth of the Gospel loving your neighbor and loving God. The whole gathered community, across time, does the believing with us. So when we struggle a bit or are unsure we get the benefit of being in relationship, of being siblings with, every believer across time or just across the pew.

The Church has always had a whole cosmos worth of questions and doubts and doctrinal wrestling encoded in its DNA. That doesn’t mean we believe everything but it does mean that our questions have been had before, will be had again, and we are welcomed into life in Christ by virtue of being baptized into him. We’re grafted to the true vine, adopted as heirs, one Body and one Spirit.

So our questions, wrestling, and more are all part of the faithful inquiry leading to deeper life as one people with one hope in God’s call to us. We may not always think we need the extended warranty — thank God he’s already bought it for us!

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert