While Trinity Sunday is one of the most important feasts of the Christian year, it's also been the one most likely to be delegated to seminarians and assistants for preaching. That's because the focus of this day, more than any other, is the nature of God. It's humbling for any of us to try to put such frail things as words to describe God and what God’s like. Besides it’s so abstract and liable to be boring.

   I can still remember Sister Mary Joseph -- my second grade teacher -- and how valiantly she tried to instill an appreciation into our 7-year old minds for the nature of the Trinity. The term "three persons in one God" had to have passed her lips at least 400 times that year. Undaunted (after all she must have had a dozen-second-grade classes before mine) and with the undiminished skill of a professional dog trainer, she used props to try to get the concept past our blank expressions. Like St. Patrick, one day, she lifted from her desktop a freshly picked clover and said, "As this clover is one plant with three leaves, God is three persons in one." Another day, like some Mister Science TV show, she revealed a cup of steaming hot water, a glass of water, and a bowl of ice. She said, "In the same way that H2O can take three forms -- steam, water and ice, but all are H2O, so God is three persons, but all three are God." If any of my classmates were like me they still looked clueless. Albeit that the Church had long since concluded that 7-year olds were capable of abstract thought, this particular thought seemed to stump us. But that wasn't to our discredit. God has always been inscrutable to us humans -- more inscrutable than we are to the tiniest of ants.

   But that was one of the very reasons that God sent Jesus -- one of the most important reasons that God became the human being -- to show us what God is like in our own terms. Not every one cares to see God in Jesus, though. Some people have come to reject the notions that Jesus is God in human terms or that God is three-persons in one in order to preserve their own comfort level in the God that they have in their own mind's eye. Some call such basic Christian beliefs a fabrication of other -- more primitive people -- and spin yarns of conspiracies long ago.

   But clearly, the earliest Christians -- who wrote the documents of the New Testament -- had no preexisting idea of the Trinity. They didn't decide that they'd concoct a new conceptualization of God -- let alone one that would be so difficult to grasp as the Trinity is. They believed in one God -- as their fellow Jews did. And they tried as best they could to put words to their undeniable experiences of God. They already knew God as Creator -- the one who revealed and redeemed throughout the course of history. But then, too, they knew Jesus. They knew Him as a man, but more than a man -- as their savior, but more than a savior -- as their Lord, but more than a master. They experienced Him as God, too. Like-wise, too, they came to know a Spirit amongst and within them -- like God, like Jesus, but somehow not exactly the same. They knew these three, firsthand, and within the first generation, had already put words to their experience in the writings that we've come to know as scripture. 250 years later, give or take, the bishops of the Church -- almost 300 of them from all over the Empire --gathered, at Constantine's request, to discuss the issues of faith at that time. And all but 2 of them agreed to what we say in the Nicene Creed. It put into words the faith that Christians have shared since the early Church -- what Sister Mary Joseph tried to explain -- that God is somehow three-persons in one.

   Beside the fact that God is holy -- other -- beyond us and warrants our profound humility, the most important meaning of God as three persons, first, last and always, is that in His very being, God is relational. By being three-in-one, God has always been in relationship – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have always enjoyed relationship together. That relationship is what we call love, as St. Paul was inspired to say, "God is love." That love was outgoing, as love always is, and, naturally, gave rise to creation. It gave rise, as well, to God's ongoing, personal involvement with Creation -- including with us humans. And that's why God has continued to come to us -- to reach out to us -- especially through Jesus.

   God's love also happens to be the reason that Jesus promised His followers that He wouldn't leave them alone -- on their own -- as Matthew explains in the Gospel reading. The disciples walked away from everything that had been familiar to them to follow Jesus. He's the one who guided them on where to go. He's the one who taught them what was true. He's the one who showed them what to do. He's the one who forgave them when they blew it. He's the one helped them when they needed it. He's the one who picked them up when they fell down -- who dusted them off when they messed up. He's the one who gave them pointers for their work and praise for their success. It was time for Him to leave. Who'd do all that after He was gone?

   Jesus said, "I'll send you another." Another what? The word in Greek was paraklete. Paraklete meant someone who comes up alongside another person to stick up for them when they were in trouble; to encourage them when they did well; to comfort them when they were hurt; or to advise them when they needed direction. Different versions of the Bible translate paraklete a bit differently. Some translate the word as advocate -- someone who speaks up for a person, and others as comforter or counselor. These days we might use words like tutor, if we're students, consultant, if we're at work, coach, if we're involved in sports, or personal trainer, if we want to stay physically fit. But I prefer the term helpmate because it implies an ongoing relationship that has several aspects to it.

   My wife, Sandra, and I are each other's helpmates. Frankly, I think I make out better when it comes to that. We help each other out in all sorts of ways. Here's just one example. Sandra is an expert at computers. If something goes wrong with my computer, that is, when I make a mistake or don't understand how to do something, I'll call out, "Sandra, I need some help." She'll come up alongside me, while I'm sitting at the computer, and give me step-by-step directions on what to do. I'll say, "Why don't you just do for me?" And she'll say, "I'll walk you through it." At each step she'll say, "Now, do this or that." And each step I'll say, "Why don't you do it?" And she'll say, "I'll walk you through it."

   That's what God -- what Jesus -- did. He sent the Holy Spirit to come up alongside us to walk us through each step along the way as we try to figure out how to follow Jesus – how to do what He’d do. We may well want to say, "Why don't you just do it yourself?" And the Spirit says, "Don't worry, I'll walk you through it -- step by step -- each step of the way." Jesus sent the Spirit to live in us and to be our helpmate through life -- if we simply allow it and ask for help. The Spirit helps us to take after God -- after Jesus -- and that means love, since that's God's nature. The Spirit is God's love living inside us always there helping us to go where we need to go, do what we need to do, and be what we need to be. We may want to say, "Why don't you do it yourself?" But the Spirit says, "You can do it. I'll walk you through it -- each step of the way."