How do you explain Trinity?  When you looked at your bulletin cover this morning, you would have seen on there that this is Trinity Sunday.  What does that mean to you?  Maybe more importantly, if you were to be talking to someone about your church, or if you were to be teaching Sunday school, and you were asked, "What is this Trinity, anyway?" - could you explain it?  Let us pray. 
  God, we often speak of you in terms that we don't really understand ourselves.  Help us when we are confused about you - help us know how to speak about you to others - help us know how to speak about others to you.  Amen.  Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. 
  I'm going to start off with something a little different today.  You are going to have to use your imagination, maybe pretend a bit.  First imagine that you are Robert Browning, a poet, married to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, also a poet.  She has been away from you for a time, and you miss her, and a letter just arrived from her.  Wouldn't you hope it would have news about her, maybe about the place she is, about when she will be back?  But you open the envelope, and there is only one sheet of paper in it - actually a half sheet - with 14 lines on it, no more. 
And this is what it says:
     How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
     I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
     My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
     For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
     I love thee to the level of every day's
     Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
     I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
     I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
     I love thee with the passion put to use
     In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
     I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
     With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
     Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
     I shall but love thee better after death.

Would you know, reading those 14 lines, that she loved you?  Would it have been any better if she had written a book, or would those few words express what you needed to hear?  In my opinion, she could have written a full-sized book - or a haiku of only 17 syllables - and not come near to expressing what she did in that sonnet. 
  There is a point to this.  The point is that words are not just words.  Getting a dictionary definition of words doesn't always get you the full meaning.  Words come with a context, with a history, and there is always the future to look forward to - what will they mean in the future. 
  Language points to the truth, but the truth comes first, and sometimes it is beyond mere words.  And that is how it is with the doctrine of the Trinity.  We read words in the bible that point to the truth about where the doctrine comes from, how it developed - but the words themselves are not the truth.  The truth is both simpler than words, and more complex.
  Let me read you another poem, another one that you will remember: 

     "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. 
     Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky,
     twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are." 

   It may seem silly, but think about it.  That little poem, that you probably learned when you were a very small child, is the sort of thing that took us to the moon.  It asks questions that we all wonder about:  Where do we come from?  How did the universe begin?  Why is the universe the way it is?  How will it end?  They are the same questions the first humans asked - the same questions the Inca Indians in Central America, the Egyptian astrologers, and the druids of early England and Ireland asked.  And those same questions were being asked by the Israelites, and later by the new Christians.
   The passages you have on your bulletin - the Creation story from Genesis, the Psalm which begins and ends on the majesty of God's name, the story of Jesus giving the great commission to the disciples, and the final salutation of Paul to the people of Corinth - they are words written by people, transcribed by hundreds more down the years, and passed on by the Church.  They are not themselves "The Truth" - but they point to the truth. 
   And the way those words were interpreted by the early church brought them to believe that God could best be described as Trinity, Three-In-One, One-In-Three. 
   If anyone ever stands up in front of you and says that he or she doesn't have trouble understanding the doctrine of the Trinity - don't believe it.  You can ask the bishop, you can ask the Pope - if anyone can understand it he should be one - and what you will most likely get is an explanation.  And that explanation will boil down to what the Trinity means to that person. 

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