Love: Before the world began.
A sermon for Trinity Sunday, Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
There’s an old joke among priests that the worst homily to preach is the homily for Trinity Sunday. The task often seems enigmatic, mysterious as it is! How does one adequately in less than ten minutes give a heresy free lesson on the nature of the Trinity?
Moreover, one danger is simply boring you all to sleep — and sleep is not the effect we want, especially not on this glorious feast of the very mystery of our God! And even more gravely, there is a danger of overcomplicating things in a world where things are already unbearably complicated and difficult, where things left and right seem to make no sense at all anymore. Often we find ourselves fearful of the neighbors we thought we knew, the communities we thought we shared! It is not at all desirable that a convoluted metaphysical lecture on the trinity put you all to sleep, offering you no hope or good news – or worse – cause you to doubt even the fact of our God!
Lucky for you, I am not a priest, and this is not a homily! So I don’t share that fear. However, I am a philosopher, and I think a pretty good one at that, too. So allow me to indulge myself with some quick metaphysics with you. But before I do, I want to give you a quick spoiler. The answer is love. Here is how.
When Christians talk about God as Trinity, we’re not juggling three Gods or pretending that one God plays three different roles. We’re saying something much more beautiful: that God’s very being is love — love so perfect, so complete, so alive, that it exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If that sounds abstract, let me give you the simplest metaphysics I can.
Every being has what we might call an essence — the what of a thing — and an existence — the that of a thing. A tree’s essence is “treeness,” and its existence is the fact that it is actually there, growing in the ground. You and I, everything in creation, have essence and existence given to us as gifts. We are creatures, which means we are dependent and changeable. We exist in time. We begin. We grow. We fade. Our being is always on the edge of becoming.
But God is different. God is not a being among beings. God is Being itself — the sheer act of existing, the fullness of life with no beginning and no end. In God, essence and existence are not two things. They are one simple, perfect reality. That is what Christians call God’s “substance”: the one divine life that is eternally shared.
And within that one substance, God “subsists” — God lives — in three distinct, personal ways of loving:
the Father who knows,
the Son who is eternally known and beloved,
And
the Spirit who is the Love shared between them, breathed forth from both forever.
This is not a puzzle. It is a relationship.
It is not a math problem. It is a communion.
It is not an equation to solve.
It is love — flourishing eternally.
Love, in its most perfect form, is this timeless, generous, and life-giving act of knowing and being known.
And, here is where it becomes about you.
You were made in the image of this God — not in the sense that you share His substance, but in the sense that you share His pattern of knowing and loving. The soul God gave you can think truth, can choose the good, can love what is beautiful. And these gifts are not accidents. They are not biological leftovers. They are reflections — faint but real — of the inner life of God.
But unlike God, we are temporal. We live moment by moment. We do not subsist eternally. We receive our existence one instant at a time. And yet — in truly a miraculous way — we receive that existence from the One who is eternal. God, for whom there is no “before” or “after,” already knows you. Already wills you. Already desires you. Already imagines the fullness and perfection of your being.
Your life unfolds in time. God’s love for you does not.
Your being begins. God’s desire for you does not.
You walk through days and seasons and years.
God’s gaze on you is eternal — unblinking, unwavering, unchanging – and because of this, He knows every moment of your life, and in a unique way in baptism, you are adopted as children of God, sharing in that filial relationship which was forged from all eternity.
Because the same God whose life is Father, Son, and Spirit — a God who is never alone, never without love, never without relationship — has freely chosen to spill that love outward
and create creatures who can know Him and love Him in return.
And among all His creatures, He chose you — every bit of you — precious beyond number, outnumbering the grains of sand on any shore.
God has loved you eternally —
because before creation, He willed you, desired you, and held the idea of you in His eternal Love.
As the Father eternally begets the Son,
and as the Spirit eternally radiates as the Love between Them,
in that same eternal movement,
God freely longed for you —
intentionally, joyfully, personally —
and so created you uniquely in His most beloved image.
So when faith feels complicated,
when belief in anything or everything feels heavy or confusing,
I beg you — in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — remember this:
Before the stars were lit in the heavens,
before the oceans were carved out with land,
before there was a single mountain,
and before time began —
before a single word was uttered from His lips,
God already desired you,
already wanted you,
and already held a place for you in His eternal heart.
+In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.+