If you imagine the Church Year to be like a cardboard crown a child might make who is to be one of the three kings to visit the baby Jesus in the Parish Epiphany Pageant; . . . if you imagine the Church Year to be a circular crown with each major festival or fast being a point on that crown, beginning with Christmas and then Epiphany and then Ash Wednesday . . . and so on, . . . by the time you get to Pentecost (which was last Sunday) . . . by the time you get to Pentecost you’re half-way ‘round the circle.  All the festivals after Pentecost complete the circle until we get back to Christmas.  . . . But right at the center of the crown . . . between Pentecost and perhaps the Fourth of July . . . right at the center of the circle of the Church Year is a spectacular diamond.  . . . Right at the center of the Church Year is today:  . . . Trinity Sunday.

    All the festivals which have preceded today (from Christmas to Pentecost) … all of the festivals which have preceded today are celebrations of God’s enormous love for us.  All of the festivals which come after Pentecost . . . are celebrations of God’s empowerment and protection of our lives.  . . . But at the center of the Church Year . . . Between Pentecost and the Season After Pentecost . . . at the center of the Church Year is the spectacular diamond of God.  At the center of the Church Year is today, . . . Trinity Sunday.  . . . At the center of the Church Year is the celebration, not of what God has done for us . . . nor is it a celebration of what God will do for us; . . . at the center of the Church Year is the Church’s celebration of God Himself.

    Now, there are many, many precise things you need to know in order to have an accurate understanding of God.  But that’s not what this festival is about.  This festival is not about accuracy.  It’s about the great and wonderful joy in having a God Who should take the trouble to show Himself to us so that we might know Him.  Not all gods do that, you know.  There are world religions in which the god that is worshipped is rather like a congressperson or an entertainment celebrity:  known to a select few but aloof and transcendent to the majority.  And in order for people to bring themselves close to such a god they must abnegate themselves so that they might share in their god’s nature by becoming like that which they worship.  The worshipers of the congressional or the celebrity god strive to become either the essence of indifference . . . or the epicenter of wrath.  . . . Other world religions have a multitude of gods, who are rather like the Keystone Cops; they bumble about bumping into one another and bringing calamity on anyone in their vicinity, so that the best thing about them is when they are appeased by their worshipers so as to become self-indulgently contented and not go mucking about among the people, . . . or when one or more of them can be persuaded to go visit your worse enemy.

    But the One True God -- the God Who created heaven and earth and all that is, seen and unseen; including the minds that invent ridiculous gods -- our True and Living God is not like that.  Oh, certainly He is transcendent and unknowable in His completeness:  totally other -- holy -- eternal and uncreated; almighty and everlasting, wrapped in darkness but Whose lightnings light up the world and burn up His enemies on every side.  Certainly it is, as the Epistle to the Hebrews solemnly warns us, “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  Not in the comedic sense, but in the sense of God’s absolute and perfect justice.  And yet, in spite of God’s mind-numbing transcendence and awesome power, look at how He is with Moses in the Old Testament Lesson appointed for today.  . . . It is an ordinary day for Moses.  He rises with the sun and takes charge of his father-in-law’s flock.  Not all that stimulating an occupation for a bright Jewish fellow who was raised in Pharaoh’s household and educated by scholars and masters of the arts and sciences, with a vast library available to his alert and agile mind.  Sheep are rather dull company by comparison.  So, I am sure that Moses was thrilled on several levels to find, on a nearby slope of Mount Horeb, a bush burning . . . but not burned up.  What a wonderful phenomenon to investigate and try to explain!

    Do you see what God is like?  This Almighty and Everlasting God . . . gently gets Moses’ attention.  Like a mother with a rattle will entice her bright and curious child to come toddling toward her, . . . God tenderly, so as not to frighten him; . . . God tenderly calls Moses into His presence; . . . with a conflagratory curiosity, God gently says to Moses, “Come to Abba . . . Come to Daddy.”  This is the Living and True God!  Transcendent though He may be, He has regard for us.  Why?  Well, because we are created in God’s image.  Just as a child bears the likeness of its parent . . . not only in its physical similarities, but right down to the composition of its invisible DNA . . . so we possess God’s faculties of life.  How do we know we bear God’s image as a child bears its parents’?  Because God speaks to us and we understand!  We may not comprehend God in His fullness, but we understand Him in His likeness.  God is our Father!  We are not created like Mattel manufactures toys.  God is like a Father.  God knows us each by name.  And like the perfect Father He is, God our heavenly Father does not terrorize us.  He gently attracts our attention -- He lovingly shakes a rattle to arouse our curiosity.  Our heavenly Father seeks us out . . . and encourages us to seek Him.  And so, because God our Father knows us and loves us and delights in our company . . . He is approachable by us; indeed, He insists on it.

    Now, a moment ago I said that God speaks to us.  That statement requires some explaining.  For, while we are created in the image of God the Father, we have creaturely limitations . . . and God does not.  God the Father is Almighty.  And because He is Almighty, He is capable of communicating Himself perfectly.  If I could do that I wouldn’t need to prepare my sermons by setting down a sequence of coherent thoughts on paper and so fill a number of pages with words.  I would be able to speak one word . . . and you would be able to comprehend my thought perfectly.  And this is exactly what God the Father does do.  He has spoken, does speak, and will speak one Holy Word.  This one Word is eternally begotten of the Father -- that is to say, the Word is exactly Who God the Father is because it is the Father’s expression of Himself.  By means of that One Word . . . all things that are created came into being.  This uncreated but begotten Word of the Father is known to us as the Son of God.  So, you see, it is God the Son Who communicates the presence and perfect will of God the Father to Moses out of the burning bush.  . . . What a truly wonderful and glorious God is the One True God, Who is our God!  Not only does He love us and communicate His love and regard for us, . . . but He is intelligible to us.  God the Son speaks to us.

    We know God the Son by the name of Jesus.  For Moses it was enough that the Son should speak to him from the midst of a burning bush.  But in the fullness of time it was the Father’s will that the Son should speak to us from the midst of our very humanity.  And, just as the bush was not consumed at the Son’s presence, but was preserved and made more attractive to Moses than any other bush, . . . so we know from the Incarnate Son that holiness will not devour our flesh and we will not suffer by being touched by God’s fire; . . . on the contrary, the touch of God the Son will preserve us . . . and make us more beautiful and happy than any worldly device can do.  For, as corporeal fire will light up a bush . . . and then destroy it, so corporeal passions and disordered affections will fill us with heat for a moment . . . and then consume us.  But it is not so with the spiritual fire of God the Son.  . . . For here is Jesus Who was among us . . . and Who has shown us that our humanity can be without sin.  . . . And you can’t say that Jesus was without sin because He has special knowledge by which sin is prevented.  Jesus had exactly what you have.  He had  prayer and He had Holy Scripture to form His world-view; . . . He had the Holy Word of God preserved by the imperfect hand of men, … and He had the heart to love God as His Father.  Christ’s only advantage was that He prayed joyfully and willingly to God the Father, and Jesus studied Holy Scripture and believed it.  He did not quibble with it and make sociological and anthropological excuses in order to discredit the hard sayings of Holy Scripture and extoll the pleasant ones in order to make Scripture give permission to think and do all sorts of disgraceful things.  No, Jesus simply believed with reason and love and faith, and by this has given His “advantage” to you; because, as Saint John the Evangelist declares,

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

And so, the first thing that God the Son communicates to Moses is the very thing He has said to us:  “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  He says to Moses, “put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  Put off the gaudy trappings of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and be pure as God the Father made you to be . . . and as you have beheld that purity in the glorious fire of God the Son Incarnate!

    This intelligible communication of God the Father by God the Son is made accessible to us by the Breath of God the Father; . . . the intelligibility of the Son is made accessible to us by the procession of God the Holy Spirit.  . . . In the Creed, we call the Holy Spirit “the giver of life”, . . . so the life you have at this very moment is from God.  But it is a temporal life.  It began the moment you were conceived.  Before that moment there was never a you.  But that temporal life which has a beginning . . . also has an end.  And then you will die.  But, knowing the love of God the Father and conforming yourself to God the Son -- having come to the burning bush and having put off your shoes from your feet -- you are on holy ground . . . and God the Spirit is beneath you and above you and around you and within you.  You shall not die but live; for, you are bound to God.  God’s very Life -- God the Holy Spirit -- is around you and within you.  And though your temporal living will come to an end, just as Jesus gave up His spirit upon the Cross, . . . yet you belong to the Eternal God by your conformity to the Eternal Son.  And so, just as Jesus rose from the tomb a living man of flesh and bone and blood . . . transfigured by God the Spirit, . . . even so shall you, who belong to Jesus, rise a living person endowed with God’s life at the close of the Age.  And as the risen Jesus ascended into Heaven, even so shall you dwell with and in the presence of God forever.  For, even now the place where you are is holy ground, . . . because God the Holy Spirit is here -- beside you and above you and beneath you and within you.

    . . . This, then, is the wonderful, beloved God Whom we worship.  Not only are we His living creatures, . . . but He loves us as His children.  . . . And loving us, the Lord God Almighty has come to us.  The Lord God Almighty has come to us in order to entice us to be children of His Fatherhood by being conformed to His Word . . . through Whom the Father breathes His unending and joyful and serene and ever fresh and Holy Life.  God the Father; God the Son; God the Holy Spirit -- One God.  Come, let us adore Him.