Piety Hill Musings

The ramblings of the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church of Detroit. Piety Hill refers to the old name for our neighborhood. The neighborhood has changed a great deal in the over 160 years we have been on this corner (but not our traditional biblical theology) and it is now known for the neighboring theatres, the professional baseball and football stadiums and new hockey/basketball arena.

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Location: Detroit, Michigan, United States

Monday, June 13, 2022

Three cheers for God....Rector's Rambling for June 12 (Trinity Sunday), 2022

Today we celebrate the unexplainable.  And in fact we do more than celebrate, we worship the unexplainable!

After a wonderful 7 weeks of celebrating the Resurrection and then the gift of the Holy Ghost, we turn today to something that can be quite confounding.  How can we have One God but we talk about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?  That seems to be three, not one.

This of course is an important foundation of the Faith that we have in the true and living God.  We believe in a revealed religion, and we can see in Scripture that God is One God, yet is also three persons!  The two are not a contradiction but a sublime mystery.  We can only begin to comprehend it when we approach it with the faith-understanding  that this is true because He has revealed it to us, and Jesus himself speaks of the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The first time I read the Creed of St. Athanasius I got caught up in the length and the seeming redundancy of the statements.  It just went on and on and on.

But as time has gone on and I have read it several times a year for over 30 years and over time it has helped me to begin to comprehend, in a general way, the importance of embracing the doctrine of the Trinity.  In fact he English 1662 Prayer Book recommends reciting it at Morning Prayer on fourteen Feast Days in the place of the Apostles Creed.  Repetition helps with comprehension!

I am not suggesting we read this creed as a part of our regular worship more often, but I do recommend that you can take it home, read it occasionally, and let it begin to sink in.

Meanwhile, this Sunday, and everyday, let us worship God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity!