The twenty-ninth Psalm we heard read this morning is considered to be the oldest of all of the Psalms.  It is thought to be an adaptation of an ancient Canaanite hymn to Baal, the God of the weather and fertility.  The thought did cross my mind this week to preach on Baal just to break up the monotony of Sunday after Sunday of talking about the same God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, but I decided that might be crossing a line even for a quiet holiday weekend.

A better topic for conversation might be why the Israelites chose to borrow from the Canaanites to express their understanding of God.  Psalm twenty-nine is an enthronement psalm, it boldly proclaims the sovereign power of God.  When this hymn was originally created by the Canaanites it was perhaps an easier time to talk of the power of God.  The forces of nature were not understood in the scientific ways we analyze the world today.  Today we do not generally believe that a storm is a demonstration of God's power and wrath, although I still do like to believe that a gorgeous day is a distinct gift from God.
 
Nevertheless, today we are often left defining and describing God's transcendent glory and power in rather amorphous ways.  Most of us are not given the audience with God that Isaiah received complete with mighty throne and booming voice.  We talk about experiencing God as a feeling or a quiet presence, or we talk about God walking around as a dusty carpenter along the backroads of ancient Palestine,  certainly a far cry from "holy splendor, full of majesty, enthroned as king forever."  It appears that God for us today has lost much of the drama and presentation of the good old days.

 We find ourselves in what I would consider to be a bit of a predicament.  Our image of a powerful God of creation  has been softened around the edges a bit by our scientific understandings of the working of the world.  We love to talk about Jesus, but it is awfully hard to imbue any single human with the entirety of God's glory.  And the Holy Spirit, well what to say about the Holy Spirit that you can ever really get a handle on.

In the grand scheme of our liturgical calendar, the church has deemed this Sunday, as Trinity Sunday, a day in which we celebrate our understanding of God in three persons, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.  Now the trinity is not a specific biblical concept.  There are not great passages talking about the nature of the Trinity in extensive detail.  The trinity is an understanding of God  that was born in the church as it grappled for a comprehensive vision of God and I believe the trinity may be our answer to reclaiming a deep and vibrant understanding of God's power and glory.

When we consider the trinity it is not so much the three elements that intrigue me, we talk about those all the time, but how we envision the three elements of the Godhead together.  Our theological tradition acknowledges that all three elements are distinct and yet all are unified.

This is where I believe our scientific knowledge may be used to assist us in our understanding of God. What if we pictured the entire Godhead as a single atom of matter.  Now I will attempt a brief and simplistic science review from my uneducated perspective.  The atom was initially defined as the single smallest particles of matter.  The Greeks defined this particle as the atom which literally means in the Greek language indivisible.  As history and our scientific research continued we learned that each single atom has protons, neutrons, and electrons within it.  The core of the atom is made up of the protons and the neutrons while the electrons rapidly orbit the core.  Atoms are always in motion within themselves whirling about and therefore all matter is inherently in motion whether we recognize that motion by the naked eye or not.

I think this is an apt metaphor for an image of our transcendent trinitarian God.  The trinity reminds us that God is not static.  God is always in motion as the three elements of the trinity relate to each other.  Now it would probably be pushing the analogy too far to begin labeling which element of the trinity is represented by the electrons but I do believe we can push the analogy in other ways.  Just like the atom, God is present in all times and all places whether we recognize that presence or not.  Our science has also taught us that within the tiny mostly overlooked atom is a power so intense that we have been left in awe by both its potential for creation and destruction on a level we would have previously labeled
as being only the prerogative of God.  Of course here is where the analogy does breakdown.  Our technological abilities have given us the opportunity to crudely manipulate the atom to control such energy but certainly our scientific abilities do not bring the promise of controlling our God.

But perhaps thinking about our God in three persons, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit as some larger and deeper template for the very building blocks of matter will get us in touch with the deep awe that the ancients used to describe their God in terms of lightning and thunder and floods and earthquakes.  Perhaps if when we think of God we spend less time envisioning some static single entity and more time picturing a God in motion, whirling, relating constantly to Godself and to the world we will have a deeper appreciation for the vitality of the divine.  Perhaps the notion of the Trinity can move beyond a rote formula to a metaphor that that both enlightens our understanding of God and reminds us that God is always beyond the grasp of our current view.  Perhaps we can continue to challenge ourselves with new metaphors which inspire us to celebrate God's glory in every new context the world brings us.  Amen.