Janice Brim was reading A Bridge to Terebithia to her sixth grade class at Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Oklahoma. Her husband, Mark, sent her a text that a twister was forming nearby. Janice had a plan. She had thought of a place to go months before. As soon as she received the text from her husband, she led her students to a cinder block closet off the hall. The children were crying and looking at her. She told them that it was a privilege to be alive, that they had to be grateful for having been given a place on this earth. As she gripped the doorknob of the closet, all of a sudden there was a terrible noise and the roof of the building was ripped off. They stood there, dazed in light. She began to check to see if all her sixth graders were OK. All of them had survived. They had survived because she had found a place for them, a safe place.
But some children did not survive. Some were crushed, injured, killed. In waves of grief that sweep the nation, we all ask God, "How could you let this happen?"
The inevitable theological questions emerge. How could God let this happen? If God is omnipotent, why not just reroute the tornado? If God could part the Red Sea and Jesus could calm the storm, they why would God not just make the storm go another way? There is a lot of empty plain out there... Why did the twister have to hit the town? Why the elementary school? Was it God's will for children to die?
Is it God's will for people to die?
There is no way to adequately answer this question as human beings. Believe me when I say that the greatest mind and hearts have been grappling with this question for thousands of years. It is called the question of theodicy: why do people suffer? And the only answer that I have ever found is completely inadequate and it is this...
Yes, there is a God.
Yes, God is Almighty
I do not understand why God would allow this horror to happen.
I don't know.
It is a terrible answer: I don't know. It is inadequate. It leaves us dissatisfied. But it is the best that we have.
This is Trinity Sunday. The concept of the Trinity is all wrapped up in I don't know. You see, in today's gospel, we hear Jesus telling the disciples clearly that they cannot bear to know all about God. It is not that God doesn't want us to know, but somehow our brains and hearts cannot tolerate the answer. We don't know not because God does not want to tell us but because we are incapable of understanding. We simply can't bear the answer.
So Jesus gave us this concept of Trinity, of Father Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a theologically mind-bending concept. It tells us that Almighty God has three persons, and yet God is one. And that makes no sense at all, which is precisely the point. The Trinity is our reminder that there are things about God that we will never understand in this life, things that cannot be grasped by the human mind.
Trinity also tells us a few important things that we can understand.
First, God has love and motion within the divine self. God does not get lonely and doesn't need us as we need each other. When it says that we were made in the image of God, it means we, us together, not a single person. God is one but God is a we, God is community and when we live in community, caring for one another, we reflect the image of God.
Three is also an unstable number. If you see three people, sitting at a table, you are more likely to go and pull up a chair. If there are four, well, things seem compete. But with three, there is a place for you.
In the concept of Trinity, God is saying that there is a place for you, a place at the table with God. When you come to God, the Three will look at you with love and say, "We have been waiting for you. We have a place for you."
In that moment, when the tornado hit, Janice Brim found a place for herself and her kids. She took them somewhere safe. She had identified it earlier as a safe place to go. She took them all in that closet and told them they would be OK. But there was also a safe place for those children who did not survive. Jesus identified that safe place.
Boalsberg, Pennsylvania,1864. Two women met at a cemetery. Emma Hunter's father had died of yellow fever while treating wounded soldiers in the civil war. Elizabeth Meyers had buried her son, who died in the same war. The women decided that they would hold one day a year as belonging not only to their loved ones, but to all the soldiers who had died. The next year, they returned to the Cemetary with the entire town of Boalsberg. Flowers and flags were laid at the grave of every single soldier. The remembrance continues to this day and is now knows as Memorial day. For fallen soldier deserves a place in our lives, a place in our hearts, even if we never met them, even if we do not know their names. We do not understand how God could allow the horrors of war, but we do know that those who lost their lives deserve a place forever reserved in our hearts. Forever. They died fighting for our country and we must make a place for them, forever. Thus Memorial day was born.
The Trinity tells us that, although we will not understand God in this life, that God has a place for you within Gods very self. God waits for you, holds space for you, reserves a seat for you. You are the fourth, the completion, the person to fill the empty seat. The children who died have a seat. The soldiers who have given their lives for this country have a seat.
And when you get there, to your seat with the Trinity, to the place where you can see God face to face, then, and only then, will you understand.
