Dear People Whom God Loves,
More and more people had this experience. We call this their experience of Jesus’ resurrection. Please note that Jesus’ resurrection was not a coming back to life as we know it in this world. If this were true, then Jesus would have had to die again.
In this contact with the risen Jesus, they had the experience that they were in contact with and meeting God. What were they to think of this? How can this be that our experience of the presence of Jesus is an encounter and experience of God. We believe and will never accept that there is more than one God. They had to think about the one God in a new way.
In a similar fashion, they had the experience that this one God was working in their minds and hearts bringing strength, healing, forgiveness, challenge, and wisdom. They again had to think about the one God in a new way.
Over several centuries, these experiences became formulated in the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity that we recite in Apostles and Nicene Creeds.
Remember that the creeds are not the experience. They are our limited attempts to put in human words and concepts that mysterious experience. This is done to be able to pass on that deep mystical experience.
Notice the bottom up theologizing. We don’t start with the doctrine. The doctrine came from the prayerful and sometimes conflicted reflection and debates by the community we call the church.
When by prayer, reflection, and living out mercy, compassion, and love we have a similar experience, we have some understanding about what the doctrine is all about and an inkling of what God is like. The one God is Father, the source of everything…the one God is in Jesus…the one God works in all of us and all creation.
This is still mystery to me, but this mystery deeply affects my life.
One caveat. I am not a professional theologian. I am a believer. I write as a believer. What I have written is not an attempt to describe God. It does give me hints that: this infinite mysterious Love we name God is for us, this God who is other and very different from us is deeply within us, and this God’s healing love is always working in us.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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