People love patterns – well, I certainly love patterns. The symmetry of a well-planted field of corn. The shifting designs of clouds on the horizon. The sudden appearance on the odometer of 33333, or 54321.

Patterns of a different sort abound in nature. Spirals in shells and sunflowers, symmetry in trees – patterns and markings on animals – and the grand march of growth and decline that marks the seasons. Did I mention I love patterns?

I’m also a big fan of constellations - patterns in the night sky that have (for millennia) aided navigation and brought some order to the days and weeks and seasons of our lives.

Patterns – when we find them - give us an illusion of control over things beyond our control.  They fool us into thinking we can express the inexpressible. Where the stars are concerned, we were never content to let them be ‘just lights in the sky’…and we cannot accept that anything could be so mysterious as to be beyond our comprehension.

So it has always been. And our Biblical stories of creation paint the picture of stable, well-ordered things happening under the patient and capable control of God.

A decisive, creative wind. A commanding, creative word. The ordering of nature in ways that helped place ancient humans among patterns that could be recognized – patterns that were being repeated. The lights in the sky – the life cycles of creation – the majestic meeting of sea and shore are described in ways that are meant to make clear just who is in control.

This great creation organized by a great creator. But the more we know, the more we want to know – that too is part of the relentless pattern of human curiosity. And if patterns help us to understand and accept, then how might we make sense of this immense, mysterious, complicated, challenging idea of God?

We needed a model - a building block for understanding - some stable foundation to launch our exploration. And let it be three. (a proliferation of things in threes…)

Make no mistake, this is not a Biblical idea - though the clues come from throughout the Bible. There is God - there is God’s mysterious power - God’s many manifestations - and there is Jesus. That’s enough for a start.

We make a lot of noise about being Trinitarian - I invoke the three-personned God often enough that you might imagine I know what it means - but really, the Trinity is a convenient pattern that helps us into a much bigger mystery, and relieves some of our anxiety about the vast and complex wonders of the Divine.

Genesis is mainly concerned with God’s grandeur. Things are called into being on a massive scale by word and wind and wonder…and as marvellous as this opening chapter is, the idea of such a capable creator is really too much for us to handle. We needed a way to contain the ideas that Genesis provokes in us. And the notion of the Trinity helps us with that.

This pattern - established by theologians four centuries after Christ - serves as a marker for the many ways that God engages the world…

The Trinity is like a theological constellation - a pattern that helps us map the large and mysterious reality of God at work around, among and within us.

These markers like “Father-Son-Holy Spirit” or “Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer” all help us navigate the inexplicable.

Trinity offers us three things we think we know well, and each in their own way, point to the countless things that reflect/reveal God to us in ways that we have trouble imagining.

So trinity - though it is subject to centuries of complicating ideas and explanations (none of which seem satisfactory) - is still a useful starting point. So long as we don’t stop with three.

Jesus was not so limited in his understanding of how God worked that he considered limits - or even stooped to definitions. Jesus used images and metaphors and parables and ultimately actions to describe God to us - According to Jesus, God is mother hen and spirit and welcoming father and heavenly ruler and guiding spirit and hidden treasure and discerning landlord and giver of growth and shepherd and light and…well, you get the idea.
Three is not nearly enough, but three is a very good start. Three is our anchor - our signpost - our best way to express the inexpressibility of our glorious, creative, consoling, compassionate God.