A Seat at the Table

Texts: Genesis 1:1 — 2:4a and Matthew 28:16-20 

More Than a Doctrine

Trinity Sunday is the one day of the church year when most preachers either try to explain something most people find baffling — or quietly hope no one notices what Sunday it is.

Here is what I've come to believe: the Trinity is not a doctrine to be defended. It is a description of the deepest reality there is. And you are already living inside it, whether you know it or not. The invitation of Trinity Sunday isn't to understand. It's to participate.

In the Beginning, Already

The appointed reading for Trinity Sunday begins at the very opening of Genesis: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Most of us were taught to read this as a story about how the world came to be. But that's not really what it is. The people who wrote it already knew the world existed. What they were asking is the question we're still asking: whose world is this, and what is it for?

The answer comes in those first three verses. God speaks. The Spirit hovers over the deep like a mother bird over a nest, drawing forth what is hidden. Light comes into being. Three movements, one act: Creator, Word, Spirit — not three gods taking turns, but one relational reality overflowing into existence. This is the first thing the Bible tells us about God: God is not a solitary monarch issuing commands from a safe distance. God is a community of love — giving, receiving, flowing — and the world is what happens when that love overflows. Then God looks at everything that has come into being and calls it very good. The table was set before time began.

What Kind of God Is Doing the Inviting

Before you can say yes to an invitation, it helps to know something about who's hosting. The 13th-century theologian Bonaventure offered an image that cuts through all the abstract theology: picture three buckets on a waterwheel. Each one fills. Each one empties. Each one swings back to be filled again. The Father empties into the Son — nothing held back. The Son empties into the Spirit — nothing held back. The Spirit empties back into the Father — nothing held back.

They can afford to empty themselves completely because the center holds. Because infinite love is the ground of everything. There is no scarcity here. No fear of running out. This is the God who sets the table — not a God who withholds, who plays favorites, who doles out grace in careful measured portions, but a God who gives everything, receives everything, and gives again. Most of us live from a sense of scarcity. We cling, we protect, we calculate what we can afford to give. The Trinitarian God lives from infinite abundance — and made you in that image.

The Open Seat

In the 14th century, a Russian monk named Andrei Rublev painted an icon that has become one of the most beloved images in all of Christian art. Three figures — luminous, in perfect communion — gathered around a table. The scene depicts the three visitors who appeared to Abraham and Sarah in the desert, whom the tradition has always seen as a window into the life of the Trinity.

What you notice, once you know to look for it, is not the three figures. It's the empty space in front of the table. There is an opening. An unoccupied place. A seat. Art historians have suggested the original icon may once have had a mirror glued to the front of that table — so that whoever stood before it would see themselves reflected in the open space. Seated at the table. Already there. Already included.

The mirror has been lost. But what strikes me is how fitting that loss is: it disappeared not only from the icon but from our understanding of God. The church spent centuries explaining the doctrine of the Trinity and forgot to tell people they were invited to sit down. The seat is still there. The Spirit's hand still gestures outward — toward you.

Emmanuel, Still

The Gospel reading for Trinity Sunday is the closing of Matthew's Gospel — and it contains something easy to miss. There is no ascension in Matthew. No departure. Matthew opens with the birth of Emmanuel, God with us, and closes with a risen Christ who says: I am with you always, to the end of the age. The incarnation doesn't end. The flow doesn't stop.

What Jesus offers those disciples — some of whom, Matthew tells us honestly, are still not entirely sure what they're seeing — is not a doctrine but an invitation: go, and welcome everyone to the table. Baptize them into the name — not into a creed, but into this same life of giving and receiving and love. I am with you in this. Always. The God you carry into the world is not a God who left. It is Emmanuel — with us, in us, among us, moving through us still.

The Chair Is Waiting

So here is what Trinity Sunday is really about. It's not about understanding how one can be three and three can be one. You have never needed to understand that.

What you need to know is this: the God who made you, made you in the image of love-in-relationship. The deepest thing about you is not your independence. It is your capacity for connection — for giving, for receiving, for flowing in and out of love without holding back. There is a seat at the table with your name on it. There has always been. The only question is whether you're willing to pull up the chair.