Pastor’s Corner – June 4, 2023
In middle school, I remember sitting at the curb of a street with one of my best friends Rumi who was a Muslim. We started to have a conversation about our faith practice. He knew I was a Christian so he asked, “Dae, why do you believe in three gods because in Islam we believe in Allah One God?” I tried to explain to him from what I’ve learned from Sunday school, that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were actually Three in One!
I explained that it’s like water, steam and ice, one substance but in different forms. But Rumi wasn’t satisfied, and at the end of the day I wasn’t either! Decades later, after graduating from seminary and years into parish ministry, I looked over to my clergy colleagues, an Imam and Rabbi sitting next to me, as our congregations came together to worship. We all agree that God is neither Muslim, Christian nor Jew.
We are all there in worship together because our faith has brought us together recognizing that God is greater than our understanding and experiences of God. We each acknowledge and validate our experiences with open hearts and minds. What matters is the compassion, love and mercy we show to each other in our world, and we do this by showing what’s at the heart of each of our faith in God. This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday.
At the heart of our faith is Trinity that expresses our experience of God as Creator, Redeemer (Christ) and Sustainer (Holy Spirit). Though there is no word “trinity” in the scriptures, it is a sacred way in which we confess the great mystery of our faith. Please come join us this Sunday and let us worship God and experience God in word and sacrament. Amen.
Pastor Dae