I never was good in math. Which, I like to say, is why I became a pastor. Part of my problem with arithmetic, with the “new math” as they were calling it when I went through elementary school, was that when it was time to switch subjects (from art, or music, or spelling, or language, or recess) and begin to think about things mathematical, I simply tuned out or — as often was the case — began to converse (quietly and seemingly-subtly) with my neighbor-next-desk-over. Consequently, I got low marks in math and high marks in needless chatter in the classroom.  The low point came early on it seems, when in the second grade, I was not paying attention on the day that Mrs. Kimball’s lesson plan was to explain those dull, boring and altogether-uninteresting symbols of the-then “higher math,” called the “greater than” and “less than” signs.

It would not have been so difficult had I been listening, but the minute she began to talk about the pointy end of the arrow facing the smaller number and the open-ended side facing the larger number, I tuned out. I could not have cared less, and paid for that apathy dearly in frustration later in the evening at home, sitting in aggravated tears at the kitchen table, struggling to do what would have been a simple assignment of one page of “greater than/less than/and equals” problems. It was a big problem. But let me just hasten to add — in my defense, I suppose — that I always understood the “equal” sign. Which, by the way, it seems to me is also one fairly-good reason why I am a pastor.  And if you’ve ever noticed the bumper on the white Toyota parked in the first stall on the right as you enter the parking lot, you’ll notice an equals sign on its bumper.

Well, now you know — you’ve heard it right from the horse’s mouth — from a very early age I was much more prone to the social (surprise, surprise) relationships between me and my classmates than to whatever sorry-excuse-of-a-relationship there might be between numbers and numeric equations.

Today is the Sunday of the Holy Trinity, and if the Holy Trinity is about anything, it too is about interpersonal relationship. “God in three persons, Blessed Trinity” we have acknowledged this morning in as we sang our hymn of praise.  That’s pretty much the extent to which we’ll discuss the numbers this morning, for as you already know this pastor is not well-versed in things numeric. For what I would say to you this morning would only underscore what I have been saying all along about those low marks in math:  3 is greater than 1. 1 is less than 3. But today I would also hasten to add: 3 equals 1, and 1 equals 3. And now we are right back to crying at the kitchen table, trying to figure out this new math.

So let’s just acknowledge it right up front: we are the finite ones trying to wrap our minds around the infinite whenever we begin to formulate thoughts or words about the Divine.  That is our relationship with this one whom we call the Three-in-One and the One-in-Three. We are not greater than that one, nor are we equal. We are profoundly “less than” as characterized by the words of the prophet in today’s first reading who, after having beheld the Thrice-Holy Mystery whose voice shook the thresholds and filled the house with smoke said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

And yet, in a profound way, our lives have been touched by that Thrice-Holy one, even as the six-winged seraph with the white-hot coal touched the lips of the prophet and sent his guilt and sin away for ever.  For when your life was intersected by the Triune God in your baptism, those three splashes of water in the Thrice-Holy Name made you, as St. Paul writes in today’s 2nd reading: “Children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” The Three into whom you were baptized have made you one with them. 3 equals 1.  Joint heirs. Unity.  The three-ness is really about the one-ness. But there we go again, getting into those awful numbers — and I promised you we wouldn’t go there.

Today this community recognizes and asks God’s blessings to rest upon three young women — Joey, Alex, and Leila — who, in baptism only about 17 or 18 years ago (but seemingly-less at the moment for their parents) became a child of this triune mystery, and who are now being sent out into the world even as the prophet Isaiah — whose words at the end of our first reading this morning are so appropriate as they now graduate from high school and commence to the next venture of life: college. When called by God and reminded of the complete forgiveness that was his, Isaiah immediately responded to the voice of the Lord, which called to him “Whom shall I send, and who will go for US?” (notice the plural! See, I told you, 1 equals 3!). To which Isaiah simply said, “Here am I; send me.”

Joey, Alex, Leila: like the prophet Isaiah, you are being called by God to commence into a world which, in the stunning words of the gospel of St. John this morning, is “so loved” by God, a world into which God the Father sent God the Son, so that this beloved world would not be condemned, “but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  St. Paul writes in the Romans reading that it is God the Spirit “bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” You can breathe a sigh of relief: you’re not called to explain the Holy Trinity to the world. Your calling is simple: the Three in One who calls you by your name sends you into the world to be a lover, even as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit so loves the world.

For on this day, even as on that day — oh, about 42 years ago now - when I sat inattentive to Mrs. Kimball’s basic teaching of the “new math,” I invite each of you, sisters and brothers in Christ, to forget about the numbers, and to be in relationship with the world around you so beloved of God: to reach out to your neighbor in need and to continually ask the question: “And who is my neighbor?” The neighbor who is lonely, the neighbor who is different, the neighbor who is struggling, the neighbor who is in need. Reach out across the lines both fuzzy and sharp that we humans allow to divide us one from another, and live into the unity that we share as children of the Triune God, who is our Mother and our Father; whose Son is our Brother and our Lover; and whose Spirit is our eternal equal sign.

“So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

You don’t even have to do the math, for the equation just is.  For in that triune plurality of persons who is One, we who are many, many and varied, are also made one: “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.”  Not greater than, not less than, but equal.

Class dismissed. Commencement begins.

Amen