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Some things are difficult to talk about. Love, for example. If someone asked you to define love and explain why you love someone, how would you go about it? What if I had to explain my love for my wife? The American Heritage Dictionary defines love as "A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness." I could not have put it better myself ... or worse, for that matter. To be honest, no matter what I might say on the subject could never be adequate.

Here is another one: kiss. The dictionary says to kiss is "To touch or caress with the lips as an expression of affection, greeting, respect, or amorousness." Yeah. But any definition is unsatisfactory. Words will never do a kiss justice.

Try one more -- God. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, All-powerful, Ever-present, Judge, Just, Merciful, Love, and on and on and on. Nothing is enough. Anything we might say would be inadequate.

The epistle lesson from 2 Corinthians brings us the familiar words of the traditional Trinitarian benediction, a text chosen because on the liturgical calendar today is designated Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the long church year that is set aside to focus on a doctrine. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and so on all commemorate historic events, and we can understand that, but a doctrine? And a confusing doctrine at that! Plus, as you Bible scholars well know, the word Trinity never once occurs in the pages of scripture. Why the big deal?

The doctrine of the Trinity is a uniquely Christian answer to the questions: What can we say when we want to talk about our God? What do we have? Three Gods? A committee? No -- the church has always insisted there is only one. How about one big God and a couple of lesser ones? No, that means more than one again. How about one God who is revealed in three different ways: first as creator and law-giver, then as redeemer, and finally as sustainer? God would assume different roles or "modes" depending on what was needed at the moment. Sounds promising, but it leaves the dangerous possibility that someone might think of the good and loving God; the Son, coming to rescue poor you and me from the mean and angry God; and the Father, who would like nothing better than to see us roast in the fires of hell for all eternity. Not a good explanation.

The church did about all that it could do -- it affirmed that, in a mysterious way, all three understandings of God are God. No way to separate any one part from another. One God who has three distinct ways of being God ... in the traditional language, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." To be honest, we do not even know if that is all there is to God. The Trinity is what God has chosen to reveal: It is only a glimpse. To describe the tip of the iceberg above the water is not to describe the entire iceberg. So we Christians affirm the Trinity, not as a complete explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what we know so far.

The glimpse we have does offer us a great deal. The God we worship is the all-powerful maker of the universe. This same God is concerned not just with the whirling of the planets, but also with itsy-bitsy me and you, loving us so devotedly that scripture says even the hairs on our heads are numbered. And, if we ever wondered about God's continued presence with us, think about that hair thing and realize that, for lots of us, that total keeps changing -- God has to be here just to keep up.

The message on this Trinity Sunday is simple: be careful what you say about God. Saying more than you have a right to is, frankly, blasphemous -- and you do not want to go there. Remember the apostle Paul's words in the lesson: "Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace ... May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit -- God in three persons -- be with you all."