"The second Fundamental Theorem of Calculus," I could feel the dread and anxiety building in my soul as the words streamed out of my pen and across the white board. Though I had been studying calculus for more than 5 years and had tutored countless of my fellow students in this very piece of theory, this was the first time that I had to teach it.

The students were still writing, still copying down, so I continued:

"Let f be a continuous function in the closed interval [a,b] and let x be a (variable) point in the open interval of the same bounds. Then the derivative with respect to x of the function defined by the definite integral on a to x of f is f(x)."

Silence. I waited as the students continued to scribble in their notebooks. It couldn't have been that easy. There were going to be questions. There were always questions. No one really understood this thing as presented, yet it was an integral part of every first-year calculus curriculum. It was on the AP exam. I had to teach it. But there was only silence.

And then a hand. "Mr. Callaham, I don't get it."

I looked in my notes. I had scratched down a few of the metaphors that the seminar leader had used at my "How to teach AP calculus" course the previous summer. "Um," I stammered, "you see, its like you're rolling out a carpet , . ." Blank stares. "Well, think of it this way, imagine that you are painting stripes on the floor . . ." Nothing. I just wasn't getting it across.

I tried two or three other approaches, but nothing seemed to be working. Only more blank stares, more confused faces, more erasures and the incessant refrain of "Mr. Callaham, I don't get it."

So I stopped, leaned deeply onto the podium and took a deep breath. "Look," I said, "you don't have to understand how this works, at least not yet. You just have to know that it's there. There'll be one question about it on the exam, it's always the same and I'll show you how to do it. For the moment, just trust me. If you stick with calc long enough, understanding will come. And if this is the last calc course you ever take, than it just won't matter, will it?"

The level of tension in the room dropped, and some of the students even smiled. But behind the façade, I could see their discomfort at my "just take it on faith" attitude toward this particular piece of theory. I knew, and they knew, that this was a change of direction for me. As I admitted from this very pulpit a number of weeks ago, I'm a theory kind of guy. You can keep your example problems and your rote memorization, you're not going to make me happy until you show me how and why something works. Like the t-shirts that I used to see around the University of Chicago proudly stated, "That's all well and good in practice, but does it work in theory?"

Today is the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Sunday in the Church year that is usually reserved for the celebration of the Holy Trinity. It is, as one of my teaching pastors loved to point out, the only feast of the church year that remembers not a person or an event, but a doctrine, an idea, a theological construct - a theory, which states that God is one in nature but "exists simultaneously in three modes of being or hypostases" [Rusch, 24].

Silence.

Mr. Callaham, we don't understand.

Don't worry, you're not alone.

Setting in staff meeting this week, Loree+, Susan and I agreed that most of the Trinity Sermons that we have heard have seemingly been a response to this silence of mis-understanding. Most, if not all have included some attempt to elucidate the meaning of the Trinitarian idea by means of example or metaphor. Our collected memory was validated, somewhat, by an informal poll of the various sermon help-sites on the web (yes, these actually exist). There they were, page after page of metaphor, simile and comparison. "The trinity is like a dance," one pastor wrote. "Like an egg," offered another. Or perhaps you like the image of an apple better, or, for those more chemistry minded, the three phases of water - liquid, solid and gas.

At the risk of being overly critical, or invalidating the experiences of those who have been enlightened by such examples, I don't find them entirely helpful. Not because they lack creativity, or because they are not well thought out, but because they are trying to simplify that which is already a vast and powerful simplification of an experience of God that is beyond our abilities to relate to one another. Moreover, they represent a deep cultural anxiety about not understanding things, particularly in matters of faith.

Throughout my ministry, both lay and ordained, I have had the opportunity to work with a number of people who have come to the faith as adults. Almost without exception, their number one concern about being baptized and joining the church was whether or not they knew enough about matters of faith to be 'accepted.' "You're not alone," I would often tell them. Many people in the church labor under the notion that they do not know enough, or understand enough to be an active part of the body of Christ. In a world where information and our ability to process it are increasingly becoming the coin of the realm, I am not surprised that ignorance, or more likely, perceived ignorance is a top cause of anxiety. Thus we spend a lot of our time trying to gain knowledge and figure out ways to explain even the most complex things to one another.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I am here to witness to you, today that there is another way. In fact, if I may be so bold, I want to tell you that we are going about it all wrong. By placing our own understanding first and foremost in our list of achievements, we are getting it backwards, ignoring - if not flat out denying - God's ability to form us and inform us whether we understand or not.

Each week in church, we read stories of men and women of faith. We look to the characters of the Old and the New Testaments and we say to our selves, collectively, "These are the ones we should be like. These are the models. They have seen God. Surely they understand." But this is not the case. In today's readings, especially, we get a glimpse of just how un-informed our spiritual forefathers can be.

"In the year that King Uzziah died," Isaiah writes. "I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lofty." Isaiah saw God, surely he must have understood. Surely he should have learned something about the nature of God. Well, evidently not. For all we get is Isaiah's meek "Woe is me! I am lost."

And then there is John, Blessed John the Seer, Holy John who was given a vision of "what must take place" (Rev. 4:2). Surely he has some understanding to pass on to us. For God did not only come to visit him, but invited him into the heavenly throne room for a look around. Now, to his credit, he is descriptive, dutifully reporting every bizarre aspect of the scene that is laid out before him. But providing an accurate description is not the same as understanding. Do we get any sign that John understands the Divine nature after having been so intimately in touch with God. No, I don't think so. We have to look a few chapters beyond our lesson for today, but I think we get the sense of it when, in Chapter 7, John responds to the Elder's question about the identity of the people he sees in heaven with the ancient Greek equivalent of "I don't know" (7:14).

Even the Lord, part of whose earthly mission was to reveal to us something of the nature of God, casts doubt upon our abilities to comprehend too much about God when he says to his disciples in John's Gospel, "I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now" (16:12). Not only do we not have a great track-record of understanding God, but Jesus seems to be saying that it may just be out of our reach entirely for the time being.

But that might not be such a bad thing after all

I think Saint Anselm of Canterbury, prominent theologian of the 11th century, had it right when he said, in his Cur Deus Homo, that, "the right order of things demands that we first believe in the mysteries of Christian faith before daring to examine them rationally." This statement has often been paraphrased as "Theology is faith seeking understanding," but in either case it means that, in our relationship with God, faith must come first and understanding comes later - sometimes much later. It is our faith that makes our relationship with God, understanding is only meant to be the icing on the cake.

So what does this mean for us? First, it means that our biblical models, Isaiah and John, are doing o.k. Far from being examples of what is wrong, or limited in human nature, they still remain exemplars. They stood in the face of God and were amazed, and that was all right with God - for the punch line on both men is that they became the instruments that God desired.

And what about us, we who even after 2000 years tend to be somehow "unable to bear" all that Christ would reveal to us? And what of our Trinity Sunday celebration and our sermons seeking to simplify our centuries-old doctrine of unity of substance and trinity of person? I think the Gospel for us today is one of freedom. Freedom from anxiety and shame about what we understand and what we don't, freedom from doubt about our worthiness and our quality as Christians, freedom to act on our belief first and to wait patiently on understanding to come, freedom to join the angels in our songs of praise to the God who comes to us in spite of our lack of understanding.

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his Glory!

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. Amen

And again, I say, Amen.