Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, a day to focus on God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, all in one. It was also the day that the national United Church of Christ had challenged all congregations to begin a “Sacred Conversation on Racism in America.” I am nothing if not someone who loves a challenge.

Our Northern California Nevada Conference of the UCC passed a resolution at its annual meeting on May 17, 2008, asking all the churches in our conference to “initiate and participate in sacred conversations on race and racism over the course of the next two years.” And so we begin.

Linking Trinity Sunday to a beginning conversation on race feels particularly timely. Not because Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Trinity UCC in Chicago, made this conversation so obviously necessary, but because Trinitarian Theology is just convoluted enough, just messy enough, and includes the humanity of Christ in the mix of the divinity of God, to be a perfect window into the facing the ways in which we deny our common humanity and refuse to fully celebrate our cultural diversity as a gift of God.

The word “trinity” isn’t found anywhere in the Bible, but the command to baptize folks in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, is.

Explanations have gone round and round and most folks simply throw their hands up in surrender, letting Trinity be whatever Trinity will be and acknowledging that believing in God may be more than enough challenge for their faithful hearts and minds.

But for me, Trinity as a concept of my Christian understanding of God is just perfect. God is love. Love is absolutely relational. God’s love manifests within God’s Self in three ways.

God is Creator, prime mover, creating still — A nurturing parent, father, mother of the universe. God is big.

God is Spirit, present in every molecule of being, the breath of life, inspiring, touching — Presence and power. God is intimate.

And God is Son, Christ, Jesus, human. And when Jesus taught that he was first born among many brothers and sisters, when he said we will do greater things than he did, when he challenged us to see him in every hungry person we feed, every thirsty person to whom we give a cup of water, we can begin to realize that the Christ lives in us, lives in all people, lives in the stranger we call “other,” because God is there.

Then we begin to realize the radical nature of Trinitarian theology. We are a part of the Holy One. The Holy One is a part of us. We are intimately linked through the Father who created us, the Son who guides us and the Spirit who indwells us.

When I first came to the church I now serve almost nine years ago there were a few folks who told me I talked too much about women’s issues and about race. I’m a woman and my sons are bi-racial. It seemed inevitable.

Now, with a woman or an African American poised to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States, and the unfortunate 15 minutes of fame given to Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC in Chicago, the subject of race in America is front and center in the minds of most of us and especially those who are troubled to see a UCC pastor speak so badly and even ignorantly in the public sphere.

Certainly Rev. Wright has no corner on ignorance spoken from the pulpit. Rev. Jerry Falwell once declared the AIDS epidemic to be a punishment from God and Rev. Pat Robinson recommended the assassination of the President of Venezuela. But we expect more intellectual rigor from our UCC ministers, black or white.

I offer this perspective: My son attended Morehouse College in Atlanta for two years. A traditional black college with a highly respected reputation (Martin Luther King Jr. had gone there), he expected great things.

Early on he learned that conspiracy theories were alive there in every part of school life. Not only did students suggest secret government plots to keep them subjugated (like creating the drug wars to fill their neighborhoods with life killing drugs and then lock them up in prisons; or assassination plots always coordinated through the FBI – O wait, that one is true — we do know that J. Edgar Hoover worked tirelessly to destroy the Black Panthers and demolish the reputation of Martin Luther King) but professors and administration staff fueled these conspiracy theories in the classroom as well. My son was surprised.

I took the call to a church in Atlanta at least in part to be closer to my son. My youngest son started high school at an integrated public school there, but it was a disaster for him. White kids wouldn’t talk to him because he was black and black kids teased him for talking funny – like a white person. Atlanta was a long painful two years.

When that church hired me they actually suggested I might be able to help them integrate the south. Believe me, I tried. But it didn’t work out.

So what would a sacred conversation on race look like and how might it begin?

To be sacred a conversation it would need to have the holy at its center. We would need to invoke the Spirit of love in our midst as we listened to one another express our experience.

I know I look white but because of my children and my life I often have experienced being the invisible black person in a room as white folks attempt to talk about “them” with varying degrees of sensitivity or prejudice.

I am of the civil rights protest generation and my first reaction is often indignant and self-righteous. Hopefully I don’t stay too long with that first reaction. It seems to me to be where Rev. Jeremiah Wright is stuck.

Luckily our children are not all stuck there. Both my sons see people as just people. There are good ones and there are bad ones. They live out Martin Luther King’s dream that “all shall be judged by the content of their character.”

Just as I see the deep fear and prejudice towards gay folks diminishing with the younger generation, so I see racial prejudice diminishing. It has been reported that some 65% of young people don’t see race or gender orientation as an issue in the company they keep. So there truly is hope.

But for us older folks and for those who have been taught to hate and to fear, the work is ahead of us. We can change and grow.

We begin by listening to one another’s stories. What has shaped your understanding of race? Have you ever walked a mile in another’s shoes? Felt the constant gaze of store clerks when you enter a business? Watched someone cross to the other side of the street or clutch their purse tighter just because they see you on the path in front of them?

Or have you noticed the privileges afforded you just because you are white? People expect your children to succeed and teachers challenge them to do better. This is not always the case for children of color.

You can expect to be treated with dignity and respect and almost never are asked to do the job of a servant because someone mistakes you for the hired help.

Sacred conversation is not one sided, and perhaps this conversation would be most effective in small gatherings over a shared meal.

Jesus got in more trouble for eating meals with the wrong sorts of folks than for anything else. Sharing meals with those we think of as strangers often turns them into friends. But do not be too quick to assume that we cannot learn about racism from each other. As we listen to one another’s experience and honor the struggles we all have to become open and integrated human beings, we can grow and we can heal.

The subject of race is as convoluted as Trinitarian Theology. Let’s wrestle with our questions, our assumptions and our fears. Let’s grow together.