The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

Trinity Sunday Year. B

Isaiah. 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; 

John 3:1-17

St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC 5/31/2015

Jim Melnyk: “The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship”

 It is perhaps one of the most iconic film endings in history.  Expatriate Rick Blaine and Captain Renault are seen from behind as they walk away from the runway where Ilsa’s plane has just left.  As they merge into the darkness and enveloping fog Rick comments, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

           

Louie’s and Rick’s friendship is based in part on intrigue, the rising power of Nazi Germany, and Rick’s lost love.  It’s a symbiotic relationship that seems to be at least as much about business opportunities as it is about being friends.  We are left to imagine what Louie and Rick make of their freedom when they leave Casablanca.

           

The friendship we celebrate today is one founded in mystery rather than by intrigue, in mercy and grace rather than power over others, and in the very foundations of love rather than a love that has been lost.  The very friendship of God spoken about by Jesus in the upper room before his arrest, and realize in that same room in the evening on Easter Day, finds its birth in the very heart of God from before time – and is spoken about in our doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

           

Those of you who had a chance to read my reflection in the June newsletter that came out a couple of days ago will recognize the words of Anglican Scholar Dom Gregory Dix who wrote: “Ever in the Holy Trinity, the Father gives Himself to the Son and the Son to the Father in a torrent of love which is the Holy Ghost… in an unending dance of love… the perfect love of the perfect lover for the perfectly beloved, perfectly achieved and perfectly returned forever”(Citation lost).

           

Dix was not the first who sought to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity using the language of Lover, Beloved, and Love.   St. Augustine, writing in the early fifth century did the same.  In response to those images brought up the other night during our conversations at Theology on Draft, mention was made that this imagery seems to elevate the first two persons of the Trinity – Lover and Beloved – while the third person seems more ambiguous.  This may be because we can imagine human form for Lover and Beloved, but Love seems more like a feeling than a person.

           

To even begin describing the Triune God with the language of dance and love is to begin to understand the essence of God to be relationship, and to understand God as the essence of relationship – the very ground of all that ever was – all that is – and all that ever will be.  In that case, Love becomes an incarnate experience of the first two persons.  The Dance becomes that which binds the two dancers into one fluid motion, and in essence is realized as a third person, all of whom are moving as one.

What we come to understand about God is this: it is not the external actions that we attribute to God that informs the distinctions between the persons of the Holy Trinity, but rather their internal relationship – “the perfect love of the perfect lover for the perfectly beloved.”

By now I’ve managed to inadvertently describe the Holy Trinity in one form of heresy or another – it is really all but impossible to actually define the Oneness of the Triune God without making a mess of it all.  And so we fall back on the mystery that is God: who though One, is also known to us in Three.

We come to know God who, as one author puts it, “seeks out multiple ways of relating to us in love” (Sojourners Online, Preaching the Word, Michaela Bruzzese, 5/31/2015).  Whether we hear a God who calls from a lofty throne, surrounded by incense and mystical beasties as in our lesson from Isaiah, or we hear a God who calls to us from the dusty streets of Galilee or the hard wood of the cross, or we hear a God who whispers to us from within the deepest recesses of our souls and bodies, we hear the call of One God – a God who creates us, who loves us, and who chooses to live within us.

Trinity Sunday is meant, at least in part, to remind us that we have come to know a God whose name – whose essence, actually – is “Relationship.”   And Trinity Sunday invites us to not only worship the Mystery of our Triune God, but to participate in that Mystery as well.  To join in the torrent of love that flows between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – to join in the unending dance of love that is God.

Augustine, who gave us the beautiful image of Lover, Beloved, and Love, also reminds us that as God’s beloved creatures – as beings created in the image and likeness of God – we bear the full image of God within – that we are created in the image of the fullness of the Holy Trinity. It follows then that this Jesus, who shares our humanity – this Jesus is the incarnation of the fullness of God – the Trinity in human flesh.  To become Christ-like in our baptism is to more fully realize and share the image of the fullness of God in our lives.

One way we might share in the Holy Dance of God is in the ways we relate to one another as people created in the image of God.  Reflecting on the Truth and Reconciliation Process in South Africa Desmond Tutu writes, “The Zulu greeting sawubona literally means a lot more than a passing ‘hello.’ It means ‘I see you’ in the sense of recognizing and acknowledging who someone is and the context within which he or she operates.”  Tutu explains that “Nayabonana is the reciprocal ‘we see one another.’” 

 

Tutu goes on to tell a story about an early encounter with a Methodist Biblewoman living in rural South Africa.  “Sensing one morning that for me sawubona was little more than a formal greeting, [she] decided to challenge me.  She explained: ‘The word sawubona reminds me to stop, to look at you, and to acknowledge you anew each time we meet, before we deal with the business of the day.’  I carry her words with me.” (Walk with Us and Listen: Political Reconciliation in Africa, By Charles Villa-Vicencio, pages 66-67) This, in part, is what Tutu means when he speaks about Ubuntu theology – our recognition of our shared humanity in the presence of God.

It has been suggested that “if we truly look someone in the eyes, we are never again able to look away from that person” (ibid).  And perhaps that’s what is behind the ancient customs of Ubuntu and sawubona.   Perhaps truly looking someone in the eyes and never again being able to look away is the truth behind the powerful imagery of what it means to be created in the image of the Divine, and finally the truth behind the mystery and the poetic beauty of the eternal dance of love that is the Blessed Trinity.

We most significantly live into the image of God within each of us when we recognize our common humanity – when we stop and truly look one another in the eyes and allow ourselves to be captivated by our common humanity – when we live into our baptismal vows to respect one another’s dignity and work for justice and peace for all people.

Trinity Sunday reminds us that the very essence of God is relationship – and as creatures that bear the very stamp of God’s image upon our brows and within our hearts – relationship must truly be the essence of who we are as well – a reality which invites us into the never ending dance of love that is the Holy Trinity – that is God.  And that, my friends, is truly the beginning of a beautiful friendship.