Letting the Trinity Explain Us

Trinity Sunday, Year C; John 16:12-15; St. Paul’s, Smithfield 5/22/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Letting the Trinity Explain Us”

The other day I came across an interesting quote by a Presbyterian minister and author.  I can’t even tell you the name of the work from which the quote is taken – it wasn’t cited.  But I found it an interesting commentary on the Trinity.

William Dixon Gray writes, “Rather than explaining the Trinity, let the Trinity explain us.  We are, for instance, always changing from what we are to what we are becoming.

Everything is in this process; being is always becoming. …

The Trinity does not allow things to be static.  Whatever is static dies.  God is active within the divine being.  A static God would soon be lost.  God is active, and we must be [active] too” (Synthesis Commentary, Year C).

Trinity Sunday is a reminder that God is somehow above and beyond all things (metaphorically speaking), while at the same time intimately bound to and fully present in our here and now.  It is our way of saying God is always more – always more than we are ready, willing, or able to speak or understand. 

Consider how we meet God in today’s lessons.  Proverbs gives us an incredibly rich, poetic vision of a God experienced through the witness of Holy Wisdom, who for over two thousand years has been understood by many as an emanation of the Divine feminine, and who from the early first century was understood to be an expression of Jesus.  She is beyond time or space, seen in majesty and awe – present from the very beginnings of creation.  Here is the Wisdom of God, at the same time both infinitely beyond and yet so tantalizingly present, rejoicing and delighting in God, rejoicing and delighting in the whole of creation, and in particular, rejoicing in the human race.

           

Or take the passage from Romans: finding ourselves at peace with God through the gift of faith in Christ Jesus – we are given endurance and hope through the gift of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives.  God working within us to change us from what we are into what we are becoming – the very hope and presence of God’s love in this world – God working within us to change us more and more into the presence of Christ in this world.

Consider Jesus – the face of God – the hands of God – the humanness of God – with us – in us!  Each Gospel writer gives us a particular glimpse of this person Jesus.  Today’s glimpse comes from the Gospel of John.  As cosmic and utterly beyond as the Gospel sounds at its beginning (In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God), the evangelist brings us down to earth almost immediately (And the Word became flesh – the Word became human – put on human skin.  The Word became one like you and me – and lived among us). Doesn’t John’s description of the Incarnation sound like an echo of our passage from Proverbs – and an echo from the very first words of our holy scriptures as found in the opening words of Genesis? 

The Jesus of John’s Gospel is about freedom and life, and about the Divine Friendship of God.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus calls his followers “friends” and invites them into the incredibly dynamic relationship that is God: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (John 15:15 and 17:23).  Imagine what our world would be like if we actually lived like we believed that – if we lived like we believed the very God who spangled the heavens with stars loves us enough to take on human flesh and become one with us – and then fills us with Holy Spirit that we might better know and live out that oneness.  “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one!”  As commentator Susanna Metz reminds us, “There is love within the Trinity that binds it together. That Love reaches out to gather into Itself each and every one of us. What else do we need to know?” she asks (Synthesis Today for May 20, 2016).

And in John’s Gospel we begin to see the presence of the Holy Spirit poured out for us as a reminder of God’s intimate presence and transforming power in our lives.  This is no new naming of God’s presence in the world – though perhaps it’s a more particular and expansive experience and understanding of God’s Spirit.  The Spirit of God – Ruach – moved over the face of the deep at Creation.  The Spirit of God rested upon prophets, judges, kings, and followers of Jesus – women and men alike – throughout the history of our faith.  Holy Spirit – the very presence of God – the very mind of Christ – enfolding us in God’s love, infusing us with Jesus’ wisdom, and empowering us to become something beyond our wildest imaginings.

           

As we listen to our lessons today we hear the faith expression of communities across the ages.  And truth be told, rather than identifying and defining a doctrine of Trinity, these lessons say something to us about how God meets us and invites us into an ongoing relationship that has existed from before the dawn of time.  As author and priest Martin Smith puts it, “The ‘personal’ God of Christian experience is not an omnipotent Individual, but a communion of self-giving love” (The Word is Very Near You, p 26).  Holy Trinity is not so much about figuring out God as it is about God figuring out us, and inviting us “to participate in the [ongoing] relationships of intimacy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit…[joining] an eternal dance already in full swing, and we are caught up into it” (ibid, p 28).  As we enter into the mystery that is the Holy Trinity we allow “ourselves to join in the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the Persons of the Trinity” (ibid).      

It has been said of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth century English mystic, that she “never approached the demonstration of God’s existence or the meaning of the Trinity in structured argument like the other great theologians of her age.  Yet in her visions and writings,” it has been said, “she came as close as anyone to understanding the God of love – the God of the Trinity.  Toward the end of her life, she penned this short but profound exchange: ‘Would you know your Lord’s meaning?’ she asks.  ‘Learn it well.  Love was his meaning.  Who showed it to you?  Love.  What did he show you?  Love.  Why did he show it?  For love’” (Frank Hegendus, citation lost). 

I don’t know about you, but I need a God who is both beyond me and this world and yet intimately connected at the same time.  I need a God who can call me beyond the mean-spirited pettiness that often infects my soul, and yet who enfolds me like a loving parent and shows me the meaning of love.    

If God can’t move us beyond ourselves – if God can’t move this world beyond an obsession with itself – what good is that?  If God can’t somehow touch the most inner core of our being, and teach us what it means to be loved and to love, what’s the whole point of believing?  When we can sift through the ancient cultural and contextual understandings of God in the Bible that reflect the harsh realities of ancient life – or we can sift through the fearful, exclusionary anger and hate that often passes for the Gospel in so many places today – we find ourselves standing with Dame Julian of Norwich and a God whose ultimate meaning is love – moving us to love this world – moving us to love the people of this world – moving us to love ourselves, our neighbors, and even the stranger living among us – with the very same love that God holds for us.

           

And in those blessed moments, when we can embrace a God who is both beyond us and yet somehow mysteriously within us – a God who is more than we can ever imagine and who strives within us to make us more than we can ever imagine – we will find that we have stopped trying to explain the Trinity.  We have begun to let the Trinity explain us.  Amen.