Trinity Church, Searcy, Arkansas
Trinity Sunday, June 11, 2017
There can be no better place to be on Trinity Sunday than at Trinity Church in Searcy. But if you are like I am, you sometimes wonder why does our God need three names, three persons? How can one God inhabit three forms and be both three and one? / Most important, can belief in this Trinity really make any difference in our lives? Will the Trinity make a difference in how we will drive their cars, how we will fill out their income taxes, how we will respond to war, or how we treat the person sitting across the aisle or living across the interstate from them? /
Robert Capon says that when human beings try to describe God we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. We simply don’t have the equipment to understand something so utterly beyond us,/ but that has never stopped us from trying. /
First let us start by saying the Trinity is a mystery. Do not let this word “mystery” turn you off intellectually. It means that the truth will be revealed to our understanding but never completely, because it requires that we are in relationship to the intimate parts of God. Saint Irenaeus said that God remains a mystery even in heaven. Through all eternity we will be finding new things out about God, and the mystery will be more and more revealed. There is never a time when we can say, “God, this is not a new thing you have shown us.”
The Trinity is not a quantifiable being. In human arithmetic, 1+1+1= 3. In celestial arithmetic 1+1+1= 1. Several years ago, I heard a Greek orthodox bishop give a series of lectures on the Trinity at Oxford. That’s Oxford, England, not Oxford, Mississippi. Surely a bishop in Oxford should be able to explain the Trinity. For one whole hour he drew six possible diagrams for the Trinity, triangles, circles, concentric circles, overlapping circles. Then at the end, he said, “and the answer is, the best diagram for the Trinity is this:” He erased all his work and left a blank board. It is a mystery.
Part of our problem of understanding the Trinity is that we have no actual images of two of the persons. We have descriptions of Jesus, the human face of God, but no one has seen the Father or the Spirit. In western art the Spirit is traditionally characterized as a dove /and God as an old man with a beard. This has led to many problems, especially if the old man with a beard in your real life is not noted for his kindness and love.
A recent popular image of the Trinity is described in the book, The Shack, by William Young, now made into a movie. In this modern midrash of the Trinity, a man named Mac Phillips meets the Trinity at the scene of the brutal murder of his young daughter. God is a large beaming African American woman who engulfs Mac in her arms, saying,” My, my, how I do love you.” She tells him to call her Papa. Jesus appears as a blue-collar man with Middle Eastern features. The Spirit is a distinctively Asian woman who shimmers like the wind and is alternately translucent or visible only out of the corner of Mac’s eye. More important than their identity is their relationship to each other. Mac writes, “I have never seen three people share with such simplicity and beauty. Each seems more aware of the other than of themselves.” The three constantly call Mac to join them in their circle of relationship. Jesus tells Mac not to ask “what would Jesus do.” “My life was not meant to be an example to copy. That would kill your independence. I came to give you life, our life together. We desire that you re- turn to us so that we will come and live and make our home and share our life inside of you, so that you may begin to see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands. But we will never force our union on you.”
The Shack reminds us that if we tend to think of the Trinity by distinguishing each of its parts, we will miss the mark. If we only see the Trinity as separate persons, we will miss the power of their community. The ultimate beauty of the Trinity is in its relationship and love of each to the whole. Each part makes decisions based on the input from the others. Their minds and hearts are constantly in relationship to each other, not centered on themselves. The three parts in this relationship teach us how to love each other. The three persons of the Trinity are desperately in love with, in COMMUNITY, and CONNECTED to each other. The parts of the Trinity indwell in one another. They are transparent to each other. They have no secrets from one another. (John 17:21-23)
God is the Creator, and father, and lover,/ and the saving, beloved Christ. The love between them is so powerful that from that love, its own person is formed, the sustaining, empowering Holy Spirit. There is no jealousy, no fear of rivalry. (John 3:35, 10:17, 15:9, 17:23-24.) Barbara Brown Taylor describes this concept of the Trinity as the “sound of three hands clapping.”
Perhaps we learn more about the Trinity from images where this love relationship is absent. What is hell but the absence of God, the absence of relationship. Possibly you have heard this story:
A Rabbi asks to see Heaven and Hell. His wish is granted and he's taken to a room where everyone is seated at a long dinner table with delicious food in front of them. However, everyone there is starving and emaciated. This is because, the Rabbi discovers, while each has a long spoon strapped to his or her wrist, the spoon is so long they cannot pick up the food and actually put it in their mouths. They are utterly frustrated and bitterly unhappy. The Rabbi is told that this is Hell.
He is then taken to another room with everyone seated at an identical long table with delicious food, and each individual also has a long spoon strapped to his or her wrist. These people, however, are well-fed, for they have learned that their spoons are perfectly designed to allow them to feed each other, which they are doing quite naturally. They are joyous and contented. The Rabbi is told that this is Heaven./
So what does this inter-relationship of the Trinity say to us? Since we are made in God’s image, everything about the Trinity can also be said about us. The Trinity calls us to a radical reorientation in our way of seeing and being in the world. We must live in community. We are what we are in relationship to. We are to be transcripts of the Trinity on earth. Either we love like the Trinity or we have no life. The God of the Trinity is not an I but a we, not mine but ours. The doctrine of the Trinity is not designed to TELL us the truth about God / but to SHOW us how to LIVE the truth… in community, in relationship.
Yes, our belief in the Trinity and the interpersonal love of the Trinity can transform our lives. Our relationship to and understanding of the Trinity can definitely make a difference in how we drive our cars, how we fill out our tax returns, how we relate and respond to war, how we treat the person sitting across the aisle from us as well as the person living across the interstate from us. Today, the Trinity will especially make a difference in the lives of each of us in this sacred space that for so many years has honored the Trinity. You have a legacy, you are the standard bearers to show all the world how to love like the Trinity.
Your mission, then, should you wish to accept it,
is to go and represent the Trinity - created in love, saved in love, and sustained in love by our Triune God. Love like the Trinity in Searcy and in the world. This mission is not impossible, because with God, all things are possible. You can do this - we can do this - together, in relationship, in community - with God's help. Keep remembering those final words of Jesus in today's Gospel. "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
Bishop Timothy Kallistos, Summer Institute, Oxford, August, 2004.
Barbara Brown Taylor, “Three Hands Clapping,” Home by Another Way, pp. 151-154.
Fleming Rutledge, “The Multicultural Good News,” The Bible and the New York Times, pp. 169–175.
Rowan Williams, “the Hospitality of Abraham,” The Dwelling of the Light, Praying with Icons of Christ, pp. 45-63.
Henri Nouwen, Beyond the Beauty of the Lord, Praying with Icons, pp. 19-27.
John Burton, “Seeing the Trinity from the Inside,” Preaching as Pastoral Care, pp. 70- 73.
Frederick Buechner, “Trinity,” Beyond Words, pp. 394-395.
William Young, The Shack, pp. 122, 146, 149, 175, 198.
Joanna Seibert