When I was on internship in Richland Hills, Texas, and area clergy gathered to discuss the scripture readings for the Sundays of Pentecost and Holy Trinity, everyone seemed quite excited about preaching on Pentecost Sunday, but hardly anyone looked forward to preaching on Trinity Sunday. In fact, my internship supervisor, Pastor Phil, joked the Intern is always given Trinity Sunday as a day for preaching. He said, “This is a test to see if the Intern is heretical or not!” You see, the doctrine of the Trinity is one many clergy would often rather avoid. So, the task of proclamation on Trinity Sunday was mine that year. However, I was glad I was assigned the task because I believe we need a better understanding of the three persons of the Trinity. You see, each person of the Trinity gives us language to better understand God. And, the relationship of mutual love between the three persons of the Trinity helps us better understand how deeply we are loved and how we are to love others.
Talking about the Trinity is not easy! Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity? God is one and yet we’ve got these three, what? Persons? Spirits? Beings? Things? So, what is God? Who is God? A triangle, maybe a prism, whole, but with three sides? We say we believe in One God, and then we sing, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” Just how do we make sense of this and what does it all mean?
Jesus didn’t really talk about the Trinity; neither did Paul. There are places in scripture where they mention the Father, Son and Spirit, but not in the way we now think of the Trinity. It wasn’t until the fourth century, 300 years after Jesus, that Christian leaders formalized the whole concept of the Trinity. This happened at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. The result? The Nicene Creed. Then, many years later in the fifth century, Christian leaders wrote another creed as they tried once again to clarify people’s understanding of the Trinity, particularly the Jesus part. That Council resulted in the Apostles’ Creed.
Over the years, there has been a lot of bitter arguing over the concept of the Trinity. And, at one point, the Eastern church split with the Western church because of division and controversy surrounding this doctrine. Quite honestly, the idea of the Trinity is hard to understand and nearly impossible to explain. So, I am not going to try to explain the Trinity, because it is a mystery. However, I am going to attempt to take you deeper into the mystery and the wonder of this One in Three, this Three in One we call God.
Last week, we were in Raleigh, NC for our son’s wedding. The reception was so much fun. Everyone was dancing. I love to dance, and I love to watch people dance. It was especially fun to watch our grandchildren let themselves be so free and open while interacting with others, dancing with sheer abandon. It was so much fun to see Collin and Vivian taking the music into their beings, feeling the beat and moving to pulsating rhythms. As I watched them, I thought about the way dance is made up of many different entities. Motion, emotion, resonance, rhythm, beat; all of these relate to each other and come together when we see people dance. They come together to create the whole. As I watched the kids, I again thought about how dance is a perfect metaphor for the nature of the Trinity, of God.
When we look at the idea of the Holy Trinity, we stand on the edge of mystery. The Trinity is a model of interactive and open relationship. God’s nature can be thought of as a three-way dance, a dance of relationship and incomprehensible love. Through the metaphor of dance, we see three distinct movements of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but movements that exchange life-giving energy and create unity, perfect unity and oneness. This dance is one of mutual devotion and shared love, a love that is expansive and generous, a love that cannot be self contained. It overflows from Parent to Child to Spirit and back again. The love of God, the love that IS God is like a divine Dance, a dynamic, graceful and deeply intimate movement. In this movement, the God who is "I AM" is not alone, never alone, because the very nature of God is relationship. In the Trinity we see a love that is always selfless and pointing to the other. In the Trinity we see a oneness that is a matter of shared egolessness, a oneness where the three are one in mission. When we consider the Trinity, we see a God who is all about relationship, community, and unconditional love.
In this interactive dance of the divine three in one, we see a coming together of power and majesty, love and tenderness, presence and movement – AND the raw and everyday reality of life. In this coming together, God gives life. In this coming together, God enters into our very lives, lives among us, and invites us to participate in the dance. And, what is so mysterious and remarkable is that while God, who in this Dance needs no other, God chose to create and redeem creation. God chose to create and redeem you, me, each and every individual we encounter – so that we might join in this Dance. The invitations have been sent. There are to be no mere spectators on the dance floor. No outcasts, no outsiders. We are called by God to see ourselves as God sees each of us and thus discover ourselves to be, like the Persons of the Trinity, truly beloved.
Do you remember words spoken to Jesus when he was baptized? The Father, Son and Spirit danced as the Father spoke saying, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” Those pulsating, life-giving, creating words danced through creation as a message of divine love. That creative Word danced through life, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, breaking the chains of slavery, and transforming chaos into wholeness. When we consider the Trinity, we see a God who entered into the deepest darkness of our lives and walks with us in the places where we think God is most absent. We see a God who is with us at those times of deepest suffering when we ask, “Why?” and there simply are no answers. For that God, that three in one, danced to the very hill of Calvary, the deepest place of darkness, of extreme loneliness, and of excruciating pain. And then, the life-giving, creative Dance of love burst forth from a sealed tomb because it could not be contained!
This is the love that invites us to participate in the Dance. God speaks to each of us saying, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased. You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, join in the Dance!” You see, the Divine Dance continues in us and through us. We dance with our God and with the world in partnership with God. What does the Trinity dance look like in our lives? We dance with our God when we care for the sick, feed the hungry and offer water to the thirsty. We dance with our God when we march in solidarity with our LBGTQ friends in the Pride Parade. We dance with our God when we partner with Samaritas to love and care for our refugee friends. We dance with our God when we walk with those who are mourning and grieving. We dance with our God when we, ourselves, are grieving. We dance with our God when we provide food for the ArrowTree Food Pantry. We dance with our God when we give to ELCA World Hunger, to Water for Tanzania and to ELCA Disaster Response. We dance with our God when we gather to worship. And, we participate in this Divine Dance daily as we live into the reign of God. We were created to live in relationship, moving to the beat of divine, incomprehensible love, dancing with God’s very self and with each other. So, come, dance on the edge of mystery, live into the kingdom of God and join the dance of Trinity!