Well, my friends, welcome to Trinity Sunday, the day when we preachers tie ourselves in knots to explain the unknowable mystery that God is three-in-one, and one-in-three.
These modern days (not to give away trade secrets) we preachers spend our time listening to podcasts and searching Google looking for clever internet anecdotes that will help us to communicate—in new and fresh ways—what is truly true about the triune God. Perhaps we find ourselves compelled by a 3 leaf clover as St. Patrick did. Perhaps not.
And all too often we find that once these stories come off of our lips, they fall flat, like a cake with too little baking soda. Perhaps it’s because we try too hard. Perhaps it’s because there’s something missing when we talk about these mysteries solely in the abstract, as though there is a singular metaphor that will get to the heart of what is right in front of us. As though in describing the various persons of God and how they interact, people will somehow be able to experience what God is like.
Or perhaps we simply delight in obscure arguments that make us feel like we’re saying something, when really we are not.
What I often need to remember is that the Trinity is not first a doctrine, but rather a way in which people throughout time and space have tried to articulate their experience of God. Isn't this exactly what we do when we experience God in a particular way? When we tell another person about our "God moment" (that moment when God shows up in such-and-such a way) we attempt to put into words the God who, for us, in that moment, simply is. Indescribably so.
Throughout Lent, I gathered folks from across our parish and our diocese to study a book by Rachel Held Evans’ entitled, “Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.”
It’s a really refreshing take on the Bible, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve found myself quoting Rachel rather frequently lately—in conversation, in my column in the Castlegar News this week, and I’m about to quote her right now, too.
“We spend a lot of time speculating about what God is like,” Rachel writes. “We argue about it, build theologies around it, sometimes even wage wars over it. We use words like omniscient and omnipotent, sovereign, and trinitarian to describe a God who defies language and eclipses metaphor….and yet the scandal of the gospel is that one day the God of our theology books and religious debates showed up—as a person in flesh and blood.”
She goes on:
"And while God delivered a few sermons and entertained a couple of theological discussions, it is notable that according to the Gospels, when God was wrapped in flesh and walking among us, the single most occupying activity of the Creator of the universe, the Ultimate reality, the Alpha and Omega and the great I AM of ages past and ages to come was to tell stories." (Inspired, Page 158)
What we know of God, what we come to experience in Father, Son and Spirit (or if you prefer, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer), is a God who shows up. And when God shows up, new stories are told, new life is made possible.
And so, on a day like today, when we are paying attention to God’s one-ness, and three-ness, trying to make sense of this great mystery, what might we say that is true, is helpful, and resists the temptation of a cheap metaphor, like a cake that just won’t rise?
For this, I turn to the words of Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, who served from 1961-1974. Archbishop Ramsey said this:
“God is Christlike, and in God is no un-Christlikeness at all.”
This is another way of saying, “Jesus shows us what God is like.” What is God like? Jesus shows us.
Jesus embodies God in his living, his dying, and rising again. Jesus shows us what God is like with his visionary stories of God's kingdom, and his visionary way of playing out that drama in his own flesh.
Today in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle talks about Jesus, the one through whom we have obtained access to God’s grace. How does this grace come to us? Through God’s immeasurable self-giving love demonstrated on the Cross.
And this, I suppose, is where our understanding of the Triune God can be helpful. This self-giving love of God, has existed from the beginning. Before God ever said “let there be…” there were Creator, Christ, and Spirit moving towards one another, away from one another, around one another, in self-giving love.
A few years ago, my former colleague, The Rev. Dr. Ellen Clark-King explained the Trinity this way. She said:
"There can be no self-giving love without an “other” to love; there can be no love at all without relationship. If God is eternally love, has never been without love, then there must be love and relationship within the very heart of God’s being. God is a seamless dance of delight and love, a ceaseless relationship. Never just one in isolation but always relational, always love."
In these isolating pandemic times, those words struck me anew, as something to yearn for, as something I long for without the anxiety of making daily health decisions. When Ellen shared these words, she followed them up with her favourite quotation about the Trinity from 13th C German Theologian and Mystic, Meister Eckhart:
‘Do you want to know
what goes on in the heart of the Trinity?I’ll tell you.
At the heart of the Trinity,
the Father laughs,
and gives birth to the Son.
the Son then laughs back at the Father,
and gives birth to the Spirit.then the whole trinity laughs,
and gives birth to us.’
We are because God is. We are, because of God’s joy and delight. One in three. Three in one. Mutual self-giving love.
And we, my friends, we are invited into the life of God. The life of laughter. The life of self-giving love. With one another, for one another. Through God who dwells in and amongst us. Through God who invites us into this divine dance, a dance that seeks the wholeness of our selves, of each others, and of the whole of Creation.
"Sometimes, in some circles of the church, we speak as though God needed to create the world in order to have something to love." But, Dr. Clark-King reminds us, “this is the wrong way around. Creation,” she says “is not a result of an original lack of love, but an abundance of love.”
Creation comes into being not as a result of scarcity, but abundance. This good earth, these good waters, we good people, were created out of an abundance of love. And what's more, we are invited “to be agents of divine love by allowing this love to live and pour out of us. We are invited to enter into the Trinity; to be caught up in the eternal exchange of love that is the very heart of our God."
And this is true too. As those created in the divine image, we humans do not start in lack, but in love. Love overflowing from even before the dawning of God’s Creation dream. Our work as God’s people is leavened by this Trinitarian Alchemy of self-giving love, a love that starts with simple ingredients, that rises to new life, even on the other side of death.
I told you at the beginning of this sermon that I wouldn’t peddle in cheap metaphor, but I must confess that after a cold rainy Saturday, a day that felt more like autumn than summer, a day when I was thinking about Baking Soda and the Trinity, I went and made an Apple Cake before bed.
And I’ve brought it to share. So after today’s service, I hope that we will be able to participate in the self-giving love of the Trinity, as we take some time to catch up, and to share in the story of God’s love together.
Or, to borrow from the Psalmist, let us continue in our worship as we taste and see that God is good.
Amen.
