We try to speak about - the Trinity - today… On this Trinity Sunday we try to look at and acknowledge the mystery of God as at least three different yet unified Whole One… And let’s be frank - in trying to speak of the Trinity - there always comes a point when words simply fail us….
There is a story told that Augustine was walking along the beach one day, puzzling over the Doctrine of the Trinity… He came upon a little child who was running back and forth, back and forth with a bucket in his hand – scooping up water from the ocean and running to pour that water from the ocean into a hole he had dug in the sand. (Don’t most of us remember spending hours on a summer day engaged in exactly such activity! )
Augustine approached the child and asked, "What are you doing?"
The boy replied simply, "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole." …
Augustine abruptly realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind….
Trying to put an Infinite God into our finite minds is no easy task!!
So let’s recognize today that the rest of this reflection may get to a place beyond words…
I believe and trust that God wants us to be in relationship with God…
I believe that getting to know God is to engage in a kind of joyful dance!
And it is God who invites us into this divine dance…
Yet try as we might to learn this dance, with all its various steps and turns, it may still take us a lifetime and more to learn…
I watched one of those reality TV shows the other night called, “So you think you can dance”…
It was one of the early audition shows where all sorts of folks come out in a variety of cities all over the country to audition in front of three judges.
The goal at this early phase of the show is to get a “ticket to Vegas”. If they get to go to Vegas they can compete on the show against other really gifted & talented dancers… and the TV show goes on to show that competition…
So… onto the stage come many very gifted and talented dancers AND a lot of other people as well… It is clear as you watch these auditions that many people come for what we might say are many different reasons… perhaps to be “on stage”… perhaps to be “in the limelight” for a moment… perhaps to be seen on TV… perhaps even because they imagined that they had real dance talent…
And the judges have to over and over again cull out folks whose gifts and skills are perhaps not quite what the program is looking for…
As I think about this dance we engage in with God - the very best news for us is that God will never give up on us… God will never cull us out… God never judges us as incompetent or inadequate to continue the dance with God… Everyone of us is invited to “go to Vegas”… Each one of us is part of the reality show of life where we can and we do learn how to dance and how to be in a relationship with God...
I have come to believe that “The Trinity” does not explain the nature of God… The Trinity tries to explain our relationship with God…
The Associated Press ran a story about a virus that infected a flock of Canada geese. The virus destroyed their navigation system. The geese flew in circles… They became disoriented. Those geese got lost.
There is an equally devastating consequence that takes place when we lose our spiritual bearings, when we don’t have clarity about our relationship with God… In the deepest spiritual sense I believe we too can get to a place where we don't know where we are going… Like those Canada geese we too can get to a place where we are so disoriented that we can't remember our destination and we too can wind up totally lost – that is, out of relationship with God…
Life can become a maze – a place where we do get lost and disoriented…
And when we get lost we are ripe for someone or something to come along and fill the void – it may be food, alcohol, drugs, obsessive behavior, even work... Like those Canadian geese designed with an inner navigational system, we too are designed with a spiritual guidance system.
That's part of what it means when we say we are created in the image of God.
Like those geese, our spiritual guidance system can fail… We can be left with a spiritual vacancy. (In classical theological terms we might say that sin brings about a malfunction, that sin separates us from God.)
The really Good News of our faith is that we are never truly separated from God… God is always there… And God makes that presence known to us in a variety of different ways… God sent a human son to live among us, to die, and to be resurrected so that we might trust how much God wants to be “God with us”… And God’s presence - in the form of the Holy Spirit accompanies us and guides us into all truth by moving in each of our hearts!
In today’s letter to the Romans, Paul suggests that it is through God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that love becomes our sole motivation… Paul assures us that God’s presence is always with us despite all of life’s challenges, disappointments, life’s tragedies and sufferings… Some would say it is the presence of the Holy Spirit deep within each of us that makes us each holy…
It is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes us each able to continue dancing and yearning to be in relationship with God. Despite all the lostness, despite all the disorienting problems, despite all the ways that life can sometimes overwhelm us… God’s Spirit lives in our hearts it’s always there…
Pastor & writer Frederick Buechner offers this “definition” of the Trinity: He suggests that,
“the much maligned doctrine of the Trinity is an assertion that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there is only One God… Father, Son, & Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, & the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us & the way we experience God.” (Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner)The doctrine of the Trinity was developed a long time ago. It was developed by early Christians struggling to describe as systematically as they could their experience of God… Just as I’m trying to do here today – struggling to identify the ways we experience God: as something beyond us; as something among us; and as something within us. /// God will continue to be a great Mystery! God will be a great Mystery for us as we continue dancing with God in this life & in the next life to come…
Someone has suggested that, “If you trip (or get tripped) up in life, just make it a part of your dance.” Good advice don’t you think… as we each seek to engage in the never ending dance with God?
Each week we gather to worship and to praise God here… We use a variety of words to describe God: Creator, Christ, & Holy Spirit… Father, Son & Holy Ghost… Way, Truth, & Life… Mother, Child, & Breath…
None of these words are entirely adequate! None of these terms alone really gets at and names completely the great “I AM”, Yahweh, the Mystery of God… These are simply human terms… Let us go out this day, ready to continue dancing with God. Amen.