Trinity Sunday B 2009 Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17 June 7, 2009 The Trinity We celebrate it every year after Pentecost Sunday. What does that mean? Three gods in one? How do we describe it? An apple? Core, flesh, skin? A person? Mother, aunt, sister? That God is one entity experienced by the world in three different ways? Monotheists, Jews/Muslims/Christians/in particular assert that there is one God and only one God. If this is part of our belief why do we then go the route of saying that in our one God, there are three persons? It gets confusing and it seems to have little to do with every day faith. When you try to read about it, you are hit mostly with scholarly language trying to wrap itself around a huge spiritually abstract concept. What can we say about God? Herbert O’Driscoll once said that trying to describe God was like being a gnat flitting around a brightly lit light bulb, the kind made of clear glass. You can’t land on it. You can’t see the whole thing all the way around at once. So you fly in as close as you can and dart back out and tell others what you experienced. And they fly in as close as they can and dart back out and tell others what they experienced. And then new gnats come along and dart in for the first time and the exchange goes on. Isaiah’s vision of the heavenly throne with seraphs surrounding it gives us a similar picture. And the prophet’s mouth is touched with the holy fire and goes from the throne to tell of God. What gnats can say about the light bulb is a collection of experiences always being gathered always being reinterpreted over time. That’s about how we come to say anything about God. So why the Trinity as a solution to describing our indescribable God? Well, the Jewish people had been flying around the light bulb for some time. They had come to form an understanding of God as creator, the source of all that is, maker of heaven and earth. And they wrote about God’s Spirit, God’s wind, God’s breath, that hovered and moved forth from God from the very beginning and has continued to move through creation, through the ages… They also experienced that God wants to be known. That God made us to be in relationship with him. And they understood that God continues to seek ways to get through to us so that we will ‘get it.’ And God is very confident that when we get it, Get what God is about, We will absolutely fall in love with God and we will have profound love and care for each other. Then, the people of Jesus’ time on earth experienced him. And for about 400 years they flitted and darted back and forth struggling to figure God out, now that Jesus was in the picture. For Christians in the first 400 years after Christ there were two markers to describing God. Who sent Jesus Christ? Who raised Jesus Christ? Who is rightly to be called the Lord God in light of what happens with Jesus of Nazareth? How does a faithful Jew say the Shema: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And hear the words of Thomas when he experiences Christ risen: ‘My Lord and my God!’ Or hear Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossians: ‘In Jesus Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.’ And Jesus’ followers experience of the profound unity he shared with God. In the long struggle enough of the faithful in the Church came to be able to say together that what happened within Jesus himself, what happened to Jesus during his lifetime here, and all that happened through Jesus was not less than ultimate, not less than God. And then a little later they were to get to the common understanding that the Holy Spirit also bears the same fullness of God. The other thing that they came to agree upon is when we are trying to see into the light bulb, it is in that threesome that we begin to get to see that part of God that always seeks to know and be known. To love and be loved. Trinity dispels idea that only a lone individual can be called ‘One’. That God in God’s fullness is not a self-contained, uninvolved, dispassionate, and singular individual. If we think we are made in that image, Then full life is presumed to offer us self-sufficiency. Trinity offers this: Being One, means being One with another, so One that between you there is One Spirit. Here are what some gnats have reported about the lightbulb through the years: Tertullian (160 to 220) and Hildegard of Bingen (early 10^th century) shared a way of trying to give image to Trinity. They spoke of Trinity as like a plant with the Father as a deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the world the root and plant exchanging life, and the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance “fructifying the earth with flower and fruit.” It fits the New Testament language about the fruits of the Spirit. Hildegard loved nature and she saw that all the color green in the earth was a reminder that the life force was ever flowing from God, through Christ, moving throughout the world by the Spirit. Joan Chittester sees it similarly(21^st century) The Father creates, Jesus is our Way, and the Spirit continually fills us as we learn along the way. ‘The Spirit of God permeates the world and lives in each of us in an ongoing call to the Christing of the universe.’ Julian of Norwich (12^th century) I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation. The second is God’s taking of our nature The third is God at work in our nature. In this God penetrates us in every way, Our length our breadth, in height and in depth – without end. And it is all one Love. Augustine (3^rd century) Suggests a threefold structure in our own self-awareness – Remembering Understanding Willing That in being made in the image and likeness of God, We also have a Trinitarian likeness That when all three are in concert, there is fullness of life. And we’ll borrow from Tertullian’s image First, God the Creator, the deep root – There is our self, our beginning that was made by God that we yearn to and are able to remember. Parker Palmer Our deepest calling is to grow into our authentic selfhood, Whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks – We will also find our path of authentic service to the world, For there is no selfhood outside of relationship. As Frederick Buechner describes it: The place where you deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Or the psalmist: For you created my inmost parts You knit me together in my mother’s womb, I will thank you because I am marvelously made Your works are wonderful and I know it well. We must go back into that place, those roots where we were formed where our truest self resides. Then – the plant coming forth from the roots – There is our self who is formed in a human body planted on this earth, needing its air and water, its sun and its shade spending a lifetime trying to understand how to live and love within its confines. And looking to Jesus, who lived and died as one of us, as our Way. And thirdly, the fragrance and fruits that come forth from our earthly planted selves– There is that part of us that lives and acts and plans and dreams beyond this body like the scent of a rose or the pollen that floats with the breeze We have a zillion choices, a trillion ways to express ourselves, To grow, to learn, Think about the infinite possibilities available to one person in one lifetime. We have the will to make choices that will bear the fruit of ‘Christing’ the earth. And we’ll continue through the ages to flit around that Light bulb we are so attracted to. And the glimpses we get will most likely reflect the Oneness of God made complete in the community of love perfectly exchanged, moving through our lives, sending us forth and yet always calling us back to the Light.