Three in One – The Divine Dance
Gen. 1:1-2:4a; Matt. 28: 16-20

The irony of Trinity Sunday is that we attempt, each year, to honor the mystery and paradox of God….… with logic and words.  What’s wrong with this picture?!

OK… so this is an impossible task… but I’m going to do it anyway… because it’s really important. 

People outside and inside the Christian tradition say, “You pray to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit… you talk about God as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer… Is God three or one?”  And the answer is…. Yes!

Christians have been saying “yes” to this question for over two thousand years.  God is three in one.  However, they haven’t always meant the same thing when they said it.

Some Christians think of the Trinity as a kind of board of directors of a heavenly corporation… with 3 equal partners.  Each has a particular responsibility:  Father is in charge of creation (production & maintenance?); the Son handles salvation (sales & distribution?); the Spirit handles the reception and enjoyment of salvation (customer satisfaction?)

Problem: we’ve got 3 gods with 3 different tasks.  Where is the unity in this trinity?  It’s true they are all working in the one corporation, but there is no intrinsic unity.

Another way this has been explained:  The Trinity is like that board of directors, but with one boss and 2 agents or subordinates.  Very popular in ancient world because folks couldn’t get their heads around the idea that God would take on human form.  It’s actually a popular idea today, too, for some of the same reasons.  Physical world was seen as messy or inferior to the spiritual world.  The divine wouldn’t inhabit a human body.  No… Jesus and the Holy Spirit were two agents of God who were invested with divine authority and power, but they are still less than God. 

Problem:  Is God a loving savior like Jesus or not?  Is God at work in our lives, renewing and transforming us, like the Spirit, or not?  What happens if there’s a conflict between God and God’s agents?  Who can we count on?

Another favorite explanation:  the Trinity is like an actor who changes costumes or masks to play 3 different roles in a play.  That has some appeal.  It recognizes 3 distinct activities of the Trinity, but…  it also begs the question of who the real, true God behind these roles is.

If God is like an actor playing three roles, how do we know what God is really like?  How can we be sure that God might not change roles or step out from behind one of those roles and become uncaring, hostile, and vengeful? 

Well, there were a lot of other ideas too… just as there are today…  To all of them, the early Church leaders said “no” and insisted on oneness and threeness. 

They insisted that there is one personal God who lives and works in three different ways at the same time.  (repeat)

The Creator of heaven and earth… ruler, protector, preserver = God over us.

The Savior, Reconciler, Liberator = God with us.

The Transformer, Sustainer, Empowerer = God in and among us.

They are not separate beings or functions – all of God is involved in everything God does!

Oh, no… you might be thinking.  In the beginning was God…  like the starting pitcher in a baseball game.  Then came Jesus, the reliever… to put a new spin on the ball…  and after Jesus had done his part… came the Closer… who stays in the game until the end.

Not so, I say!… In the Genesis story of creation, in verse 2 it says, God’s Spirit “swept over the face of the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light.’”  Gospel of John - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came into being through him…”  The Spirit and the Word were both present at the beginning of creation. 

In the passage Linda read for us from the end of the Gospel of Matthew…  Risen Christ tells his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”… he lays out clearly for us the three-fold nature of God.

And he also says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…”  who but God has that kind of authority?

And he closes by saying, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Who but the Holy Spirit could say that?

Jesus is not just pointing to the three parts of the Trinity, he is embodying them!  All of God was present in that moment.

It’s a bit of a mind bender, isn’t it? – This Doctrine of the Trinity tries to preserve a mystery that can’t really be explained.  It can only be experienced.

It’s a paradox…  It was in seminary that I came to understand and appreciate the value of a good paradox… two or more things that may seem to be contradictory but are actually true.    I found that the more paradoxical things became, the closer I was to the Spirit.  This isn’t always comfortable, but we really need to resist the urge to make them logical or to fit our understanding of how life works… for in that direction lies danger.

(Go to triangle)  Let’s look at this triangle symbol…  For centuries, this has been the accepted symbol for the Trinity. 

We’ve looked at it and said, God has 3 sides, but it’s one triangle…Well, that’s OK… except we say 3 equal sides, but what we have actually done is put God, the Father, at the top… and then we slip into the thinking that I described earlier… where the other two are somewhat lesser beings at the bottom.  We have done that as a church and as a society.

The problem is reflected in the language… God, the Father, God the Son…  Christianity was born in a patriarchal, monarchial, hierarchical society.  The language we use to describe the Trinity reflects these roots… and that language continues to shape our understanding of God and our relationship with God and each other.  When we use only masculine language for the members of the Trinity, we tell only part of the story.

In the Genesis Creation Story, it clearly says that human beings were created in the image of God…  “male and female God created them…”  Where is that feminine side of God reflected in the Trinity? 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Spirit is referred to as ruah and shekinah… both feminine nouns.  What happened to that?  It was almost lost, but Christian feminist theologians have done much to help us recover it.

They have helped me in my own spiritual and vocational journey.  It has been important for me to discover and experience the feminine side of God… to go back and search through scripture for the clues that have been nearly buried…  so that I could feel affirmed as a woman… and particularly as a clergywoman. 

At two important places in my journey… both times during guided meditations…  God came to me in the form of a woman…  These two images have become Spirit guides who have been with me every since and continue to help me grow in my understanding of God – and in my relationships with God and others.  God has helped me restore the gender balance in the Trinity.  You’ll find that I will rarely use masculine pronouns when I refer to God, because for me they are too limiting. 

But the problem is much bigger than just our understanding of the Trinity.  God is not only described as Father in the Trinity, but also as King. Traditional symbol of triangle w/crown at the top.  If we take this image of a masculine, all-powerful, supreme being as the description of God, then we, who are created in God’s image, will organize ourselves that way too…  hierarchical, monarchial, patriarchal.  And that’s just what both the Church and our society have done.

We have created a Church and a society that value the masculine over the feminine, the rich over the poor, the powerful over the powerless, and so on – we’ve even extended it to include skin color. 

Remember how I said at the beginning that it is important to talk about the Trinity?  I wasn’t kidding.  How we understand God… who God is… how God is active in the world… shapes our understanding of ourselves, how we treat each other, and how we organize our lives. 

We need to trade in old, unbalanced models for better ones… in our personal lives, in our public lives, and definitely, in our spiritual lives.

I want to share a different way of thinking about the Trinity with you.  While the Western or Roman Church has been fixated on the triangle, the Eastern Orthodox Church has been seeing the Trinity as a circle.  It is often pictured as three figures sitting around a table together sharing a meal.  (Three dancers come forward and make a circle)  Ohh… that really speaks to my heart.  There’s nothing an Italian likes better than having the family gathered around the table for a meal.  J

Many centuries ago, John of Damascus, a Greek theologian, developed this understanding of the Trinity with a concept called perichoresis.  It gives a lovely picture of God.  Perichoresis – peri = around (think perimeter); choresis = dancing (think choreography).  The Creator, Redeemer and Transformer are like three dancers holding hands, dancing around together in harmonious, joyful freedom.  I love it!  (They dance)

The oneness of God now is understood as the unity of a community of persons who love each other and live together in harmony.  There is a deep, intimate, indissoluble unity between them.  There are not three independent persons who decided to get together to form a dance group.  They are what they are only in relationship to each other.  Each exists only in the relationship and would not exist apart from it.  God is intrinsically relational.

If these dancers could spin round and round at very high speed… what would happen to the colors that bind them together?  Turn into white light?  God is like white light… that is refracted into different colors… but they don’t exist separately from each other… they are always part of the white light.

So, there is no solitary person here separated from the others; no above and below; no first, second, and third in importance; no ruling and controlling or being ruled and controlled.  No hierarchy or monarchy.  Instead there is the divine dance of joyful community!   (thank dancers)

We are surrounded by this trinity of creative power, love, and empowerment… and God invites us into the dance… to realize that we are created to be relational, too, just like God… and that we are a part of the dance… a part of the community of God… and we don’t exist separately from each other!  Like the colors of the rainbow, we are exist only in relationship to each other and to the Light of God.

God calls us to invite others to experience themselves as part of the dance too.  That’s the Good News!  And it’s our calling…  Enter into the dance… there’s a place for you here…  and invite others to come and experience their place in the Light too.