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| "Hospitality of Abraham" ("Holy Trinity"). Hand-painted icon by Andrei Rublev. |
"The Dance of Love"
Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17
Over
the years, I’ve had a number of front porch theological conversations with
Muslim neighbors, in which they’ve asked about the Trinity. I’ve been asked, “So, about the Trinity: One
God or three? These kinds of questions have led to some interesting theological
conversations about the nature of God over the years
In the Christian calendar, this is Trinity Sunday—the only
Sunday in the church year dedicated to a doctrine of the church.
For centuries Christians have sung,
confessed our faith, prayed, baptized, received new members into our community
in the name of a Trinitarian God who is traditionally Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. But for many Christians in our
time (and for some in earlier times) the doctrine of the Trinity has been a problem.
How many of us have heard a
conversation in a church school class or study group that goes something like
this: “Do we have to believe in the Trinity-- that God is three-in-one and
one-in three--to be a Christian?” “What does it mean? How can you put three
persons together and get one, or divide one into three and still have one?”
If you think about it, you can
understand why our Muslim and Jewish friends have a problem with the Trinity
and wonder if we really do worship one God.
The defenders of the faith--the traditional
faith--might blunder through a fuzzy explanation and then conclude: “There’s a
reason we call it a mystery that no one can fully understand.” Maybe they say,
“We just have to accept it by faith.”
I agree that the Trinity is a
mystery no one can fully understand. The
doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that there is always more to God than we can
conceive… always more of God than we can explain… always more than we can sing
or preach or prove.
So—what do we do with the
Trinity?
I think theology is important.
I think bad theology can hurt people…and hurts the church. The language we use when we speak and sing of
God is important.
Apparently, some ordinary Christians
in ancient times knew this. Theologian
Elizabeth Johnson observes how fascinated people of the late fourth century
were with speaking rightly about God.
She quotes a famous remark by
Gregory of Nyssa that describes the situation: “Even the baker,” he said, “does
not cease from discussing this. If you
ask the price of bread, he will tell you that the Father is greater and the Son
is subject to him.”[1]
It’s difficult for many people today
to grasp how bitterly this conflict divided the Christian world for several
centuries. The Nicene Creed was hammered
out to defend the faith tradition against the Arian claim that Christ was not
eternal, but created.
The burning big QUESTION in the ancient
church was “Who is Jesus Christ, in relation to God the Father and Creator?”
The Nicene Creed was the ancient
church’s answer to the questions of its time, using the best philosophical
constructs and language available to it at that time.
As (the late) theology professor
Shirley Guthrie wrote, the doctrine of the Trinity is “the church’s admittedly inadequate
way of trying to understand the biblical and Christian understanding of who God
is, what God is like, how and where God is at work in the world, what God
thinks about us human beings, does for us, requires of us, promises us.”[2]
We need to be clear with ourselves
and in talking with others that we don’t “believe in” the Trinity. We believe
in and trust in God, and the Trinity is a way Christians think about and speak
of God.
During times of controversy, the
church has found it necessary to re-interpret the gospel for new times, in
response to new situations and questions.
If you look through our Book of
Confessions,[3]
you’ll see that the “Scots Confession,” “the Heidelberg Catechism,” the “2nd
Helvetic Confession,” and the “Westminster Confession” were worked out during
the Reformation
period, in response to concerns particular to that time.
In 1934, the Confessional Synod of
the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen, Germany. They “sought a common message for the need
and temptation of the Church” in their day. The threat was the way the
Christian church was cooperating with the Nazi regime. The resulting confession of faith was what we
know as the “Declaration of Barmen.”
The 1960’s were turbulent times, and
the “Confession of 1967” was adopted by the Presbyterian Church “to call the
church to that unity in confession and mission which is required of disciples…”[4]
The theme of the Confession of 1967 was the church’s ministry of reconciliation, which has been a strong
theme in the mission of this congregation for several decades.
The Presbyterian Church had split at
the time of the Civil War, over the issue of slavery, and it took over a
hundred years for the northern and southern Presbyterian churches to be
reunited. At the time of the reunion,
the General Assembly voted to re-state the faith as a way of affirming what we
believe together. The result was “A
Brief Statement of Faith of 1991,”[5]
which we often say together in
worship. The “Brief Statement of Faith”
is a Trinitarian statement, which begins by stating that we trust in the one
triune God, whom alone we worship and serve.
The 2016 General Assembly made
history by voting to add the “Belhar Confession” to our Book of Confessions.[6] Belhar is a moving call for reconciliation and
a condemnation of racial injustice written in South Africa during the struggle
against Apartheid, to be a resource to the church during a time when racial
tension, injustice and violence in the United States make headlines nearly
every day.
We
are part of a living, growing tradition, and we continue to address new
situations and questions by re-stating our faith. One of the great themes of our Reformed
Tradition affirms the church reformed, always being reformed, according the
Word of God, as led by the Holy Spirit.
I believe that the controversies of
our time over sexuality issues are finally being worked out
after decades of conflict. I hope this
frees us to work through other important questions for living faithfully in our
time. For instance, how do we confess and live our faith in Jesus Christ in a
pluralistic world? How do we speak of
God in conversations with our neighbors who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist,
atheist, or “spiritual but not religious” or the “none’s” or “done's”? If we trust in a God who creates every person
in the image of God, a God who calls us to love our neighbor and to live
together in Beloved Community, what does our faith require of us in our
relationships with those who are different and those who are marginalized?
When we struggle over theology,
important things often get worked out.
We often learn something—sometimes in spite of ourselves. Even though we might want to dig in and
defend what we have always believed to be true, we have the Holy Spirit nudging
us, reminding us of what Jesus did and what he taught. We learn and grow, as the Holy Spirit leads
us further into the truth—just as Jesus promised
Jesus told his disciples that he
still had many things to say to them, but that they weren’t ready to hear them
yet. He promised that the Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of Truth, would guide his followers into all the truth.[7]
But from the earliest centuries of
the church, discerning theologians have stressed that all our language about
God, including the Trinitarian symbols, are inadequate and relative. The Bible
uses many images or metaphors for God, and other theologians have offered a
number of possibilities for speaking of God.[8]
I believe God continues to speak a
new word to us in new times--things we weren’t ready to hear before. We still have many things to learn, so we
need to be learners--theologians. We need to listen for what God’s teaching
Spirit has to say to us.
In my study this week, I was reminded that the Western Church’s
model of the Trinity has typically looked like a triangle, while the typical
model in Eastern Orthodoxy is a circle.
John of Damascus, a Greek theologian
who lived in the seventh century, developed the understanding of the Trinity
with a concept called perichoresis. I don’t bring a lot of Greek words into
sermons, but this one gives us such a beautiful picture of God. “Peri”-- as in perimeter--means
“around.” “Choresis literally means “dancing” -- as in choreography.
This isn’t an approach to the
Trinity that most of us in the Western part of the church are as familiar with,
but some contemporary theologians, like Jürgen Moltmann and Mirosalav Volf,
have written about it.
Father Richard Rohr has written a
very accessible book: “The Divine Dance:
The Trinity and Your Transformation,” that invites us to take a closer look
at the mystery of the Trinity. He says
we need a larger God than the understanding that seems to dominate our culture.
God is not what
most people think. God is not an
angry, distant moral scorekeeper or a supernatural Santa Claus handing out
cosmic lottery tickets to those who attend the right church or say the right
prayer. God isn’t a stern old man with a
white-beard, ready and eager to assign condemnation and punishment.[9]
I find the metaphor of a dancing God
beautiful and life-giving, and I think it is more faithful to the story of
God’s self-giving love we hear in the scriptures. Imagine it: Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit-- or Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer-- the three persons of the
Trinity are like three dancers holding hands, dancing around together in
harmonious, joyful freedom.
In today’s Gospel lesson, we heard, “God
did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
might be saved through him.” God is
not vengeful, not demanding of judgment or appeasement, not angry--but loving.
The cross is a sign of just how far God will go to show us that God
already loves us.
How do we proclaim the good news of
God’s love in our time? To those who have been baptized in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we need to proclaim the new, open,
love-filled space of our Triune God, the space where we are to love God with
all we’ve got and to love our neighbors--all
our neighbors-- like ourselves.
Our God is a relational God, and the
Trinity is all about relationship. I think the Trinity matters,
because--without the Trinity, some people can make claims that justify the
hatred of entire groups of people and call them animals. Without the Trinity,
some churches will claim to be church but carry on with self-centered,
individualistic, fear full messages, rather than a gospel of love and
community.
On this Trinity Sunday, what really
matters is being led further into God’s truth and God’s way of love.
Maybe, as Father Richard Rohr
suggests, we need to push back the furniture a bit and make room to dance with
the divine. Maybe that’s a better way to teach us all about God’s self-giving
love and how we can be part of the dance-- God’s dance of love and life.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you!
Amen.
Rev.
Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn,
Michigan
May
27, 2018
[1]
Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The
Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse.
[2] Shirley
C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, Revised
Edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), p. 71.
[4] The
Confession of 1967, article 9.05 in Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian
Church (USA).
[7]John
16:12
[8] See
William C. Placher, Narratives of a
Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture (Westminster John Knox
Press, 1994).
[9] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity
and Your Transformation. (Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge / Whitaker House), 2016.
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