Trinity Sunday is the only day of the church year that the lectionary invites us to ponder a teaching of the Church rather than a teaching of Jesus. The scriptural readings for today are carefully chosen to reflect the Three-in-One doctrine of God as Creator, Christ and Spirit. The scriptural readings each year on this day provide Biblical basis for a non-scriptural word: Trinity. Trinity Sunday is useful to reflect on the many ways we know or experience the divine presence in our lives. The history of the Trinity is the attempt of Christian believers, from the earliest followers of Jesus and the writers of the NT, to the early church’s formulation of the creeds in the fourth century, to contemporary theologians, to put into words their understanding of God based on their experience of the divine spirit they meet in Jesus. The roots of the doctrine are in experience and emphasize that we know God in relationship, to the divine and to each other and to the created world. The development of the doctrine of the Trinity reflects the experience of the early church and early church fathers, as they came to understand and express their experience, of the risen Christ and of the fellowship of the growing Christian community.
The Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into full participation with God, a flow, a relationship, a waterwheel of always outpouring love. Trinity basically says that God is a verb much more than a noun.
Richard Rohr has this to say on the subject of the Trinity: “The Western Church tended to have a more static view of both Christ and the Trinity–theologically “correct” but largely irrelevant for real life, more a mathematical conundrum than invitation to new consciousness. In our attempts to explain the Trinitarian mystery, the Western Church overemphasized the individual “names” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but not so much the quality of the relationships between them, which is where all the power and meaning lies! The real and essential point is how the three ‘persons’ relate to one another–infinite outpouring and infinite receiving. The Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into full participation with God, a flow, a relationship, a waterwheel of always outpouring love. Trinity basically says that God is a verb much more than a noun. The Trinity is a wonderful mystery that can never fully be understood with the rational mind, but can only be known through love, prayer, and participation. For God to be truth, God had to be one; for God to be love, God had to be two; and for God to be joy, God had to be three! Any true Trinitarian theology will always offer the soul endless creativity, an utterly open horizon, and delicious food for the soul. Trinitarian thinkers are overwhelmed by infinite abundance and flow.”
No language can do justice to the breadth and depth of the love, grace and power of God revealed in the texts appointed for today. Active Life Spirit renewing life every moment: “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (Proverbs). Reconciler whose power holds people together in community: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts” (Romans). Emmanuel—God with us—leading us in the Way: “the Spirit of truth . . . will guide you into all truth” (John). Today is a day to move more fully into the depths of the mystery of our life in God. It is a day, as is every day, for being reminded of the multi-dimensions of this God who is One, yet known to us in so many ways, as Father, Son, Spirit, as Creator, as Way, Truth, Life, as Mother, Child, Breath, as Wisdom, Reconciler, Companion, Advocate, Giver of Hope, Joy, Peace. Is it any wonder that we refer to the Divine ultimately as Mystery?
Trinity Sunday marks the transition in the church year from Easter to Pentecost. Now we move from our three-fold celebration of the great seasons of the church year into—and I love this double meaning—ordinary time. In the next six months we find god in the ordinary, serving god in the ordinary day-to-day events of our lives. “The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask.” We are to see the Holy Spirit at work in here and out there, in the seeming chaos, encouraged to discern the divine in the least likely of places or situations. This transition to ordinary time asks us to focus on both the Risen Christ, who gives life in the church, and the continuing force of the spirit of Christ that is alive and at work in the world. The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s somewhat mysterious attempt to witness to the link between the historical Jesus and the worldwide force of God’s life-giving presence.
The good news is that God’s creative power for life is at work in the world. The gospel of Jesus Christ contradicts the common assumption that the world has refused and rejected that power for life—and that our proper stance in the world is therefore one of fear expressed as anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence. The claim for God’s Wisdom and Truth refuses the notion that the world is ruled by chance or depends solely upon us for meaning. Shakespeare’s Macbeth utters this bleakest of views:
Out, out, brief candle.
Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player Who struts and frets his brief hour on the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale,
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The Love of the three-person God stands in contradiction to the anxiety and despair that assail a world that seems to be insane, disordered, and on its own. The texts today attest that the world continues to be the place where the gift of life is given. As Walter Brueggeman comments, the God described to us in such passages of scripture is one who makes no distinctions, who authorizes hospitality, who opens prisons, who breathes the world anew, who assures good order in the world. Today’s Bible readings invite us to live in the world boldly, freely, in peace, at home, for the Divine has been there in creation since the outset. The relation of the creator and creation, of creator and mankind, is one of deep and endless joy; both together rejoice in the world and in the humanity that are both known to be “very good.”
There is a Greek word that has been used to describe something of the life of Divine co-unity we worship: “perichoresis” (perry-cor-ee-sis). The word means “dancing around” or “dancing in a circle,” and theologians have used it to describe the dance of the Eternal-Three-in-One, each distinct yet interpenetrating the other, each pouring out grace and love to the other in the endless dance. It is into this eternal dance that we have been invited. So let today and every ordinary day be our dancing day with God!