Divine Dance - 6-12-22
Divine Dance
Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
John 16:12-15
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Prayer
God for us, we call you Father. God alongside us, we call you Jesus. God within us, we call you Holy Spirit. You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds and enlivens all things, even us and even me. Every name falls short of your goodness and greatness. We can only see who you are in what is. We ask for perfect seeing – as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be – amen. (Prayer by Richard Rohr)
In her book Circle of Quiet, Madeline L’Engle repeats Dorothy Sayers’ story of a Japanese man who’s politely listening to a Christian who is trying to explain the concept of the Trinity. The Japanese man is very puzzled – “Honorable Father, very good. Honorable Son, very good. Honorable Bird I do not understand at all.” Madeline observes, “Very few of us understand ‘Honorable Bird,’ except to acknowledge that without his power and grace nothing could be written, painted or composed at all. To say anything beyond this about the creative process is like pulling all the petals off a flower in order to analyze it and ending up having destroyed the flower.”
Trinity Sunday is one of those Sundays when preachers have to be careful not to pull all the petals off the flower while attempting to analyze it. It’s a task easier said than done. While in seminary our theology professors taught us that the Trinity was made of one God, one essence, and three natures, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Simple right? But what I have learned since that time in the early 90’s is that the whole idea of the Trinity just didn’t seem all that relevant. We rarely talk about the Spirit in the Presbyterian Church; in fact, most folks in our denomination talk more about Jesus than God. It seems that we, like most Christian denominations spend most of our time talking about Jesus, and rightfully so, but what about God and Spirit? Where do they fit in our divine dance?
Some twelve years ago, William Paul Young wrote a beautiful and somewhat controversial book entitled The Shack. In his book, Young portrays the Trinity as Papa, an older-aged black woman, Jesus, a middle-aged Middle-eastern man, and Sarayu, an Asian woman described as a ‘whisp of breath or air.’ Young’s book created quite a stir for lots of reasons, but for many theologians it opened the doors to revisit the Trinity and there has been much thought and written about the Trinity since then.
Students of Christianity have generally set aside the Trinity as a mystery that just is and can’t really be explained or understood. For us as Christians the question of Jesus’ status as part of the godhead remains. Why does God need three names or natures? How does one God inhabit three forms? How can God be both three and one? It makes me wonder if it is in fact a Divine dance.
Scripture often compounds the problem by making it sound as if all three operate independently of one another. A portion of our gospel passage this morning highlights the problem when Jesus tells his disciples he is going to be leaving but will send the Spirit and that all that God has is also Jesus’. Who are all these people? How can God the Father be his own son? And if Jesus is God, then whom is he talking to? And where does the Holy Spirit come in? Is that the spirit of God, the spirit of Jesus, or someone else altogether? If they are all one, they why do they come and go at different times, and how can one of then send another of them? Talk about split personalities – Freud would have a blast with this.
Our past and present theologians have offered answers to all of these questions and I never really began to think about it again until The Shack came out. I accepted those ancient understandings as earnest human efforts to describe something that cannot be described, which is the nature of God. We would probably be better off if we left the whole subject alone, but if you have ever lain on your back looking up at a fall night’s sky then you know how hard that is to do. You lie there thinking unexplainable things such as what is out there, exactly where it all stops, and what is beyond. You lie there wondering who made it and why and where an infinitesimal speck of dust like you or me comes from. After a while you start making up answers or else you go inside where the television can erase that profound thinking.
But William P. Young’s book got a lot of us talking, in good ways and perhaps not so good of ways. What became very clear to me as I first read the book and then went to the movie is that the Trinity was perhaps less about forms and more about relationship. The relationship between Papa, Jesus and Sarayu was profound in a shared countenance, a shared thinking, a shared love. Relationships are entwined, entrenched, elusive, messy, enabling, enrapturing, maddening, exhilarating, frustrating, exposing and too beautiful for words – perhaps a divine dance. It is relationship that provides the backdrop and framing for the art of our lives, apart from which our colors would simply disperse into the darkness formless and void, awaiting the hovering of the Spirit to collect them and with Her shades and hues, breathe them into us to set them free. Perhaps one of the most important ideas that has re-formed since Young’s book is around this relationship of the godhead. Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three – a divine dance if you will.
Brother Elias Marechal, a monk at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Ga, shares, “The ancient Greek fathers depict the Trinity as a Round Dance: an event that has continued since the beginning of time. An infinite current of love streams without ceasing, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro: gliding from Father to Son, and back to the Father, in one timeless happening. This circular current of love continues night and day . . .” This circle dance is not reserved exclusively for the big Three; it is not a closed circle; we all are invited in – all creation is invited in and this is the Divine’s intention from the very beginning. Divine inclusion was Plan A from the beginning.
The Trinitarian Revolution that has evolved since The Shack reveals God as always involved instead of the ‘in and out deity that leaves most of humanity orphaned much of the time. Instead of the small god who thinks and acts like us, this new divine dance which focuses on relatedness and inclusion reveals God as with us in all of life instead of standing on the sidelines, always critiquing which things belong and which don’t.’
If in fact there is a spiritual mathematical paradigm shift going on then the implications could be staggering; every vital impulse, every force of the future, every creative momentum, every loving surge, every dash towards beauty, every running toward truth, every ecstasy before simple goodness, every leap of faith, every bit of ambition of humanity and thee earth, for the wholeness and holiness, is the eternally-flowing life of the Relational God.
This triune God allows us, impels us, to live easily with God everywhere and all the time, in the budding of a plant, the smile of the gardener, the excitement of a teenage boy over his new girlfriend, the tireless determination of a researcher looking for a cure for cancer, the pride of a mechanic over his hidden work under the hood, the loving nuzzle of horses, the tenderness which eagles feed their chicks, the downward flow of every mountain stream and even the sudden loss of a life-long love. This new divine dance which may be emerging suggests that God is not far off and distant, but present in everything, a loving flow that is still speaking, still present and alive within you, me, everything.
I believe there is a divine dance revolution that is underway, the old plausible structures of theology and divinity are re-forming perhaps because much of religion is in rigor mortis. If my instincts are right, this unearthing of Trinity as relationship and eternal relatedness can’t come a moment too soon. I’m convinced that beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils – political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another based on race, gender, religion or sexual orientation – the greatest dis-ease facing humanity today is our profound and painful sense of disconnection – disconnection from God, ourselves, each other and from our world – this fourfold isolation is our sinful brokenness. The sheer scope of disconnectedness is staggering.
I’m discovering that the gift of the Trinity – this divine understanding of relationship and relatedness offers a grounded reconnection with God, self, others and the world that all religion and spiritualty, and arguably, even politics, is aiming for – but which conventional religion, spirituality and yes, politics, fall short. God’s joyous unveiling as Trinity can melt even the most hardened constrictions, illuminating our way toward a fourfold re-union, reconnection, relationship of Spirit, self, society and space. May God bless this divine dance with a renewed vision of relationship and salvation for all of creation – thanks be to God – amen.