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“Choosing to Dance”
Genesis 1.1-2.4 & Matthew 28.16-20
June 7, 2020
Trinity Sunday, the Sunday, the pastor usually takes the day off, leaving someone else to preach about the Triune God.
It is usually the Sunday when those leading a children’s sermon bring in a baseball, an egg, or even a glass of water to explain the Trinity. While the intentions are good, they a lot to be desired. Why? For instance, water, while it captures the idea that God is one, it doesn’t do an excellent job of showing how God is three and one at the same time. This view, also known as "modalism," was rejected by the early church.
The next step in trying to explain the Trinity is merely saying, “The Trinity is a mystery, and thus, cannot be explained.” Yes, this is true! The Trinity is a mystery. When we describe God, we can only use similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. So, yes, our communication fails, but we can’t throw the baby out with the baptismal water in our efforts to explain the Trinity. I love what Jesuit priest Karl Rahner said about the Trinity, "Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”
Yet, we must speak more about the Trinity. We need to explain the Trinity. We can be transformed by the doctrine of the Trinity.
Wait, pastor. Didn’t you just contradict yourself? You said our language fails, and then in the next breath, you said, “We need to explain the Trinity.” What gives?
First, we absolutely must maintain humility before the Great Mystery; otherwise, religion worships itself and its formulations instead of God. In our adventure into the life of the Triune God, this is essential.
Next, I do believe we need to talk more about the Trinity. The way to explain the Trinity is by experiencing the love of the Triune God. This will require us to let go of the egg, the water, and the clover, and walk into the flowing love of the Trinity. To know and be transformed by the Trinity, we must choose to dance.
To dance, we must give ourselves permission to enter into the music that is the mystery of the Trinity. By this, I mean, we need to see the ‘mystery’ of the Trinity as something that can’t be understood, but instead, it is something we can endlessly understand. As one theologian said, there is no point at which you can say, “I’ve got it.” Always and forever, the mystery gets you! In the same way, we don’t hold God in our pockets; instead, God holds us and knows our deepest identity. The first step in the dance with God is that God is the dance. The dance is called Love.
Love. The entire Christian faith rests in and on Love. Love is what created in the first place; Love is what defeated death and brought about resurrection; Love is what gives us life now. Scripture affirms this when it declares that God is love. I love [see what I did there] how one theologian puts it when she says, “The name “God” points to this mystery of love in its unlimited depth, the center of all that is; love that overflows onto new life. God is not a super-natural Being hovering above earth, but the supra-personal whole, the Omega, who exists in all and through all.”[1] The nature of God is love. God exists as love. God is love.
What kind of love? Isn’t this the question? Surely God isn’t the love we have, for say, our favorite baseball team or tacos, right? Correct. The love of God is relational. Again, Ilia Delio gets to this beautifully when she says, “God is love—eternal, divine, overflowing, personal love. Love goes out to another for the sake of the other and manifests itself in relationship. Divine love is personally relational—Trinity: Lover, Beloved, and the Breath of Love.” What we read in the Genesis text, what we see in the commission from Christ, and what we receive in the Spirit is the knowledge of how from all eternity, God has sought to love another, to be love in another, and to be loved by the other forever. This other is Christ, who is the aim and purpose of our lives.
What does this mean for us? I’m not much of a swimmer these days, but as a child, I loved the water. One of my favorite things to do was make a ‘whirlpool’ by swimming around and around until the current took me by itself. The love of God is like the flow of the whirlpool—the love shared between the Father/Mother, the Son/Christ, and the Holy Spirit is a gentle flow of love. It is a flow that doesn’t force you in, nor will it pull you under, but instead, it brings you it carries you deeper into the center of the pool—the heart of the Triune God.
Yes, the love of the Trinity is a dance. It is one we are invited to participate. Father Richard Rohr says this about the flow of God as dance, “God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love. God is Absolute Friendship. God is not just a dancer; God is the dance itself.” God is dynamic, always moving, creating, and loving--inviting us to dance in the liberating flow of Love.
Church, here is why all of this is important. To understand the Trinity as a detached, static explanation of a God up there prevents us from entering into the life-giving flow of love that is God. We limit what the love of God can do in our lives when we try and figure out the math behind it all. The transforming love of the Triune God exists not in the names of the persons themselves, but in the relationships shared between the Father/Mother, Son/Christ, and Holy Spirit. The real and essential point is how the three “persons” relate to one another: infinite outpouring and infinite receiving.
We need the Trinity. We must talk about the Trinity. We have to explain the Trinity but not with our silly analogies of baseballs, butterflies, and different identities of a ballerina. No, we must explain it by how we experience the Trinity. Here’s the thing, friends, the Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into full participation with God—a flow, a relationship, a waterwheel of always outpouring love. God is a verb much more than a noun. God as a verb means God is actively creating and continuously dancing—and in turn, inviting us into the flow. This is important because if God is love, and if we are in God, then we are Love ourselves. God isn’t interested in hell and death, but instead, God is pouring out love.
So why should we fixate on anything other than love? You see, friends, I believe that when we resist the flow of the Trinity, when we push back on the abundant and free love poured out upon us by God, that is when we experience pain, suffering, and injustice. When we try to dam up the love of God, that’s when humanity tastes the dry mouth of death. When we try to lead the dance instead of letting Love lead, that’s when we experience isolation so deep that we react with violence and despair. The Christian life is a commitment to love, to give birth to God in one’s own life, and to become midwives of divinity in this ever-changing world. We are to be wholemakers of love in a world of change.
The love of the Trinity is transformative. The love of the Trinity, which flows like a lazy river at a water park, is what will lead us beyond the ways we restrict God's love. When we enter the flow of the love shared in the Trinity, that is when we will see God's peace dwell in our midst. When we come to the dance of the Trinity, that is when we will walk along still waters where racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the other prejudices that stand in our way from becoming the beloved family are washed away. When we allow the love of the Triune God leads us in the dance that is our life, we will no longer live in animosity towards others or demand control of the other or creation, but instead, we will all become lovers of the Divine. When we allow the love the Trinity to consume us, we will come to know what it really means to live, and move, and have our being in Love.
God is Love.
God is flow.
God is dance.
I guess the question Trinity Sunday asks of us is, "Will you have this Dance?"
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