The Great Dance (Trinity C)

“The Great Dance”
Feast of the Holy Trinity (Year C)
26 May 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

A couple of weeks ago, Elena and I were hiking up to Upper Table Rock.  We saw great variety of wildflowers, many of which I misidentified with little pocket guide to North American wildflowers, but which Dr. Frank Lang later helped me to identify correctly. 

One of the ones I got right was the trillium:  a delicate white flower made up of a three pointed leaf-like bracts surmounted by three pointed white petals and centered with golden stamens and pistils, also organized in three.  All the groupings of three attach to a single stem and root.  The juxtaposition of the bracts and petals make a shape like a Star of David.    Trillium Ovatum, or the Pacific or Western Trillium, is so common in Oregon’s springtime forests that it is often mistakenly called the Oregon State Flower, while this legislature-bestowed honor actually belongs to the Oregon Grape.   

The trillium is definitely our Trinity Church flower, though we can never use this wildflower in our altar arrangements: they must not be picked in the wild, given their fragility and general risks to their habitat.   Its groupings of three joined to one remind us of the Holy Trinity, which gives our parish its name.  A few years ago, Trinity had an Arts Sunday with poems and short stories written by parishioners, some now gone and some still here, including Ed and Mary Brubaker, Charles Armstrong, Michael and Charlotte Foley, Gloria Boyd, John Garver, and Carol Howser.  The small book that resulted was called—what else?—Trillium. 

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is difficult and generally seen as not particularly accessible.  This is due in large part to the fact that it is an abstract idea, without much story or narrative attached.   The doctrine of the Trinity generally describes God in eternal being, outside of time.  Story and narrative require time for a sequence of events, cause and effect, tension and resolution.  Stories move us; abstract ideas absent story, not so much.   And then the math doesn’t seem to add up:  1 + 1 + 1 = 1? 

It is important to remember that the Trinity isn't just "Three guys up in heaven," who actually are one.  The word describes a process, a dynamism, a mystery in what we call the Divine. 

Frederick Buechner writes:  

“The much-maligned doctrine of the Trinity is an assertion that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there is only one God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God. The Trinity is also a way of saying something about God and the way he is within himself, i.e., God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens. In other words, the love God is love not as a noun but as a verb. This verb is reflexive as well as transitive. If the idea of God as both Three and One seems far-fetched and obfuscating, look in the mirror someday.

“There is (a) the interior life known only to yourself and those you choose to communicate it to (the Father). There is (b) the visible face which in some measure reflects that inner life (the Son). And there is (c) the invisible power you have in order to communicate that interior life in such a way that others do not merely know about it, but know it in the sense of its becoming part of who they are (the Holy Spirit). Yet what you are looking at in the mirror is clearly and indivisibly the one and only You” (originally published in Wishful Thinking).  

St. Augustine in his great Treatise De Trinitate wrote that the doctrine of the Trinity is another way of saying that “God is Love.”  He is clear that this does not mean simply that what we know as “love” is God, but rather that within God, God as God is, is self-giving social interaction.  This is the true form and source of what we know as “love,” or at least what we know as “love” as it ought to be. God, as both our origin and source as well as our end and goal, is also the source of all our love and what all our love tends toward.  

One of the Cappadocian Fathers who developed the doctrine of the Trinity in fourth century Gregory of Nazanianus, first used the word perichoreisis, or “a dancing about” to describe the dynamic beauty of the interaction of the between the persons of the Godhead (Epistle 101). 

Here, perhaps, is an image that helps bring narrative into the abstractions of the doctrine.  Dance can be seen as a series of steps, interactions such as leading and following, with a flow and rhythm, a building and climax, just as a story.  But it can also be seen as an entirety, a single event or doing, and thus can translate well the timelessness of the abstraction of the doctrine. 

A Dance of Love:  this is one of the ways of thinking that makes “Trinity” accessible to me.  It also brings close the doctrine to the name of our Church here in Ashland.  A Dance of Love: mutual self-giving, self-sacrifice, listening, loving, occasionally leading or challenging.  Losing oneself in order to find oneself.  A Dance of Love. 

Jesus prayed for all believers before his death, “I pray … that all might be one, as you, Father are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us” (John 17:20-21).  Living in the Spirit transforms us, and makes us one.  This makes us each more authentically ourselves. 

One of the great things about this parish is the amount that people are invested, the amount of ownership people have of the ministries and service of the Church.   We all share in a common ministry, and most try to respond to God’s call.  Trinity parish is well named:  The Father (or Mother, if you prefer) brings us together here and bids us to live and to awaken.  The Son (or Child) calls us follow him: declare the Happy News of God’s Reign, serve others, comfort and help the sick, shelter and clothe and feed the poor.  The Spirit gives us power to do more than we can do ourselves, breaks down barriers between us, and gives us hearts to love, and reverently worship and rejoice. 

Thanks be to God. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.