The Divine Dance: Trinity as Love and Relationship

In the name of the blessed Trinity, one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

It's not uncommon when I meet someone new and upon discovering my vocation,

The response is some form of excuse For not believing in God.

Often it has to do with Some form of what I'd call proof, right?

That since God cannot be proven Belief is not possible,

Now there's so many ways To engage this conversation but perhaps the most accessible way is love.

Love cannot be proven either. Do you believe in love?

If a stranger were to walk up to you and say, I love you, you'd run away probably

because the only way to know of love Love is in relationship.

Love is born out in relation to another.

You can have love for food or artwork or a building as we do for this one.

You can, in a sense, have a relationship of love with, say, in my case, coffee.

But the love of a thing is very different from the love of a person.

And the only way to know another person fully to the point of love is to be

in relationship with them.

And even when they prove by what we would call act of love, it's never quite permanent, is it?

Any human relationship, in any human relationship, you learn that human beings are complex.

Humans have differing personalities, diverse ways of understanding the world

around them, and often unusual ways of expressing themselves.

And most complicated of all is that human beings change.

When someone says that they love you, we tend to want to believe it's permanent.

Yet we all know that the feelings of love ebb and flow.

Christians believe that we human beings are created in the image of God.

And that in the fullness of time, God became one of us, a human being in Jesus.

There is therefore for us something in our belief that the dynamic of human

relationship exists in God's very being.

That in some way God is relational,

and that in some strange way the complexity of human relationship exists in the very being of God,

and that in the same way that in the opening chapters of the chapter of the

Bible as the same way that that chapter describes how God is present in every

nook and cranny of creation.

God is present in the fullness of our relationships.

And all of this brings us to Trinity Sunday.

Christians, unlike all other faith expressions believe that God shows up among

us in three manifestations one being,

As the one who creates, as the one who redeems, and as the one who empowers

one God in three expressions.

We don't believe that this is a problem to be solved.

We believe it is a mystery of God to be enjoyed.

Someone didn't sit down at their desk and dream up the idea of the Trinity.

It comes from the experience of the disciples and us.

Yes, church theologians have worked mightily to unpack this experience of the disciples and of us.

But they were not inventing a theory out of whole cloth.

They were trying to be faithful to what the disciples had lived,

that the God of Israel had drawn near in Jesus and that after he ascended,

that same nearness came rushing back to us on Pentecost as the Spirit,

the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier.

Three encounters of one God.

Those theologians in the early days worked carefully to find the words for this,

But it's important to realize they didn't set out to create a math problem.

They were simply insisting that whatever else God is, God is not alone.

Gregory, preaching early in the 300s of Nazianzus, described it as what has

been called some type of holy vertigo, if you will.

No sooner do I conceive of the one, he said Than I am encircled by the splendor of all three,

No sooner do I distinguish God as all three Than I am carried back to the awe of the one,

Gregory is not confused Thank you.

He believes this is what it feels like to stand in a relationship of love with God.

You cannot think long about God the Father without arriving at the Son.

Cannot speak long about the Son Jesus without encountering the power of the Spirit.

In Greek, they used a word for this, mutual belonging, as I'm describing, perichoresis.

It's a hard word to translate.

It's two persons making room for each other, holding nothing back.

Later Christians, trying to describe this, used the word dance.

A picture of the divine as a dance.

The three manifestations of God always moving toward one another,

never colliding, yet never being apart.

It reminds us of the word communion.

But perhaps, most of all, St.

Augustine reached for the plainest picture he could find.

Love.

The one who loves, the one who is loved, and the love that binds them together.

He said, the father loves the son, the son loves the father,

the spirit is the love poured out between them.

Perhaps this is what it means to call God three in one.

For the fullness of God is not found in a solitary self, but in the endless giving.

Of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Which brings us all back to where we started. For if we are created in the image

of God, then we are created for relationship.

No matter how hard it may be, Sometimes we are created to be in relationship

with God and with each other.

Never created to be completely alone.

Perhaps that is the astonishing claim of this day Is that the communion of God,

The Trinity stands with arms open wide,

Gathering the creation together That is what our baptism is Not first a washing away but a welcome,

a welcoming in.

You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever.

We welcome you into the household of God and proclaim the faith of Christ crucified.

So we come, this Trinity Church, today, To celebrate.

We are not ashamed.

And that stranger who says belief is impossible because God cannot be proven

has without knowing it given us the opportunity to see exactly how God is known.

The same way that love is known.

Not by proof but in relationship,

for the trinity is not a riddle to crack,

it is a fellowship of love a love that is so full so generous,

that it could not be contained A love that spilled over into creation,

into a manger, into an upper room, and poured out upon us forever and forever.

In the name of the blessed Trinity, one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. R. Scott White.

Introductory and closing reflections were shared by the Rev. Amy Peterson.

Musical contributions were performed by Dr. Kevin Seal.

Sermon audio was prepared by Nanette Popa. Production was guided by Karin Marie Fredrickson.