Dancing with the Trinity

John 16: 12-15

by Pastoral Intern Joy Fallon

My husband Bob is the 7th of 10 children. His mother is also 1 of 10. His father was one of seven.  Me – I’m from a much smaller family:  3 kids, and a grand total of two aunts and uncles.  That’s it.   Bob has 48 first cousins on just one side.

So you can imagine what it was like for me to first meet my husband’s family.  On the drive out to his house from college, I rehearsed all the names of his siblings, in their birth order, to try and get them straight:  Kathy, Fred, Patricia.  The triplet boys: Charlie, Richard and Jack.  Then after Bob, there were Jeannie, Mimi and Joe. 

Could I keep them straight?  What would they be like?  What you they think of me? 

            When I arrived, this is what I found.  A home where the door is always open – literally.  Everyone is welcome to come and go at any time.  I found a table that could always fit one more chair – they’d all just take slightly smaller portions, sharing as much as they had with anyone who arrived. I found an acceptance for who I was, amidst all their very different styles and habits, because of course each member of that family – like all of us – is unique and special.  Mrs. Fallon assured that each was acknowledged for his or her own different gifts. The Fallons offered me a welcome that has remained full and vibrant over my thirty years of marriage to Bob.  

            You here at Cotuit Federated Church did the same for me last week.  When I arrived, the door stood open to me – literally -- and I felt the whoosh of the Holy Spirit in and through this place.  I found red helium balloons bobbing on the sanctuary ceiling, in celebration of Pentecost’s blessings.  I met jokesters in your ranks, who were actively considering putting the ceiling fans on, to really create a windy Pentecost scene!  And later, just before the service started, when I realized that between me in the kitchen and Pastor Nicole’s office where my robe was, sat the whole congregation, already deeply involved in a hymn sing.  I was going to have to tromp right across the front of the sanctuary here. No problem, several of you told me:  “We’re a tromping kind of church!”   

            “We’re a tromping church!” You’re on the move, alive!

I think the Holy Trinity is tromping too, and alive – the  Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Like this church, the Creator God, Christ Jesus, and  Holy Spirit are on the move and active, not a static concept or doctrine, but in fact, dancing among themselves and with us  – and that’s what I want to talk about today. Dancing with the Trinity.

Because officially, on our church calendar, today is Trinity Sunday, the day set aside by the worldwide church to discuss Trinity. Now I’ll admit that I hadn’t fully realized this when I accepted Pastor Nicole’s invitation to preach today. The Trinity is not the first choice of every new ministry summer intern.  It can be convoluted and confusing, as well as dangerous: people have burned at the stake as heretics for getting this wrong!  Perhaps worst for me, as I’ve learned the long history of church debates over the Trinity, it has not always been our finest hour.

The truth is, good old fashioned power politics did affect which words ended up in the Nicene Creed, explaining the Trinity, back in the early church of the 300’s.  And a lot of the language that finally made it into Christian statements about the Trinity may have meant something profound when people understood Greek philosophy, but today has often lost its ability to persuade us, to really help us understand God more deeply.  For many of us, a lot of the Trinity lingo confuses us more than it helps.

In addition, the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed have affirmatively caused us Christians problems.  They led to the first huge split in the Christian church, between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Roman Catholics, because the East thought the West had not given sufficient rank to the Holy Spirit, placing it down below the Father and the Son.  For the same reason, Pentecostals in the US split off in the early 1900s, still convinced that too little weight is given to the Holy Spirit by the rest of us Christians.  Here in New England, we’re especially aware of that Unitarians split off from Trinitarian Christians, saying there is only one God and the trinity implies there are three. And most recently, the Trinity has been a major point of debate between Christian and Muslim theologians. When we have met together to discuss all that binds Christianity and Islam, as religions both founded by Father Abraham, Muslims balk at the Trinity, believing that it creates three gods, rather than the One, monotheistic God in whom they believe. 

So I admit right at the outset, that much of the long history of debate over the Trinity has seemed like angels dancing on the head of pin.  A debate not worth the division, missing the key point about our faith and its message of love, forgiveness and justice.

            However, I’ve noticed that when I resist a topic, God often has something new to show me.  When I’m confused about the church and its crazy ways, that’s when I’m probably being urged by God to dig in, in community with you all, to try and learn what God might want to teach me, with you, this week.

So rather than following my first instinct – to cut and run and preach on an entirely different topic – I’ve turned and looked to the  things we Christians often examine when we’re trying to sort out life and God:  (1) our tradition – to see truth we might glean from those who’ve gone before us; (2) the scriptures, to see what light the Bible might shine onto our path; and (3) our own experience as living, thinking humans:  what really rings true to us, what makes sense, based on what our lives have taught us, here in 2010.  God wants us to use our brains, wants us to learn from our experiences, I am convinced.

So, starting with our tradition, I found all the power politics and outdated verbiage I’ve already mentioned.  But I also found some key kernels of truth:  that our God will come to us in many different ways, over time; that God will not be limited.  God so wants to be close to us and know us, that God will become present to us as the Creator God all around us, as Jesus, another human who bore our struggles, and as the Spirit, which fills us – God surrounding us in nature, God walking in human form next to us, God right inside our very hearts.  That is the view at the core of our tradition’s concept of the Trinity.  God yearns to make Godself known to us, fully, completely, wholly.

I also found an old, ancient tradition about the Trinity and dancing:  the Greek word is perichoresis.  Augustan in the 300 and 400’s, saw something like the symbol on the front of our bulletin today. 3 intertwined circles or ovals, when he thought of God:  three parts, all intersecting, all moving into each other, all animating the others, all dancing, he said, with one another, and with us, community with each other and with us in Love.  A dancing Trinity.

A dancing Trinity – maybe an intertwining minuet, maybe a rollicking square dance, maybe the beat of African feet to drums, maybet  Latin samba!  Remember, God can shake us up when we dance! A dancing Trinity, a “tromping” Trinity, Christians on the move.  Tradition. Those are tradition’s notions.

Second, as we turn to scripture, today we have two great texts that have been used as people have sought to understand God and the Trinity - a text from Proverbs about the Spirit of Wisdom, and a text from the Gospel of John about the Spirit of Truth whom Jesus will send to his disciples. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we’re told about the wonderful third, the Spirit, there with the God of the Creation in the Old Testament and with the Jesus of the New.   

The Proverbs passage is particularly fascinating, don’t you think?  Here we have a great Jewish way of naming a strong Lady Wisdom, right there with Lord God when God made the world. The passage starts with her standing on the heights and proclaiming, making sure she is high enough that all can hear her.  Then she stands right smack at the major intersections -- or may be the rotaries – so everyone will notice.  Wisdom plunks herself down right at the entrance to the city.  And then she says this amazing thing:   

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. 

….When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him,

like a master worker;

and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

In this scripture we find both the Creator God and the Spirit of Wisdom, working together, delighting together in the human race that God was creating, delighting in us.

            In the John passage, too, Jesus is adamant that the story is incomplete if we think only of God and Jesus, of Father and Son.  Jesus says that his own life has been too short to tell us everything Jesus yearns for us to know about God.  There is more truth I want you to see, feel, experience, taste, he tells his disciples.  So the Spirit of Truth will come to be our helper and our guide. 

            The scripture, then, the second source to which we can turn, says that we can know the Divine, the Power beyond us, the Love that Holds the universe together and holds all of us tenderly –as the Creator, as Jesus, as the Spirit named Wisdom and named Truth.

            Has that ever been your experience?  Because our life experiences are also what we Christians look to when we want to figure out the important issues in our lives, and God. Have you had glimmerings about God through Creation, through lessons about Jesus, through something or someone that was Wise, or True?  Has God met you in any of these different ways, that we sometimes call the Trinity? 

Here on the Cape, we have such a chance to marvel at Creation – seeing God in this way – walking along the shore, marveling at the distant horizon, sand under our feet, the beat of the waves in a timeless rhythm. Does your experience of creation hint at the One who made it all, does it provide one way in to knowing God more deeply?  It does for me.

            As do the stories of  Jesus.  My dad was a minister, so I was raised on them – maybe you were, too. Or perhaps the stories of this real, historical man are new for you—and therefore wonderfully fresh.  Either way, hallelujah!  Because for me, reading just a bit of the story of Jesus, still feeds me. The stories are still relevant. Jesus, standing up for the little guy and the ones no one else cares about; stories about grieving mothers and fathers who’ve been left behind by their children; about mental illness and physical pain; about struggles with money – too much or too little;  about healing and dying, all told by Jesus as a way to help us have more whole lives. 

            And then there’s the Spirit, who today’s scriptures say go by the names of Wisdom and Truth.  Imagine – all the things that are Wise, and all the things that are True –these are also the things that show us who God is, that knit us closer to God. 

            I’ve always loved the word Wisdom.  One day, when I was down, worried about our two children, and how I was doing as their mom, my husband said that what he saw when he looked at me, were “wise and loving eyes.”  Wise and loving eyes?  For me, it is the most wonderful compliment he could ever give.

            Mind you, on some days he’d rightly say my eyes were cranky and controlling, or worse, but who among us would not like to, every once in a while, be known as wise?  And to be with others who are?  I know that I love the gifts of wisdom I’m regularly given by friends and family, and even by foes.  I need wisdom and I need truth.

            But these nearly always come at a price, don’t they?  Wisdom is hard won, often springing from suffering.  And truth can be hard to face, jolting me from where I’m most comfortable.   But I’ll tell you, on this Memorial Day, it is the men and women who sacrificed much, who I most want to hear talk about war and peace; their testimony is credible, because it is borne of experience.  It will be most wise and true, most often. On this Memorial Day, it is the families of all who went to war, who I want to hear speak about how long it takes to heal, about whether resurrection really is possible, about whether hope can be found in this world of tragedy.  Wisdom and Truth.

            The Spirit of Wisdom and Truth is why in this church we keep asking the questions, and searching for truth; we don’t assume we all already know it. The Spirit of Wisdom and Truth require constant discernment – darn it all – there is no pat answer.  As a parent of teens, I kept wishing there were, one steady speed I could drive -- a cruise control of parenting -- but instead, I find I am always adjusting to fit the traffic, so as to speak, discerning with others and before God when I should put my foot on the gas pedal and when to push on the brakes, when to give my children more autonomy and when to set limits, when to hold them as close as possible, and when to let them fly free.  Blessedly, the Spirit of Truth and Wisdom, according to the Gospel of John and to Proverbs, helps guide me. I am not alone. I have partners for my dance of discernment, not only God, but all of you – God working through you, Wisdom and Truth.

            It is a dance.  God being known to us, through Creation, through Jesus, in the spirit of Truth and Wisdom, and our responses to God and one another.  The Trinity is relational - about us all together, forming a community, dancing with the Trinity.

One afternoon this week, when I was mulling over this sermon, I did something that perhaps not all ministers do for sermon preparation – I went dress shopping.  You see, my daughter is being married in June, and I haven’t been able to find the dress I’d like to wear.  Pastor Nicole had mentioned the local artists and business persons who have shops at Mashpee Commons, so I drove over there from the church to explore.  Up and down the little streets I went, but to no avail, finding lots of wonderful things, but nothing right for the wedding. Two of the shopkeepers recommended I try a store in Hyannis, run by another local business woman.  By now you know that I believe in learning wisdom and truth through community, so those two separate recommendations for the same store convinced me it was worth stopping by on my drive back home to Eastham.

            Sometimes I love telling people about my new vocation – about my switch from being an attorney to training for ministry.  But when I got to Hyannis, and the shopkeeper asked me about what I did, I suddenly grew remarkably shy.  Here I was trying on dresses, hoping to look nice, and I was training to be a minister?  I felt silly, until she told me that people who believe in God can want to nice at a wedding, too! 

The more we talked, I learned about this woman’s deep faith, and a remarkable church to which she’d been introduced by her Jewish boyfriend – he’d heard such good things about it, he suggested she check it out.  Now this woman misses that church every time she’s away from it.  The reason this particular Catholic church is so wonderful, she said, is that all of the people there exude love and caring and justice.  They embrace absolutely everyone. It is not simply the clergy who seem to be caring – though they are fine – it is that the members themselves, as a group, are so evidently full of the Spirit!  Of God!  Of Jesus!   It flows in and through them, she said, gushing out, spilling over, running forth.   “I don’t know much about the Trinity,” she said, “but I know a great church when I see it.”

            I left with many thoughts.  About how much this woman DID know about the Trinity, not as some stale doctrine, but as the real Trinity – God the Creator, Christ and Spirit - at work, reaching out to us from many ways, excluding no one, love gushing out, spilling over, running forth, creating a place to which she felt compelled to return whenever she was in town. 

I also thought about how she had been evidence of the Trinity for me, right there as I tried on clothes.  Indeed, all week long, from my welcome by you all in Cotuit last Sunday, to that Hyannis store, and beyond, God was at work finding ways to dance with me, to teach me, to lead me, to partner with me, so I could try to love others and realize I am loved, so I could set aside old ways of thinking, and consider a new dance, of Truth and Wisdom.    

            I’m glad I have all of you as partners, too, in this wonderful dance with the Trinity.  Thanks for this opportunity, to be with you, and the Trinity of Love.  A Church in motion, alive! Dancing!  Amen!