Living the Trinity
What is the Trinity? Once a year, every year, we are called to wrestle with our understandings of Trinity. We are like Nicodemus, looking for answers in the darkness. Nicodemus, a learned teacher, has used a history of Jewish writings to explain beliefs and rules. He goes by the book, but the book is not helping him to understand Jesus. Jesus at once attracts Nicodemus, and mystifies him.
If Nicodemus were among us today, and faced with the question “What is the Trinity?” he would use his intellectual gifts to search for Trinity in the bible. When he realizes the word Trinity never appears in the bible, he will have run out of resources. He will never understand.
Trinity is our best effort to capture and share our experiences of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We easily become entangled in arguments about gender-neutral word choice. Instead of Father we may substitute Father-slash-Mother or Blessed Parent, or Creator, or The Holy. We may replace Son with Jesus or Redeemer or Christ or Savior or Sophia. We may slide the term Holy Spirit aside, using instead Great One, Breath of life, Spirit of Truth, Tongue of Fire. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy names.
We are called to tell one another of our relationships with God rather than to allow the limits of our language to dictate our experiences of God. Like Nicodemus, we need to transcend, “the earthly things” – literal or limited language – and listen to Jesus for the “heavenly things,” the spiritual bonds among us, the examples of God in our days.
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Yesterday was a beautiful day for an ordination. Trinity Cathedral was filled. The Spirit blew where it chose, and we all heard the sound of it, but we didn’t know where it came from or where it went. (John 3:8) A combined choir of singers from St. James, Monterey, Saint Mark’s Santa Clara, St. Thomas, Sunnyvale, St. Augustine, Oakland and, of course, Trinity sent their songs and hymns to soar to the high beams of that ship-builder-designed landmark building, to dance with the Spirit as it danced around and through us. We were there for the ordinations of Ernie Boyer and Joanna Hollis to the transitional diaconate. Ernie, who spent a year of field education with us at St. Mark’s, enriched our spiritual journeys here with his knowledge, compassion, humor, and spiritual depth. And he made delicious salads for pot lucks before our Sunday Night study groups, too.
The ordination was more than the wonderful blessing and celebration it was. It was an opportunity to see the Trinity in action in my life and in those around me. It was an opportunity to see the Trinity unencumbered by the limits of language.
Our bishop presided at the service and she preached in her usual comfortable style. She began, as she always does, by saying “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This well known invocation brought me into communion with the Holy Spirit before she uttered another word. Then she spoke of the calls we have – Ernie and Joanna of course, but each and every one of us, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and to reach out as servants to all. In our reading from the Book of Isaiah this morning, we read,
(8)I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me.”
When we approach the world with openness and vulnerability, we live ready for and in the experience of God.
Two women were talking. One said, “I’ll never forget the thunderstorm tape you gave me when I moved here from the Midwest. I do miss thunderstorms!” The listener had created a welcome and a memory. The speaker was touched. A spiritual bond was renewed.
Someone approached me. She reminded me of a long talk we had had long ago when she was complaining about the Episcopal Church. I had no idea who she was. She continued to talk, mentioned that she had lost 85 pounds (aha! – no, I still didn’t recognize her), and how much joy her new freedom was giving her. Then she said, “Tell me about St. Mark’s Center for Reconciliation. I’m really worried about these people who are in full scale warfare in my parish.” The woman, whom I’ll call Jane, is called to her baptismal vow to foster reconciliation. Peace and love and reconciliation are all words for God.
I realized as I watched people chow down on chicken and cold cuts and brownies that we have countless opportunities to act in the manner of the Trinity. People created a moving service and a great party. People breathed life into one another with conversations both lighthearted and serious. Young people, in albs of different styles and sizes, created a prayerful environment for us all. The banners of each church raised our eyes and our understandings that we are all one. The choir, without a doubt and with only about 40 minutes of rehearsal as a group, transformed the old wooden pews of Trinity into a place to glorify God and feel the Spirit among us. These were all God moments that moved and elevated me.
The ordination of Ernie and Joanna was just one spot of time where the Trinity lived. Each of us has opportunities to create as God creates, to invite, to remain vulnerable, and to give ourselves as Jesus does, to inspire and uplift one another as the Spirit does with us. Whether words support our efforts or not, we can be free of the Nicodemus in us because we know the connections God makes to us. Let us share them with one another.