Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
It seems the case that some of the dodgiest theology, even heresy, appears to be acceptable when presented in hymns. Take, for example, the much-loved Christmas carol Hark the Herald Angels Sing: “Late in time, behold Him come,
offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.” That’s it – “veiled in flesh”, suggesting that Jesus only takes on the disguise of a human being and that – as one person described it – “becoming flesh obscures the divine glory rather than expresses it.” Today’s recessional hymn poses, if not altogether dangerous, then at best unhelpful theology: “Unresting, unhasting and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might…[things] wither and perish, but naught changeth thee”. Here we hymn a passionless god, a distant un-involved god, an in-light-inaccessible-hid-from-our-eyes god; and while I love this hymn with its cadences, its imagery and alliteration, I know that it sings more the god of the Deists, than the God of Christianity, because the God revealed to us in scripture and tradition is a God not distant from us, but intimately involved with us, intimately close to creation. The God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is not un-changing as such, but instead profoundly involved in the process of change, profoundly involved in creation and re-creation, and – on account of the Incarnation – profoundly involved in the vagaries, the uncertainties and the messy incidentals of the our humanity.
Today is Trinity Sunday, and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to understand this infinite and passionate involvement God has – or perhaps better, God is – with creation. The image we often have of God as loving – yes, certainly loving – but yet distinctly distant is not what we hear this morning in the lessons or in the Gospel. It is certainly not what we encounter at the altar when God gives God’s own self to be experienced by our senses – when God gives God’s own body to be taken into our bodies. No, what the doctrine of the Trinity attests to is the reality of relationship – passionate, creative and re-creative relationship – between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it attests to the truth that that passion is so great, so powerful, that by God’s grace it spills over in creative power, inviting and drawing into that relationship all that is. It may be tempting to think of the doctrine of the Trinity as simply describing the nature of God, but it encompasses more than that. It is also how we understand our own participation in the life of God, and in that marvellous relationship of love, in that marvellous, divine adventure in which God goes outside of God’s self in passionate, even erotic – in the classical sense of the word – self-revelation, and then draws us into it. Isn’t that perhaps the best way to understand the narrative of creation – that big bang of passionate love which cannot be contained but bursts out in creative power, and not as a once and for all event, but an event which unleashes a process of continual creation and re-creation? Light, stars, earth, animals, seas, creeping things of every kind, “galaxies, suns,…planets”, you and me all birthed through love into an exciting and continual process of change and growth; or more correctly – dare I say it? – evolution.
The doctrine of the Trinity is the reality that God does not desire to be contained – ultimately, no sacred temples, no holy of holies, no purity laws – but that God’s desire bursts forth into nothingness and creates, and once creating continues to desire more and more intimacy with creation. God wishes to pattern creation along the reality of the passionate, loving and dynamic relationship which God is in God’s own self – that relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God reveals that passionate desire in the creation of life itself, in the calling of those creatures into partnership and redeeming them into freedom. We Christians recognise that desire uniquely expressed in the “big bang” of the Incarnation, when God’s passion for relating cannot be contained and is revealed in a distinctive human form – in the person of the Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus God joins God’s self to humanity purely out of passionate love, purely out of a desire to connect with us, and by so doing draws all that is human into the divine life. Pentecost is a continuation of that desire as divine creative powers are unleashed in the person of the Holy Spirit. This unleashing, as Bishop Talton reminded us last week, breaks down any divisions of language, gender, race, class, economic status – any divisdins whatsoever – and thereby inaugurates a new community that is to mirror the generous, loving and equal relationships within the Holy Trinity. God calls into being and calls into partnership a community, the hallmarks of which are the same as that of the divine life, hallmarks detailed in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “Put things in order…agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” (2 Corinthians 11:11)
As we are drawn into the life of God we are also drawn into the uncomfortable processes of conversion, change, transformation, and maybe that explains the hymns; because it is easier to have a distant, unchanging god we simply have to worship, than an immanent God into whose passionate, explosive love we are drawn to participate. It is easier to have a saviour who comes merely disguised as a human being, rather than one who loves humanity so much that he wants to share in all its intimate, messy details, and then makes us part of the story by sending us out into the world; sending us out to unleash his creative power. Isn’t that what the great commission is about as Jesus sends out his followers into the world in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? He commissions them, he commissions us, to go into the world and live the life of the Trinity in creation. Is that also not what the early church did? Listen to this description in the Acts of the Apostles: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:43-47) What the author of Acts describes is the life of the Trinity poured out and manifested in the life of the Church. It is what we witnessed last week as God’s life burst forth in the lives of Corey, Lisa, Patsy and Melissa and they were drawn into that life, the Trinitarian dance of creation. In that life there are no divisions and there are no spectators. There is no place for passionless participation – whether our own or God’s. There is only purposeful, passionate involvement, there is only going out of one’s self in love and getting caught up in the cosmic drama of continuing creation and re-creation; caught up in what we – in short – call salvation.
Posts
