1st Sunday after Pentecost (Trinity Sunday)-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
1st Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year B
May 30, 2021
When David and I were first dating, he
had the idea that we should foxtrot together.
While this seems like a good and reasonable idea on the surface, in
actuality, it turned out not so great.
You see, David had some basic training in foxtrot, and he assured me it
was “one of the easier dances.” But I
had no knowledge of how to foxtrot. The
other thing that was working against us was the fact that we were attempting
this endeavor in his tiny NYC apartment’s living room which was already much
occupied by furniture. Even by moving
the coffee table out of the way, we quickly discovered there just wasn’t enough
room, and eventually, we spent more time agreeing upon the desired song than we
spent actually attempting to dance.
Today, this first Sunday after Pentecost,
is the day in the church that is set aside to highlight the doctrine and the
mystery of the Trinity: God who is three
in one and one in three; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; Creator,
Redeemer, and Sustainer; “Lover, Beloved, and the Love”[i] shared between the two. At its heart, the Trinity is about
relationships, and it is through that lens that we are invited to contemplate
and engage it.
In the book Walk in Love: Episcopal
Beliefs and Practices, the authors Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe write
about the Trinity and Trinity Sunday: “One Sunday-and one Sunday only-each
year, the church celebrates a doctrine.
On the Sunday after the Day of Pentecost, we focus on the Doctrine of
the Holy Trinity. We sing hymns and hear
preaching about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: the Holy Trinity. If you wanted to pick a good Sunday to hear a
heretical sermon, you’d do well to pick this Sunday. You see, it’s pretty common for preachers to
make the mistake of trying to oversimplify the Holy Trinity. And in our efforts to downsize the ineffable
into something we can grasp, we almost always mess it up. We are much better off leaving the Holy
Trinity as a divine mystery, something that we enter into with joy and a bit of
uncertainty. Without trying to boil the
whole thing down to a bumper sticker, there are a few things we can say about
the Holy Trinity. At its core, the Holy
Trinity reveals that our God is a God of relationship. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in a
beautiful, careful, and timeless dance.
The Holy Trinity reveals to us that God is unity, diversity, and
majesty. The Holy Trinity keeps us from
making the mistake of reducing God to something comprehensible, to a God that
our brains can hold.”[ii]
Interestingly enough, the early church
Fathers wrote about the Trinity by using a Greek term for dancing: perichoresis.
Peri means around, and khoreia/khorein means dance or even to make room
for. Healthy relationships are always a
balance between staying connected and also making room for the other; this is
modeled for us in the Triune God, and we are invited into this type of
relationship with God and with each other.
The Trinity transforms our understanding of God being only up there hanging
out in heaven and apart from everything to God who is up there, down here, and
everywhere, in the thick of things with us, in us, in others, and all around
us, longing to be connected with each one of us while also giving us enough
space to be who God has created us to be.
This notion of Trinity not only impacts our relationship with God, but
if we allow it, it can impact our relationship with every other created person
and part of this world.
Finally, here’s one more practical
vision of the Trinity, this one from C.S. Lewis. Imagine “an ordinary simple
Christian” at prayer, Lewis says, his voice crackling over the airwaves in one
of his famous radio addresses (the same reflections he eventually collected
into Mere Christianity). Her prayer is directed toward God — but it is also
prompted by God within her in the first place. And at the same time, as she
prays she stands with Jesus and within Jesus as part of the Body of Christ
(recall how Christians typically pray “in Jesus’ name”). In short, as this
“ordinary simple Christian” prays, God is three things for her: the goal she is
trying to reach, the impetus within her, and her beloved companion along the
way — indeed “the Way” itself. Thus “the whole threefold life” of the triune
God “is actually going on” around and within her, Lewis contends — and as she
prays, she “is being caught up into the higher kinds of life,” which is to say,
into God’s own life, three and one, one and three” while still remaining
herself. [iii]
Your invitation for this week is to
think about this mysterious dance of connection and making space that God does
and invites you into. How might this
understanding change or reshape the way that you encounter God? How might this challenge you to encounter
others or Creation differently?
[i]
From St. Augustine of Hippo
[ii] Gunn,
Scott and Melody Wilson Shobe. Walk in
Love: Episcopal Beliefs and Practices.
Forward Movement: Cincinatti, 2018, pp271-272
[iii]
From Salt Lectionary post as quoting CS Lewis in Mere Christianity Part 4 Section
2. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-for-trinity-sunday
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