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Trinity
Sunday
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Trinity
Sunday
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The
Lutheran Magazine has a page called The
Light Side that tells about church bloopers and funny stories.
Perhaps I’m not the only one who turns to The
Light Side page first when The
Lutheran Magazine arrives. This month the Light Side was titled “In praise
of the Trinity.” A story tells of
a father arriving home and being greeted by his son who said “Father!”
The father responded in kind, “Son!”
Then the 7 year old sister added “and the Holy Spirit.”
They didn’t know she knew that Trinitarian phrase.
The same Light
Side has a comic of a man at a desk with a large frog perched on the back of
his chair. Another person enters the
room and says, “I said a blog would
be a valuable tool for your ministry, not a frog.”
It made me pleased that no one has said my office should have a blog instead of my beloved warthogs.
But back to the Trinity!
Some have thought the Trinity was conceived by academics making things
complicated. But it actually came
from grassroots Christians trying to talk about how they saw God.
It made sense to talk about God as relating in three ways – like a
parent who is a brother or sister and a child at the same time.
Apples make a good
illustration of the Trinity. Cut in
half, it shows its skin, its pulp, and its seed.
You can’t have an apple without the skin, or the pulp would get all
over the place. Without the seed,
there would be no more apples. All
are necessary to the whole.
The Father, Son, Holy
Spirit: Creator, Savior, Helping Comforter:
three are one and one is known in three ways.
Of all the Sundays of the church year, the Creed is appropriate to today.
Alan Jones of Grace Cathedral refers back to the old understanding of the
creeds as love letters – not so much to be dissected as to be honored as part
of the journey of how we have come to know and experience God.
If we are to come to know
God in the various ways God relates to us, Bishop Hanson, Presiding Bishop of
the ELCA, suggests, also in The Lutheran,
that we do well to become fluent in what he calls “the first language of
faith, the language of Scripture.” He
reminds us that Jesus taught in parables – everyday stories about life – so
that we would be attentive to God’s presence among us.
The reign of God is like
a seed that silently grows; like a rich man who gave all his property away; like
yeast a woman mixed into flour, like love poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit. But, Bishop Hanson
asks, if we don’t know these stories – if we are not fluent in the first
language of faith, the language of Scripture – how will we recognize the signs
of God’s reign among us?
Psalm 8, appointed for
today, tells us that God is mindful of us. “What
are mortals that you should be mindful of them?”
Mark Ralls in the Christian Century suggests that “mindfulness is love that resists
distraction. It refuses to fall into
absentmindedness. Mindfulness
focuses sustained attention on the beloved.”
Perhaps some of you read
the New Yorker.
One of the staff writers, Calvin Trillin, has written a book about his
wife Alice. He catalogues her sense
of style and wonder that he made notes of throughout their 36 year marriage.
Near the end of his book, called About
Alice, Trillin tells of an experience his wife told him of from when she
volunteered at a camp for terminally ill children.
The psalmist in Psalm 8
tells us that God is like that towards us. God
delights in us with full attentiveness. God
has made us little lower than the angels, putting us over the works of God’s
hands – that’s how much God trusts us! God
takes God’s precious creation and puts it in our care.
And then God mindfully watches over us, to assist us in every way – if
only we will be attentive to God’s assistance.
Today’s Gospel says, “When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.”
It’s not like the comic in The
New Yorker that had a big sign that said TRUTH with an arrow point one
direction and a man running under the sign, but running on a treadmill getting
no where.
But our first language of
faith – the Holy Scriptures – tells us “When
the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.”
We are not restricted to a treadmill, for the living Spirit of God is our
guide. The opportunity before us is
to support each other in discerning how best to attend to this guidance – this
sustained attention – this refusal on God’s part to be absentminded.
Learning to dance with
God may be a helpful metaphor. To
dance requires attentiveness. We
cannot dance if we are not attentive to our relationship with the other with
whom we dance. Dancing is an
interweaving of attentiveness. May
we support each other in learning the first language of faith – the scriptures
that tell us of God’s love as Creator, Savior and Guide – that this holy
dance may become our dance – the dance of the Trinity!
A wonderful new hymn has
been written on this theme: “Come, join the dance of Trinity, the interweaving
of the Three.” It has been put to
a familiar English folk tune in Evangelical
Lutheran Worship #412. As we
learn this new song may the interweaving it invites shape our daily living!
Amen.
+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson,
to the glory of God
Faith