TRINITY

Today we celebrate one of, if not the most, central dogmas of our Christian faith, with the feast day of the Most Holy Trinity. 

If I have to be honest, researching the mystery of the Trinity was a bit frustrating.  I found it to be quite a stretch to meaningfully connect what I was reading to the reality of the everyday….pondering how three persons can exist in one God….while the dinner is boiling over, Barney is blaring on the TV, my aging father is cursing while negotiating the complexities and little buttons of his cell phone, and my toddler is running around in circles in the living room frantically repeating “I have to poopy.”  It really left me wondering “does the Trinity really matter?”  Which reminded me of a story I once heard…..

Jesus said “Who do people say that I am?”

And his disciples answered and said, some say you are John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the prophets…

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?  Peter answered in reply

“Thou art the Logos, wisdom incarnate…one of the three distinct, but not solitary, persons in the consubstantial, divine triune unity, in yourself whole and entire, sharing full divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts down, the infinite co-naturality of three infinites in perfect and profound egalitarian, relational communion.

Jesus said to him in reply “What?”

I know I have many times in my life, and I hope I’m not alone, wished that God wasn’t so darned cryptic and elusive…that God would just say what needs to be said, clear as a bell, for example some clouds parting and a bellowing voice from heaven…

I was always taught to be bold in my prayer to God, so my request is for an undeniable, recognizable message and mode of communication….what’s so hard about that?  There would be no guessing, no lengthy discernment or straining to find that ‘quiet place within.’  But instead, when I’m trying my very best to be an attentive and faithful servant of God, I often feel like a mouse poking around in a maze trying to find the cheese….not exactly edifying to say the least….

Now, of course, we all realize that fully grasping the mystery of God is absolutely and without question beyond us and our human capabilities…and that is as it should be.   But, that still leaves the question, is the Trinity relevant for our faith lives and in what way?

I caught sight of the cheese when reading theologian Elizabeth Johnson who affirmed that at the root of ALL our doctrine is an encounter with the holy mystery that is God.   The Trinity is a symbol, an image, a concept of God that developed historically out of our collective experience of the sacred…the first Christian believers were faithful to their Jewish monotheistic tradition and without abandoning Yahweh, the God of Israel, they pondered and tried to make sense of their experience of this same God in the person and mission of Jesus Christ…and then once again coming to know this same God in the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised in the days following Pentecost.  Our doctrine of the Trinity is firmly founded in our discernment and experience of the ever-receding horizon that is the mystery of God.

Then I stumbled on an interesting sociological study that showed that people actually do become like the God they worship…which is all Jesus really ever asked of us, to follow him…so, if people believe in a warrior God, people become warriors.  If they believe in an aloof, patriarchal God, they become very individualistic, detached and struggle with issues of class and power. 

In the doctrine of the Trinity, and why perhaps it in a non-negotiable for every Christian believer, God has shown Godself to be a community of three persons, equal in every way, living together in loving, mutual relationship…and somehow in the life, death and rising of Jesus we too have been swooped up into this communion, invited into this love of God that is salvific, overflowing, and life-giving…because God did not choose to be God without us.  God is pure self-gift and we are the happy recipients of this nature.

This is an understanding of the Trinity that has some teeth…that we can connect to our experience.  If God is a community of love, then whenever we find ourselves giving or receiving love we are learning about and experiencing the doctrine of the Trinity in the most potent and powerful way.  There are other ways of taking in truth than just through reason, which leaves us totally limping in our efforts to grasp the mystery of the Trinity. 

The paradox of the Trinity stretches us to find God in unexpected places.  We only learn and recognize God in the struggle to love one another.  God is always trying to communicate with us, but we need to get out of our heads and into our skin (grow sensors of sorts) to discern this truth.  We can not explain love or beauty, but we know when we are in the presence of it.  So too, we cannot explain the Trinity, but we know when we are experiencing the peace that comes through communion with God, the spirit that moves us, the Christ that welcomes and forgives us.

Not a mystery to be missed to say the least! 

A sufi mystic (Rumi) once said, we live “with a secret we sometimes know, and then not know.”  There will still be moments of feeling like a mouse in the maze…tis the human condition….we don’t, and won’t, always get what God is trying to communicate and draw us into. 

But then there will also be those other times, when the lilacs are in bloom, or when enjoying a great meal with family and friends, or feeling the support of a faith community during times of distress or loss….or when I’m cuddled up with my family in our bed on a Saturday morning, listening to my children laugh as my husband makes silly faces at them in a game of peek-a-boo, feeling rested and thankful almost to bursting…and at those times I know, deep in my soul, that God is in this….that the love that we are sharing, the love that is between us, IS the stuff of God, the substance of life, the Trinity expounded…and it is enough. 

Perhaps paradox is God’s loving way of playing peek-a-boo…getting us out of our heads and into the love, laughter and communion of the moment.