June 16, 2019

Trinity Sunday

John 16:12-15

Last week, road weary and disoriented in time and space, I entered into a new life with you in this place of grace. We celebrated the great feast of Pentecost where we were empowered to “Go forth and set the world on fire,” a fitting end to the great fifty days of Easter.  Thank you for the gracious welcome and hospitality and for your willingness to celebrate Pentecost in a different way — anointing is a precious intimacy and time of blessing, and beginning our time together with the oil of gladness was a lovely way to start this relationship.

Today we enter into the long, growing season of Pentecost. These Sundays after Pentecost go on and on through summer’s high season, autumn’s harvest, all the way to the creeping darkness that descends at November’s end. Through these many months we will continue to hear from the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s offering of parables and the parabolic acts of Jesus offers a glimpse into a different way of storytelling. It is fraught with opportunity, and easy to miss the point.

We hear this story of Jesus and the parables and don’t realize there are many entry points and much complexity. Too often, we dismiss these simple stories and leave them for the children. But, parables are filled with mystery and wonder and paradox — a whole universe is ready to open to us, if we will be open to it. At the heart of it all is this one thing: love never ends.

Love never ends. We live in the paradox of this promise of God. Even in the midst of change, chaos, grief and loss, we are promised that love never ends. And this love — it is given to us, it is a gift that is hardwired in us — this miracle that at its most primal level of particle physics has been described as quantum entanglement, it is ours as well.

The mystery of God permeates the universe from the smallest particles to boundless space. In a remarkable discovery even the smallest particles know what the other is about, even without evidence of communication — isn’t that just a wondrous thought. And if particles behave that way, can quantum entanglement of love be any less true?

We begin this journey into mystery on this first Sunday after Pentecost with the only theological Sunday in our liturgical cycle. This is Trinity Sunday, is focused on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the three in one and one in three — Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the other politically correct variations on the theme — Creator, Redeemer, and Reconciler. This is also the most dreaded Sunday for newly ordained clergy. Cruel rectors love to assign Trinity Sunday to their newly minted charges who now must expose their theological deficiencies to their boss and congregants.

But, alas, today the task falls to me! Only the second time we’ve been together and I’m provided a great opportunity to bore you to tears as we walk down the historical path of the development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But, know this, I am no novice to these challenges, and why would I come to this most exquisite island to rehearse such mind numbing word games when these is a better path and a more playful way — for at the beginning and the end of this season of Pentecost, we discover in the Holy Trinity, the way of love, a dance of desire that undergirds all of creation.

As I already said, “Love never ends” and this eternal dance of love is described in the Greek word, Perichoresis. It is a much more appealing approach to the Trinity.  Perichoresis means going around, envelopment, containing one another. To be enveloped by and see this dance of unity not just as an underlying principle in particle physics, but a glimpse into the very nature of the Holy Trinity, God, three in one, is to know that we are held together in love.

As this is true at the quantum level and the cosmic level, it is also true in our own living form, in our own bodies. The discovery of our capacity to create and generate love is being explored by neurobiologists. This most intimate connection is expressed through limbic resonance and spread through mirror neurons. Sight, sound, touch, taste, every aspect of our humanity is wired for love.

My favorite image is this one. When my son’s first child, Isabel, was six weeks old, a photo was shot, both in profile, eye to eye, nose to nose — my son was teaching his tiny daughter to love. He was generating love in the exchange that was charged with the power of connection — in the picture you see them face to face but between them was that third reality, a living connection — Perichoresis — Father, Child and that elusive Spirit — together generating the dance of desire, the dance of love.

We generate love — is that not just the most amazing thing! We embody it, we share it, we offer it to tiny babies jus born and we dispense it with the laying on of hands, anointing the beloved, even in death. In community, we gather in this holy place every week to proclaim that this is an Easter celebration — a resurrection day! Love never ends! Even at the grave, we make our song, “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!”

And so today, this Trinity Sunday, I offer these words from Jurgen Moltmann: “An eternal life process takes place in the triune God through the exchange of energies. The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Sob. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent that they are one. It is a process of most perfect and intense empathy. Precisely through the personal characteristics that distinguish them from one another, the Father, the Son and the Spirit dwell in one another and communicate eternal life to one another. In the Perichoresis, the very thing that divides them becomes that which binds them together.”

And even more beautifully, he goes on to say, “The trinitarian Persons do not merely exist and live in one another; they also bring one another mutually to manifestation in the divine glory. The eternal divine glory is for its part displayed through the trinitarian manifestation of the Persons…The Persons of the Trinity make one another shine through that glory, mutually ad together. They glow into perfect form through one another and awake to perfected beauty in one another.” Glory be!

That is our promise, together, if we care to come together as Christ’s Body into this eternal dance of love. The Holy Trinity is not simply a theological doctrine to be marched out once a year, it is a dance of love and loving to be offered to each other. And when we do this, even when we get the tiniest glimpse of it, we are bathed in glory, it is the most profound experience, never to be forgotten.

In this final discourse in John’s gospel, Jesus is offering us this promise of glory, a dance of love that is eternal. So, come, let us dance together.

Amen.