We are Relationship
II Corinthians 13:11-14
“o day, arise! the atoms are dancing. the souls are dancing, overcome with ecstasy. i’ll whisper in your ear where their dance is taking them…” Life of the Dance, come and visit us this day. And may the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard be Your word. Amen.
Finally, brothers, sisters, siblings, farewell. Be restored; listen to my appeal; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
Today is Trinity Sunday. I don’t know about you, but I spent much of my life not being able to care less about marking Trinity Sunday. In seminary, I lost count of the number of people who told me I was heretical because I didn’t use Father-Son-Holy Spirit language… or who called the United Church of Christ apostate because some churches baptize in the name of the Creator, Christ and Holy Spirt instead of Father-Son-Holy Ghost language.
One of the primary reasons for this is that the scripture often associated with today is Matthew’s “Great Commission.” In particular, the verses that read: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you
For much of Christian tradition the idea and language of the Trinity has become deeply intertwined with colonization, violence, and control. And I largely associated the Trinity with people seeking to control and punish me and my community.
If you have any of this pain associated with Trinity language or with attempts at forced control or punishment for who and how you are, I am deeply sorry. The use of Christian language and theology to harm people is wrong and is a deep distortion of the Christian path.
And, it is deeply ironic that the Trinity would be used to suggest a rigid and controlling and preciseness about God. Because the understanding of the Trinity and much of what our ancestors in faith were grappling with is deeply liberative.
It has been feminists like Roman Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson who’ve help guide my way on this journey. Johnson talks about the Trinity as God in God’s essence as relationship. But not precision and rigid exactness. God is, at God’s core, a dance of relationship, of moving and changing expressions and manifestations of love. Our cover art comes from a Catholic community that seeks to draw God as a circle dance in which God is many colors and genders and expressions.
David Weiss, himself explicitly rooted in feminist tradition, says it this way:
Augustine, who wrote an entire book on the doctrine [of the Trinity], comes closest to the truth when he remarked that finally the Trinity is a fence around a mystery. It speaks the Moreness of God, but it hides as much as it reveals. Ultimately, all our words fall short.
This much we can say: the mystery behind the fence is Love. Anything more—mapping the respective roles of the Three Persons, their exact relationship to each other, and the manner by which they are at once Three yet One—any of that is rampant speculation. Distraction. It pretends that human intellect can apprehend the inner workings of God.
The Truth is that naming God as Trinity—even as the words themselves twist in the Wind—simply says that the very ground of God is love. Divinity itself is not solitary because love is not solitary. Somehow—and this is the fence, not the mystery itself—somehow Divinity is multiple-yet-undivided: such that the very ground of holiness is love-flowing-in-community. The words barely do it justice. We come to the edge of God, and it is as though we sense a blazing brightness just beyond—or an absolute darkness that can’t be pierced—or a rushing wind—or a complete stillness. And all we truly know is that this which is Beyond us is full of love for all that is.
Now you may thinking, why in the world is she going on about this. I still couldn’t care less about Trinity Sunday… and that’s OK.
But want to say just a few more words about why I think David’s and Elizabeth’s scholarship and creativity about the Trinity matters in our lives.
We are living amidst a kind of toxic, distorted white Christian nationalism that threatens so much: the lives of many of us, our beloveds, our democracy, our very planet’s future. And much of the logic of this Christianity is rooted in hyper-individualism. It is rooted in an ethic of competition. It is rooted in the fear of being punished for disobedience of rigid rules or roles. It is rooted in hierarchy.
And all of this starts with an understanding of God as the ultimate ruler who metes out punishment for disobedience from above. This angry and punishing God relates to each of us as individuals and decides upon our individual salvation or damnation. In this system, the life of faith is the life of clear, precise answers and narrowly defined truth.
But how do our lives change if the heart of God is a Divine Dance of relationship… that the very ground of holiness is love-flowing-in-community? What if separated individuals competing against one another for scraps of salvation is a lie? What if Divinity is multiple-yet-undivided and so are we?
Rumi envisioned the relationship between atoms as a dance. Even though he was a 13th Century Sufi mystic, he presaged what quantum physicists like Einstein have shown: the essential unit in the universe is relationship. Moving and changing energy that is connected across distance is at the center of life.
Within Godself, there is energy and mystery and boundless love. So much so, that God poured all of God’s creativity into making a world that God calls good, over and over again. Whew, look at that water…. Wow that’s good…. Whew, look at those exquisite trees… wow, that’s good. Over and over again in Genesis, God calls creation good. It is only after God has created the earth creature, the adam, and notices that the adam is lonely that God says something isn’t good. Only loneliness, only lack of companions and relationship, only that is said to be not good.
And later, God pours Godself into human form in order to have an enfleshed experience… in order to know what it is like to be human… in order to be in more intimate relationship with us. And God pours God’s spirit into us and all of creation in order to create ongoing relationship…
What if we are closer to our Divine purpose when our hearts are attuned to the multiplicity that each of us is? What if we are not just one thing? What if we are the relationship between all of our selves?
What if we are closer to our Divine purpose when we are living as if there is no such thing as other people’s children? Or there is no such thing as my future that is separate from your future?
Jeremy Begbie reflected on the Trinity and described God as a musical chord (three distinct notes but also one foundational sound.) If God is best understood as harmony, how are we disciples of harmonic resonance?
A few years ago, I had the chance to sing with a group of queer people and allies. Our director was a Black gay man whose partner was quite ill. He chose a couple of pieces for us to sing, but he explained that Hezekiah Walker’s song, I Need You to Survive was the song he wanted us to begin and end each rehearsal with. Claire and Jeanine and I are going to sing it a bit later. But I’m going to share the lyrics of the chorus:
I need you, you need me We’re all a part of God’s body Stand with me, agree with me We’re all a part of God’s body It is Gods will, that every need be supplied You are important to me, I need you to survive You are important to me, I need you to survive
We are living in a world that stokes fear every day… we are told that we’re in competition with one another. But we worship a God whose essence is relationship, whose deepest yearning is love.
Finally, brothers, sisters, siblings, farewell. Be restored; listen to my appeal; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the [Incarnation of Love], the love of the Mysterious Dance, and the communion of the Energy Breathed Out be with all of you.
Amen.
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