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God HappensJune 03, 2007 Trinity Sunday We’re told that God is a Trinity. All four of our readings today, subtle though they may be, are meant to prick our curiosity about the nature of the Triune God. So today, rather than explicate one or several of our scriptures, I want to honor what they intend to inspire – reflection on the nature of God. The Trinity is the central Christian belief about God: three distinct persons in One God who relate to each other in constant expressions of self-giving love. Let’s be clear – we Christians are not polytheists by any stretch of the imagination. We’re not talking about three gods; we’re talking about One God made known in three distinct ways. Pretty easy, right? Non-Christians, as well as most Christians, find this understanding of God confusing, to say the least. The average Christian in the pew, and minister in the pulpit, has a very difficult time explaining and understanding this central aspect of our faith. How can it be? And, honestly, who cares? Don’t worry, I promise not to lecture on the theological intricacies of the Trinity. We have a number of courses here at Christ Church that foster deep theological reflection, and if you’re interested I encourage you to take one. For our purposes today, I want to consider one aspect of Trinitarian faith that I believe is at the very heart of faith itself. The minister who confirmed me thought it very important that all confirmation students understand the Trinity very clearly. Like many of you, I imagine, I was taught to understand the Triune God as either water or an egg. The logic goes something like this: An egg has three constituent parts: yolk, white, and shell. All are equally part of an egg, and without each part, an egg is not an egg. However, no one part of the egg, in and of itself, makes the egg an egg. You need all three parts: three distinct parts, one egg. We confirmands were amazed, for we finally understood the Trinity. How simple and clear! But this wasn’t enough for Pastor Neil; he had yet another example: Water has three forms – solid (or ice), liquid, and gas (or vapor). All three forms are equally H20, and no one form can claim to be more authentically water than the other two. Again, three distinct forms, all water. It was a clear and simple explanation, and for a while, I believed I understood the Trinity and could explain it to others. But over time, these quaint examples began to bother me. God reduced to an egg, an odd-shaped, fragile object that humans consume, or worse yet, that can easily go rotten if not stored at just the right temperature? That seemed like a flimsy God to me. And water didn’t prove a better explanation. Certainly water is the necessary source of life; without it we cease to exist. On the other hand, pure water, life-giving as it may be, is tasteless, odorless, and colorless. That seemed like a far cry from the God revealed in scripture, whose breath brought all that is into being; who, in Jesus, offered hope and love to all humanity; and who, in the Spirit, was described as fire, passion, and explosive power. Yet, the most disturbing aspect of these explanations was that they assumed God was an object. These explanations of the Trinity say nothing about the dynamic love that is the nature of the Christian God. The Triune God, at the most fundamental, essential level, is not an object or being unto itself; rather, the Triune God is a relationship, a loving and passionate, fiery relationship. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, released a book a few years ago entitled Where God Happens. Note that he didn’t title it “Where God Is,” rather Where God Happens. God, argues Williams, is a verb, an active force in the world that happens in us and to us. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while One God, is within itself a community living together in an intimate and meaningful way. In other words, God’s nature is not an isolated, self-sufficient being, but a community of love. But I fear I’m starting to lecture about the Trinity, so let me pull back for a moment and make my point another way. God is essentially the deepest desire and want we have; that primal urge we try to satisfy with so many other things, but that God can only fulfill in the end. This is so because at the root of our wants and desires is relationship, and although we try to compensate for healthy, vibrant relationships with all manner of things and associations, in the end nothing quite satisfies. Because what we’re getting isn’t really what we want. Surely tangible things and certain relationships satisfy for a while, but eventually the initial degree of gratification wears off, and we look for something else to fill the void; and thus continues the elusive quest to quench our deepest desire. I would suggest that if you want to understand who God is, or better said, where God happens, you need look no further than your very own genuine wants and desires. Father James Smith puts it this way, “We want God. We want God the way a river unknowingly seeks the sea…We want God the way a lonely man aches for companionship…We want God the way a lover yearns for her beloved, the way suffering people crave comfort, the way a stranger longs for the familiarity of home, and an addict kills for a fix…How do we want God? ‘Let me count the ways.’” [1] Again, let me pull back for a moment and make another point. It’s difficult in our present milieu to speak adequately about a desire for God because this desire is too readily linked with religious observance; but that isn’t necessarily the case. Don’t get me wrong, I happen to think that religious observance is a good thing. I’m just not certain that the religiously observant can make an exclusive claim on God. In a recent column, David Brooks of The New York Times makes what I think is a shrewd observation. He distinguishes between the religious, the anti-religious, and the quasi-religious. He defines the quasi-religious as people who “attend services, but they're bored much of the time. They read the Bible, but find large parts of it odd and irrelevant. They find themselves inextricably bound to their faith, but think some of the people who define it are nuts.” [2] What Brooks is astutely identifying is the modern aversion to God, at least to God defined dogmatically rather than dynamically. To speak of God as a theory, or as an object, or as an egg, or as an authoritarian headmaster, or as a fairy godmother is precisely what the quasi-religious find off-putting. To be sure, the quasi-religious believe in God, and in religious observance, but in a much more interesting way. This is how Brooks summarizes the quasi-religious creed: “Always try to be the least believing member of one of the more observant sects. Participate in organized religion, but be a friendly dissident inside. Ensconce yourself in traditional moral practice, but champion piecemeal modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages, but with one eye open.” [3] The quasi-religious understand something that the religious often forget, or perhaps never knew: it’s important to keep one eye open, otherwise we will miss where God happens. If our gaze is constantly upward, or if our faith keeps our eyes constantly shut to the realities around us, we will fail to see where God is taking place. If we fail to see where God is taking place, we will also continue desiring and wanting that which is not God. In other words, eyes wide shut produce hearts that are empty. Yet we are all here because we want God. We want God to happen in us and among us. We have gathered to sing, pray, listen and feast in the hopes that God will be made known in our midst. That’s why Christians have always celebrated this sacred meal, around a common table, where we extend an open invitation to come near and experience God. God happens when we are around this table, because around this table we are in relationship with God and our neighbor. At this table we begin to see the world as God intends it to be: open, nourishing, hospitable, welcoming, grace-filled, and an expression of deep love. This table is where our deepest wants and desires can be quenched, if only we keep one eye open and watch God happen right here. Trinity Sunday is about keeping one eye open; about looking for God to happen, checking first not under theological rocks or behind dogmatic curtains, but in relationship. Jesus summarized the point of our faith quite succinctly: love God above all else, and love your neighbor as yourself. So you see, the Christian faith, and the God it proclaims, is all about holy relationships, relationships characterized by self-giving love, by the absence of fear, grounded in a deep trust and vulnerability which makes us fully available to the other. Isn’t that precisely what God did in Jesus – become fully available to us through self-giving love? When you stop and think about it, isn’t that kind of relationship our deepest, most authentic desire? Can you honestly say that you want something else more than that – more than authentic, trustworthy, selfless love? We want that more than anything else is because what we really want or desire is God. Don’t you imagine that if we were capable of and open to such a relationship we would know that God has happened to us? We would know that God had happened because that relationship is the very nature of the God we worship. That relationship is what God longs to give us, or put another way: that relationship is God giving us God. And in that, God is giving us all we desire. We may not always know what that means or even be aware of that desire, but make no mistake about it, what we truly want in life is God. The Triune God who is relationship. And this God is no object. This God is an invitation. How will you answer? _____________________________ Previous sermon: Come Holy Spirit! • Next sermon: Jesus, Healer of Our Every Ill All past sermons |
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