First Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year B

1st Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year B May 30, 2021 When David and I were first dating, he had the idea that we should foxtrot together. While this seems like a good and reasonable idea on the surface, in actuality, it turned out not so great. You see, David had some basic training in foxtrot, and he assured me it was “one of the easier dances.” But I had no knowledge of how to foxtrot. The other thing that was working against us was the fact that we were attempting this endeavor in his tiny NYC apartment’s living room which was already much occupied by furniture. Even by moving the coffee table out of the way, we quickly discovered there just wasn’t enough room, and eventually, we spent more time agreeing upon the desired song than we spent actually attempting to dance. Today, this first Sunday after Pentecost, is the day in the church that is set aside to highlight the doctrine and the mystery of the Trinity: God who is three in one and one in three; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; “Lover, Beloved, and the Love”i shared between the two. At its heart, the Trinity is about relationships, and it is through that lens that we are invited to contemplate and engage it. In the book Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs and Practices, the authors Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe write about the Trinity and Trinity Sunday: “One Sunday-and one Sunday only-each year, the church celebrates a doctrine. On the Sunday after the Day of Pentecost, we focus on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. We sing hymns and hear preaching about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: the Holy Trinity. If you wanted to pick a good Sunday to hear a heretical sermon, you’d do well to pick this Sunday. You see, it’s pretty common for preachers to make the mistake of trying to oversimplify the Holy Trinity. And in our efforts to downsize the ineffable into something we can grasp, we almost always mess it up. We are much better off leaving the Holy Trinity as a divine mystery, something that we enter into with joy and a bit of uncertainty. Without trying to boil the whole thing down to a bumper sticker, there are a few things we can say about the Holy Trinity. At its core, the Holy Trinity reveals that our God is a God of relationship. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in a beautiful, careful, and timeless dance. The Holy Trinity reveals to us that God is unity, diversity, and majesty. The Holy Trinity keeps us from making the mistake of reducing God to something comprehensible, to a God that our brains can hold.”ii Interestingly enough, the early church Fathers wrote about the Trinity by using a Greek term for dancing: perichoresis. Peri means around, and khoreia/khorein means dance or even to make room for. Healthy relationships are always a balance between staying connected and also making room for the other; this is modeled for us in the Triune God, and we are invited into this type of relationship with God and with each other. The Trinity transforms our understanding of God being only up there hanging out in heaven and apart from everything to God who is up there, down here, and everywhere, in the thick of things with us, in us, in others, and all around us, longing to be connected with each one of us while also giving us enough space to be who God has created us to be. This notion of Trinity not only impacts our relationship with God, but if we allow it, it can impact our relationship with every other created person and part of this world. Finally, here’s one more practical vision of the Trinity, this one from C.S. Lewis. Imagine “an ordinary simple Christian” at prayer, Lewis says, his voice crackling over the airwaves in one of his famous radio addresses (the same reflections he eventually collected into Mere Christianity). Her prayer is directed toward God — but it is also prompted by God within her in the first place. And at the same time, as she prays she stands with Jesus and within Jesus as part of the Body of Christ (recall how Christians typically pray “in Jesus’ name”). In short, as this “ordinary simple Christian” prays, God is three things for her: the goal she is trying to reach, the impetus within her, and her beloved companion along the way — indeed “the Way” itself. Thus “the whole threefold life” of the triune God “is actually going on” around and within her, Lewis contends — and as she prays, she “is being caught up into the higher kinds of life,” which is to say, into God’s own life, three and one, one and three” while still remaining herself. iii Your invitation for this week is to think about this mysterious dance of connection and making space that God does and invites you into. How might this understanding change or reshape the way that you encounter God? How might this challenge you to encounter others or Creation differently? i. From St. Augustine of Hippo ii. Gunn, Scott and Melody Wilson Shobe. Walk in Love: Episcopal Beliefs and Practices. Forward Movement: Cincinatti, 2018, pp271-272 iii. From Salt Lectionary post as quoting CS Lewis in Mere Christianity Part 4 Section 2. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-for-trinity-sunday