Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17
The Trinity is not about God being remote and self-contained, but is all about the dynamic relationship God has with the world from the beginning of creation.
The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult and complicated only if we’re trying to define God. It is easy to get stuck with words and concepts as if we’re talking about something static like a statue in an art gallery. But the Trinity is about how God continues to be involved in the world and we are caught up to share in his life.
We do not find the doctrine that God is Trinity in any one biblical text; it comes through many texts as we understand what God is like through his dealings with his people. The experience of Jesus did not suddenly reveal God as triune (three in one), but in the light of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection, and in the coming of the Spirit, it was easier to see that this is the nature of God.
The heartbeat of Christian theology, our understanding of the nature of God, is that God is God-in-relationship. There is relationship within the Being of God, toward humankind, and with (and beyond) all creation. Christian theologians have captured the idea of Relationship-within-God in the Greek term “perichoresis” (parry-kor-E’-sis) from the time of the “church Fathers” (John of Damascus and Gregory of Nanziaznus, among others). In Greek, perichoresis means, literally, “dancing around.” It originally referred most specifically to the circle dance performed by the chorus of a Greek play. As Christians used this term to describe the nature of the Trinity, they did so also to speak of the ways in which the Father offers himself to the Son with the Spirit, the Son offers himself to the Father with the Spirit, and the Spirit flows between Father and Son and the whole of creation, bidding us to join the dance of God, the dance of Love.
One of the best symbols to represent the Trinity is a circle: God is love; the relationships within the Trinity are of reciprocal love; the creation of the world is an act of overflowing love, so we, as created beings, are caught up in the ‘dance of love’ within God. Whatever symbol we use it needs to be dynamic, not static.
How believable is this doctrine of the Trinity? Does it make any sense to you? What does it mean if we don’t even expect to make sense of it? I’ve enjoyed reading Donald Miller’s book, “Blue like Jazz,” which is also a movie, and this bit says it better than I could.
“I read a book … about Mother Theresa. Somebody in the book asked her how she summoned the strength to love so many people. She said she loved people because they are Jesus, each one of them is Jesus, and this is true because it says so in the Bible. And it is also true that this idea contradicts the facts of reality: Everybody can’t be Jesus. There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. But I think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don’t make any sense to our heads. Love, for instance; we believe in love. Beauty. Jesus as God.
It comforts me to think that if we are created beings, the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality, and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality, that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality, or it would not be reasonable.
When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe. Eternity, for example, is not something the human mind can understand. We may be able to wrap our heads around living forever (and we can do this because none of us has experienced death), but can we understand what it means to have never been born? I only say this to illustrate that we, as Christians, believe things we cannot explain. And so does everybody else.
I have a friend who is a seminary student who criticises certain Christian writers for embracing what he calls ‘mysticism.’ I asked him if his statement meant that he was not a mystic. Of course not, he told me. I asked him if he believed in the Trinity. He said he did. I asked him if he believed that the Trinity represented three separate persons who are also one. He said he did. I asked him if that would be considered a mystical idea. He just stood there thinking.
You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.
I was talking to a homeless man at a Laundromat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to maths we defile the Holy. I thought that was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at maths. Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on his majesty and otherness forever.”
When God created humans – male and female – he created them in his image. It took all the humans on earth to image God then; maybe it takes all the humans on earth now to image God now. Each one of us is made in God’s image but our Creator is so much greater than we are that all of us together only hint at God’s nature. Even so, the fact that humans are made in God’s image has huge ramifications for humans, in the way we relate to one another and to creation. We relate to all creation in God and, in our limited way, as God!
Romans
What Paul described in his letter to the Romans is a fundamental dilemma facing humankind. As he shows in chapter 7, the power of sin, dwelling within us, prevents us from doing what is good and right despite our best intentions. In the beginning of chapter 8, Paul asserts that the solution to this human dilemma is the indwelling power of the Spirit (8:1-11).
To Life
Life is yours! That is a powerful promise, affirmed many times through Paul’s letters and again in the passage we read: if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (8:13). The resurrection is promised not for Jesus alone, but for all the brothers and sisters who are in Christ. No one is so dead in sin that the power of God cannot bring that person back to fullness of life.
God’s power is for all in the gathered community who face death-dealing forces in their lives. In the midst of all the ways we might feel trapped – unable to see a way out, weighed down by thoughts, feelings, or circumstances beyond our power to control – Paul invites us to receive the Spirit of God as earnestly and completely as the Spirit of God receives us.
Children of God
The life-giving power of God makes it possible for us to receive life through our adoption as children of God. Adoption into God’s family is the work of the Spirit: it is the Spirit that leads us (8:14) that bears witness with us when we cry, “Abba! Father!” (8:15-16), that dwells within us (8:11). Elsewhere in Romans we learn that this Spirit intercedes when words fail us, “with sighs too deep for words.” (8:26). It is the same Spirit through which the love of God is poured into our hearts (5:5).
As loving adoptive parents everywhere will attest, children who enter the family by the miracle of adoption are every bit as beloved – and every bit “family” – as those who are born to the parents in the old-fashioned way. God makes it possible for the family of God to encompass all of us.
Joint-Heirs with Christ
The good news of our passage is that all God’s children, adopted into the family of God, share together as common heirs of God. Further, the identity we share with one another as children of God is shared also with God’s own Son. Christ is a joint heir with us; he suffers and is glorified, and we suffer and are glorified right along with him. What happens to Christ (resurrection life), happens to us; the glory that is Christ’s (God’s son), belongs to us as well (God’s children).
Audrey West, Associate Professor of New Testament, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, IL, WorkingPreacher.org, alt.
So we are all family. And like any family there are times when we don’t get along. We object to something a sibling says or does. We behave objectionably. We lose trust. We get apathetic. But that is living according to our human nature. On the other hand when the going gets tough the family holds together. The reality of being God’s children, even if we don’t understand how that works, keeps us relating in the love of the Spirit of God. So we keep loving one another, trusting one another, caring about and for one another. We try to be kind and gentle and forgive anyone who slips up, even if it is for the hundredth time. This is living according to the Spirit.