Wallflower

Trinity Sunday

Roughly a thousand years ago, the church decided to have one Sunday each year dedicated to the Trinity, and that idea has stuck around. I strongly suspect that very shortly after the holiday was established, it immediately became tradition, one still observed, that the newest priest on the block, the lowest one in the pecking order, was tasked with preaching on Trinity Sunday. Let the new kid explain the Trinity to the unwashed masses.

This is because the Trinity is today, and perhaps was then too, one of the least understood parts of our faith. I don’t know whether any of you has been asked before to explain the Trinity, but it’s a fairly daunting task. And not only is it difficult to understand, it’s really easy to make fun of. I remember very well being in college and going out to see a student written play. Both of my roommates in college were theater majors, and so every weekend we were going to see something or other on campus. But on this particular occasion, crammed into the tiny little blackbox theater, the play was winding through its plot exploring some existential crisis or other. Honestly, every play written by a college student explores some existential crisis or other, and every one involves smoking, self-exploration, and nudity whenever possible. In fact, if you can smoking, self-exploration, and nudity to happen simultaneously, it was generally judged a success.

But on this occasion, someone was doubting their faith and so went to talk to another character, one who was a kind of 'drunk the kool-aid' vacant-eyed Christian. And so the main character starts yelling at him, asking whether he's supposed to believe some shit about a God is Father and Son and a Ghost and also not these things, and on and on. The laughter in the audience was heartfelt. I found myself sighing. Nothing like presenting ideas you disagree with in their least-flattering light to mock them rather than try to understand them. It still makes me sigh.

I think part of the problem is that, for what seem like good reasons, we're all tempted to explain the Trinity on Trinity Sunday. I think is what I would call a "Bad Idea." Not--and here's where I differ with some people--because the Trinity is impossible to understand. Or even because it's weird. But I think the sermon on Trinity Sunday is simply an awful moment to try and have what is a long, theological, historical, and complicated teaching moment. I think that likely anyone, with the time and interest, could in a classroom setting come to understand the main points of the doctrine. It's really not that onerous, despite the idiotic cloud we build around it like it's the highest of all mysteries. God is mysterious--doctrine isn't. It begins, in essence, with the very strange fact that Jesus seemed both to think that he was God and that he was constantly speaking to his "Father," who also seemed to be God. You could start a class with that unusual fact and more or less explore all the possible options and come to see why we ended up with understanding God to be Trinitarian in a profound way. But Sunday morning probably ain't the time.

So, instead, let's take a short sermon idea, one that might be more helpful. Instead of talking about "what" the Trinity is, let's talk about why it matters. Why we care.

And I think the nicest way to begin is probably by looking at a picture. Or go look at it here.

Rublev, Hospitality of Abraham, such and so on. It's real famous. You all probably know more about it than I do--icons are certainly not my area of expertise.

But I want to point out only one thing--stolen boldly from Rowan Williams--that might change how we think about Trinity Sunday. I've heard it elsewhere, but Williams, as per usual, explains it better than anyone else. So I think it changes things, or at least, it does for me.

If we look at the center character, it's probably Christ. Deacon's stole, hand in the 'teaching pose' above a chalice, blue for divinity and red for something other--humanity or blood or some such. If we look at Christ, we see that Christ is looking at God the Father on our left--God's blue divinity almost entirely shrouded in a mysterious robe. But then if we look at the Father's eyes, we see the Father looking at the figure on the right, the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is looking at Christ, mimicking him in postures, in blue clothing and dressing, in the inclination of the head.

In the icon, we can't just look at the Trinity. We get drawn into it--seeing Christ and moving with Christ into the mystery of Father, who pushes us on to the Holy Spirit, whose imitation of Christ brings us back to the Word. It's a simple motion, in a way. And it draws us inward, and as many are quick to say, we find ourselves at this table as well--the perspective of the icon is such that we are sitting at the fourth seat, at the table with these three figures, drawn into the circling gaze. This can be hard to see when it's small. I once had the good luck to see a more than lifesize reproduction of this particular icon where the figures were larger than me, and it makes a huge difference on the whole 'sitting at the table' thing. If you ever see this thing that big, the forced perspective is hard to miss--it's literally like standing right at that table.

So, what good is the circling gaze? It is this: God is not a point in space we look at. God is not mystery we gaze at in the abyss and contemplate. God is not the Prime Mover, the perfect stillness that is the Self-Caused Causer of all causes. God is not the Other, the thing different from us. Or at the very least, not only these things. It turns out that to say "God is one" is a metaphorical statement, just like saying "God is great," or talking about "God's arm being strong to save."

Instead, God is more than one. We do not experience God as a separate point, but as a pilgrimage, a drawing up. We meet God in the Word, who calls us into the mystery of the Father, but the mystery in turn breathes us into the active Spirit, whose actions are patterned on Christ. We don't look at God from a distance. We get on the path and walk, or the horse and ride, or the merri-go-round that turns in both a circular fashion and into a new reality. There's a mystic in the tradition who talks about how God is the Non-Aliud, the Not-Other. God is Other from us, but not THE Other--God is not identical with us, but we ourselves cannot pare ourselves down such that God is stripped out of our reality. God is Non-Aliud, Not-Other.

So why Trinity? Because God is not someone we go to visit, or not only. We don't meet God in a consumerist sense, buying and consuming God to meet some need. God's NOT even like the ultra product, some thing that we could consume forever in our never-ending hunger because God is 'infinite.' Instead, God is a Way, a path, a Reality, that we experience and dance with. Knowing God, loving God, requires participation.

So on Trinity Sunday, we remember that faith is a dance in which we share, not a TV show we watch. If we're only watching, we simply haven't met God. If we want to know God, we gotta buck up sometime, fellow wallflowers, and get out on the floor.