The Southwark Trinity – After Rublev by Meg Roe
(megroe.com)
Today is Trinity Sunday. The day we think about and
celebrate the Trinitarian nature of God. Our passages this morning clearly name
the three persons of God who we’re used to hearing mentioned in worship,
showing doing so is biblical, that is the absolutely the origin of this
teaching of the church.
Genesis 1 speaks of the spirit of God hovering over the
waters and says that human beings are made in “our” image. Plural, “our”.
The Apostle Paul signs off his letter with what we now call
the grace – invoking Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And Jesus, commands his disciples to go and make disciples
of all nations in the name of Father, Son, and Spirit.
So it states the facts:
God the
Father is God
God the
Son is God.
God
Holy Spirit is God.
It doesn’t go much further, it doesn’t try to explain how
the three can be one or the one can be three. But that hasn’t stopped
Christians from trying to figure it out for the past two thousand years.
There are many theories and many strange analogies that
people use to try to explain the Trinity.
There’s the classic one about water – because the same
molecules can be ice, water, or steam, but, frankly, that really leads to
issues of heresy called modalism.
Then there’s the one about the egg – the Father is the
shell, the Son is the White and Holy Spirit is the yolk. But it’s easy to take
that too far and begin to question what came first. Again: heresy.
And there are many more besides: God is like a tree; God is
like a 3 leaf clover, God is like an apple. The list goes on.
We come up with all these analogies because we are creatures
who can only have and experience one personhood. We cannot understand the
mystery of the Trinity in all its glory. We can only catch glimpses of it and I
want to share with you one that I first came across ten years ago as a student
and that drastically changed my understanding of the Trinity and has become
foundational to my faith since.
This is an understanding of the Trinity that goes all the
way back to the Early Fathers in the Eastern Orthodox Church – a couple of guys
called Gregory and another called Basil who went on to become saints. The
Eastern Church focussed on the three persons of God – Father, Son and Holy
spirit – and tried to explain how they could in fact be one (whereas in the West
we started with the idea of 1 God and tried to explain how there could actually
be three persons within that. The difference is subtle but has had huge
ramifications for our theology and worship ever since).
The term they come up with in the East is ‘perichoresis’
‘Peri’ means ‘around’, and ‘chorein’ means ‘to make space’ –
put them together and you have ‘make space around’ or more specifically:
‘someone or something that makes space around itself for others or something
else’.
There’s a sense of movement to it: with each person of the
Trinity constantly making room for the other two. Like in a dance. A Divine
Dance, it’s been called. Where Father, Son and Holy Spirit make room for each
other, move in and through one another, dance with one another, in a way that
creates a mutual indwelling while still maintaining space for each
individually. These are the three persons of God completely individual and
radically united. It is full of movement and energy; there is no space in it
for any kind of hierarchy. It’s like in John 14 when Jesus says ‘I am in the
Father, and the Father is in me’.
Why is this important though?
A Brazillian, Liberation theologian called Leonardo Boff
wrote that,
if God
were only 1 person, the end point of all things would be isolation and
solitude.
if God
existed in 2 persons only, the result would be division, separateness,
exclusion
HOWEVER
a God who exists in 3 persons offers the possibility of communion, union, and
perfection.
Jurgen Moltmann, a German theologian, points out that where
Christians have focussed on a 1 person God who rules, dominates, divides and
judges, they have taken it as permission to do the same to their fellow human
beings.
BUT when they are able to hold in mind a Trinitarian God, he
says, one without supremacy or subjections, Christians develop earthly
community that reflects God’s unity and mutuality.
We are made in the image of God.
In the image of a God who exists in community.
Who’s very nature is reciprocity, union, love, relationship.
This is an expansive vision of who God is, and in turn, who
we are as human beings.
It tells us that we were made for community. The first thing
that God says is wrong about creation, is that it’s not good for man to be
alone.
We are made to be in relationship.
We are made to love.
We are made to be united.
If God exists in perichoresis – ‘make space around’ – then
so should we. Not just we in HPLC, not just we in Scotland, but we the human
beings of the world.
We are made in the image of a communitarian God, that makes
us communitarian people. And communitarian people stand together.
We’ve seen some beautiful examples of this in the face of
the pandemic. I know that some of you are shielding, in order to stand
together. Some of you have been delivering food to others, in order to stand
together. Some of you have been making scrub bags for medics, in order to stand
together. We’ve stopped meeting in church, in order to stand together.
This week we’ve seen people standing together against
another evil that plagues our world.
It’s easy to believe that racism and police brutality are
things that happen somewhere else far far away and aren’t relevant to us.
But if we believe in a communitarian God, and know ourselves
to be communitarian people, then we must stand together with out fellow human
beings wherever they may be.
I’ll admit that I spent a lot of this week avoiding anything
but the headlines and I’ve not lingered on them for too long. I really held off
from listening to black voices, from reading up on anti-racism. I’ve not
donated or protested or promoted. I’ve stay silent and safe and I repent of
that.
Because we need to stand together.
We are all made in the beautiful image of this communitarian
God and no matter our skin colour, our gender, our sexuality, our poverty, our
education, we are together.
So firstly we have to check our own privilege. Particularly
if we think we don’t have any. We are white, middle to upper class people,
living in the safety rural Perthshire, with the means to access the internet
and technology that allows us to be sitting here right now. We have immense
privilege and we need to be aware of it and make sure that it doesn’t blind us
to the experiences of our fellow human beings.
Then we need to educate ourselves. About what it’s like to
be the people who are different than us and disadvantaged because of it.
We need to learn about the subjugation of people of colour
that has helped us in getting to this place of privilege.
We can donate to organisations working to end racism, here
and abroad.
We can write to MPs and MSPs and make sure that they know we
will not stand for policies that discriminate and ask for the reform of justice
and education systems.
We can seek out and use businesses run by people of colour
(if there aren’t any locally, we all spend plenty of time shopping online!). If
we run businesses, or sit on the boards of companies and charities, we can
ensure they are actively seeking to engage with and employ people of colour.
We can challenge others when they bemoan the violence of the
protestors or defend the violence of the police. We can stand up for those who
aren’t there to defend themselves.
We can talk with our children and grandchildren, be
conscious about the gifts that we buy them, the history we teach them.
Something as simple as a book whose protagonist is a person of colour can
expand our children’s worlds.
We can become aware of our own unconscious biases and work
to change them.
We do all these things because we stand together.
Because humanity is one community, made in the image of one
communitarian God.
Next say time you say “Father, Son
& Holy Spirit”, remember this idea of perichoresis – a dynamic unity that
makes space around. And remember that that is the God in whose image humanity
is created, and that unity that makes space is what we as human beings should
be replicating.
Glory to God, Source of all being,
Eternal Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
