Loading...Two weeks in a row! It’s very exciting!
Two weeks in a row, we have a baptism to celebrate.
Two weeks in a row, we revel in the sacramental mysteries.
Two weeks in a row, we remember our own baptisms.
Two weeks in a row, we hear again the promise in the covenant.
There is so much to “unpack” in Baptism – the symbolism, meaning, and actions.
God is claiming Khaya as daughter; God is adopting her (as St. Paul writes about in his letter to the Romans)
Baptism is an “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”
the gifts of Holy Spirit are given
the seal of the cross of Christ is inscribed upon our forehead
and a covenant will be made, a two sided covenant
God never fails in being the loving, merciful divine one for us
and even if we drop the ball (which of course we do),
we are still in this covenant relationship with God.
But, on this Holy Trinity Sunday
-- a day that is set aside to focus on a doctrine, or a teaching, of the church –
I want us to remember the center of that theology about Trinity.
Talking about the Trinity can get you into a tangle VERY quickly:
three persons in one God, and one in three,
not separate from each other, and yet also not just a part of one another.
Other religions think that Christians have fuzzy math,
especially when we also start talking about how Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.
All of the metaphors and analogies that you may have heard used have some sort of shortcoming, and they end up with some sort of heresy:
partialism (the heresy that says that the Trinity is made up of different parts of one whole but are not distinct from one another) – when we use the analogy of an egg, or an apple, or a clover leaf;
modalism (the heresy that says that the persons of the Trinity are just different forms of the same God, not distinct from one another) – when we use forms of water or the roles that a person can have to describe the Trinity.
There is a funny four minute video online that delves into this problem and ends with words from the Athanasian Creed, the ancient statement of the church that deals specifically with the Holy Trinity:
“One God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons, nor dividing the substance that we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct person is God and Lord and that the deity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory and co-equal in majesty.”
Are you swimmy-headed yet?
Yeah, so that may be a thorough church definition or description of the Trinity,
but what does that mean in daily life, for you, for me, for Khaya?
What’s at the center of “three persons in one God”?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Several years ago I lived in the Tri-Cities. (Technically I lived in the “fourth of the Tri Cities” – West Richland)
What a fantastically fuzzy-mathed place to have a revelation about the Trinity!
As I drove around, I kept getting lost and confused moving between Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland.
What was the best route?
Do you have to go through one to get to the others?
HOW DO I GET AROUND?!?
Then I figured out the three main roads and that whatever else can be said about Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick, I figured them out. Or, at least how to get from one to another.
I hit upon the key to understanding:
not about the cities themselves,
but the main roads that connected them – WA240, US395, and I-184.
The way to “get” the Tri Cities is all about their relationship.
Ding! Holy Trinity. Relationship.
This is the heart and center of the Holy Trinity,
not the mental gymnastics or ancient creedal statements;
not all the words we use to think about the Trinity.
But the relationship
of the three, yes,
yet more powerfully, the relationship of the Three to you
and the relationship that that One relationship invites you into.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our own Trinitarian life is centered in that same heart of relationship:
God’s with you (which is reciprocated)
Yours to yourself and caring for yourself, and
Your relationship with the community and world.
This is the life into which we are baptized and the covenant we make and are nurtured in.
We love and care for the people around us, yes, including the refugee family or undocumented immigrants who are our neighbors.
You are in relationship with people who have radically different views that do you. You figure out common ground and start there to build community.
You love the people who try your patience, or “push your buttons”.
As people baptized into the Trinitarian name and relationship of God,
we love and care about God’s creation – earth, water, animals, and people of every nation and tribe.
We are baptized – Khaya, you, and I – into a life of love,
into a life reborn because of love,
into the kind of love that Presiding Bishop Curry talks about
the love that guides and directs our whole lives –
family, work, school, business, civic and public life.
We are baptized into the love and heart of God –
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit –
three persons in one divinity.
Holy and life-giving mystery
that draws us in through mercy,
and sends us out in grace.
Amen
