Readings:
Isaiah 6.1-8; Psalm 29; Rom 8.12-17; John 3.1-17
May I speak in the name of God; always creating, redeeming, and sanctifying. Amen.
Trinity is a deep part of my faith and yet it is always difficult to talk about because it is so counter to our lived experience with our time and space bound bodies. So, I’m going to tell you a couple of stories; one to illustrate the Trinity and one to illustrate the importance of that mystical truth.
Holding that the nature of a metaphor is that it is helpful some of the time, and all metaphors will eventually fail if pushed too far, I ask you to lean into this metaphor with me. I am pinching the best metaphor I’ve ever heard to help understand the nature of the trinity as offered by the Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem. He told us a story about conjoined twins, Krista and Tatiana Hogan.[1] The Canadian girls were born in 2006 and are conjoined at the brain.
In their early years, their mother noticed that they were able to communicate without words. They knew what each other needed, if Krista was thirsty, but the drink was near Tatiana, Tatiana would reach for the glass and hand it to Krista without a word being spoken.
Their mother also noticed that if Krista wanted a crayon that was next to Tatiana, she would simply reach around for it, even though there was no way she was able to see it.
Doctors confirmed what their parents and they themselves already knew: They could see through each other’s eyes, and they could feel what the other feels, both emotionally and physically. They can even read each other’s thoughts. Tatiana can control three of the arms, while the Krista can control three of the legs. But they are also able to decide whether or not to take over the control.
And yet, they are unique persons. Tatiana is a more extroverted and confident character while Krista is shy and takes a back seat. They have their own wishes and challenges.
They are their own persons and yet bound together in such intimacy, the depth of which we can only imagine. And while, when they were young, they tried to pull their heads apart when they fought, they have learned that the best way to go through life is in love because they are so intimately connected.
So maybe this is a little insight into what the nature of God is like. While there are three persons of God, they are bound together with one purpose and work together and through each other in a dynamic dance of love; they are One.
So much ink and blood has been spilled to work out our beliefs about the revelation of God, but what difference does it make anyway? Well, I can simply tell you what difference it makes to me. I was raised in a Christian family, but we did not believe in the Trinity. Jesus was God’s son, yes. Jesus was the Christ, yes. Jesus’ death was to atone for our sins, yes. But Jesus was not God. Jesus was a creature. The first-born Son of God, but a creature nonetheless.
In this context the Holy Spirit was described as “God’s active force.” And parallels some of the ways in which the Holy Spirit is spoken of in current church circles: as a kind of side-lined, subordinate, ‘force’ of God, rather than a full, equal, and dynamic person of the Triune God.
God the Father, of course, was a fearsome powerful figure, always an old white bearded guy sitting on a golden throne in the sky. Of this God the Father, I was very worried; I worried about what would happen if I didn’t do everything that has been prescribed by the leaders of that church.
It took me almost 20 years to come to a place that I could accept the mystery of the Trinity, and still hold my questions. The single most formative moment for me was my pastoral training. It is this experience that brought home the profound importance of the Trinity.
That God became incarnate - took on flesh and lived on earth, a human - is utterly awe-inspiring and life changing. To transform Christ’s experiences on Earth from merely human to both human and divine, was like the light went on right in front of my eyes. It was so brilliant it blinded me for a moment, but then my sight adjusted, and I could see the how that experience of knowledge (embodied knowledge) affects all my own suffering and the suffering of others.
If Jesus is God, and Jesus is human, it means that God in Christ Jesus has experienced life and death as a human does. That means God has experienced human hunger; human maternal love; how the dirt feels when it gets stuck between your toes. God has experienced human laughter, and human heartache, grief. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, has experienced human betrayal. God has experienced human anguish and fear. God has experienced the pain of physical torture in a human body. The person of God the Son has experienced what it is like to humanly despair and feel that God has abandoned him, along with his closest friends.
God has experienced what it is like to approach human death.
God has died a human death.
God was dead.
Easter is obviously the grand triumph that follows this story, but let’s just sit in this Godly humanity for a moment longer… What does it mean to you, how does it feel in your body, when you hear that God has suffered such human suffering? Does it change anything?
Paul writes to the Romans and says that we are heirs with Christ “if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” This scripture can and has been read that we should seek out suffering in the name of Christ, but I do not believe this is what it means. I believe this is referring to bringing Christ into all of our experiences because in Christ is life, no matter what kind of suffering our human condition is currently inflicting upon us. Jesus has already done it!
There is nothing I can experience that God hasn’t already experienced. Even doubt, even anger at God, even the fear of physical pain and the pain itself. And it has all been redeemed by that intimacy. It has the power to transform our suffering and that intimacy, I believe, is one of the primary ways that Christ saves. We are never alone! Why not ask for his help whilst we are in it, because we know that Jesus is glorified and will glorify us in him.
I believe in a mutable God, meaning a God that can change. I don’t believe that God changes in essence - God is Love! I believe that God was changed immeasurably by the incarnation, and that that change allows us to draw so very close to God. We know we are invited into God’s dance of Love, as Jesus has told us.
Last week we read Jesus promise the Spirit would come to the disciples. In john 16.14-15: “[The Spirit] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Can you feel the movement in this, the dance?
The spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you; All that the father has is mine; and this is why the spirit will take what is mine and give it to you. The Creator, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all interconnected and each has the truth that to live in Jesus Christ is to reject violence and selfish living, and embrace each other in all of our difference in the love of God.
Just like Krista and Tatiana had to decide whether to continue to live fighting each other and trying to pull their heads apart. Instead, they realised that whilst their experiences were so incredibly different from ours – limited by able-bodied structures in ways we can only begin to imagine; that it is impossible for them to escape one another – they may as well reject violence, reject selfish living, because it hurts their sister and inevitably, themselves. Instead, they chose to embrace the experience they have and the extraordinary bond they have which expands their experiences far beyond anything we could hope to understand. And this is what we believe of God: God is Love! And that Love so explodes our limited human experience that there is not even a possibility of duality within the one being of the three persons of God.
We can only truly know God through experience, a participation in the relationships of God and with God.
Today, when we celebrate the Eucharist and bread is broken, the body of Christ, let us enter the symbolism of that. Jesus body was broken, just like sometimes ours are. God the Daddy, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit join us intimately in that moment. What a beautiful, amazing, grace.
Amen.
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2010/11/21/conjoined-twins-can-hear-each-others-thoughts-587109/#:~:text=Conjoined%20twins%20Krista%20and%20Tatiana,see%20through%20each%20other's%20eyes.&text=The%20four%2Dyear%2Dolds%20have,see%20through%20each%20other's%20eyes.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/krista-and-tatiana-hogan/