How
is God for you? When you think of God,
what comes to mind? How have you
experienced God?
David
L. Beck* - a Presbyterian pastor – wrote about a conversation with two
children. He called their words “the
best help” he received in understanding how we can understand what “Trinity
means:
“Rather
than insisting that scripture make the doctrine of the Trinity explicit,
perhaps we should allow the Trinity to remain implicit and affirm it out of our
own experience, our own living with God. The best help I ever received in
understanding how the idea of the Trinity may evolve from our Christian
development rather than be imposed as an abstract formula came from two
four-year-olds (one of them my own) with whom I spent a winter's afternoon18 years
ago while their mothers were shopping. Somehow they decided that they were
going to explain to me what they knew of the divine. They did it with such
sincerity and enthusiasm that I still remember what they said.
“I
needed to know they advised me, that first there was God and God loves. Long,
long ago God made everything. God is everywhere and sees everything but you
can't see God. On the other hand, they said, you can see Jesus or at least
pictures of Jesus are because he was down here where we are.. Jesus is simply
wonderful and loves us very much, children as much as grown-ups. If you can't
see Jesus right now, it is because he is in heaven, but he stays in touch with
us so well he might as well still be here. A lot of the time it seems as if he
is.
“As
they talked, however, they did not talk about God alone or Jesus alone, but of
"God and Jesus." Together "God and Jesus" were a wonderful
divine partnership who made the world a wonderful and beautiful place to be.
“From
their perspective, nothing was missing. They had digested what was taught about
God in the creation story and what was taught about Jesus in the Gospels. Had I
shared with them the two parts of Paul's benediction, the blessing or prayer
with which he ended 2 Corinthians, they would have understood it. After saying
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ," I would need to explain the
word grace as "a wonderful gift from Jesus that leaves you very
happy," and they would have been able to connect with that. I would not
have to say a thing about "the love of God" because they already
believed that God loved them; that part of the prayer simply repeats something
they already knew and believed.
“What
they would not understand, however, would be the last part: "the communion
of the Holy Spirit. . ." It takes
an adult self-consciousness – the experience of an adult living and trying
to believe but knowing doubt, trying to do the right thing but knowing failure,
trying to be confident but sensing despair – to also know that there is a
part of God that helps us through those obstacles, a part which is different
from God's love or Christ's gift of salvation.
“Sharing
in that part of God leaves us able to say, with the conviction of Paul, that
"nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord." God is revealed as a loving Creator, a compassionate Savior and
a mysterious presence allowing us to overcome what we could not on our own.
This is the Trinity. It is the last thing to be said about God, after we have
lived and grown and struggled. Then we discover that it was the Spirit that
allowed us to cry, "Abba, Father" in the first place and to perceive
God's saving love in Jesus Christ.”
Here
are my reflections of Pastor Beck’s story:
It makes wonderful sense to me that we can understand God as trinity of
persons, because we experience God that way.
The unity of God's being can be more difficult to deal with once you
really focus on those separate persons.
This a prime critique of Christianity by the other two Abrahamic faiths.
As
I meditate on the meaning of the Trinity, the three persons of the Trinity represent
a community, which we can enter through Jesus' mediation. In an abstract form the circle called perichoresis can depict that
community. [Point out the stained glass
panel showing this.] Perichoresis derives from the
Greek peri, "around" and chorein, which has
multiple meanings among them being "to make room for", "go
forward" and "contain."
The
Rublev icon of three “persons” shows the Trinity in a more “human” way—a better
way, perhaps. [Their bodies have equal weight or
space; they form a circle, but there is an opening at the front center of the
group for someone to join them.] This sort of community we can imitate here during our earthly
lives, including here in our parish. It's a way to understand Jesus’
great commission to us at the end of Matthew’s gospel as well. Because we have experienced the divine
inclusiveness, Jesus tells us to go into the world and lead more and more
people into the circle of God's love. Is
this how you have experienced God?
*David
L. Beck, ‘Sharing the Holy Spirit,’ Living By the Word in “The Christian
Century,” May 19, 1999.
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