Holy Trinity Sunday

June 7, 2020

Art by Margie Thompson, SSJ, M.F.A. is an artist, spiritual director and a Sister of St Joseph of Philadelphia. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Chestnut Hill College, where she has taught Art Studio, Art and Spirituality and Honors Courses since 1992

“Dancing with the Stars”

Thematic Sermon

I can’t dance.  Ask my relatives and good friends and they will tell you just how bad a dancer I am.  I’d love to learn to dance.  I could use some dance lessons just to get down the basics.

There are some people like Elaine in the sit-com ‘Seinfeld’ who are proud of their dancing.  Elaine thought she could dance, but her dancing was a bit awkward to say the least. 

Then there are those who can dance like elegant ballet dancers.  There are those who even dance in church.  Liturgical dancers can bring rich meaning to a text, shaping the text from words to movement.

Dancing with the Stars has been a popular show.  The winners did a freestyle dance that was a human sculpture – artful, and intimate.  The dancers had a give and take, they had to let go and take hold. 

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday - a Sunday on which we reflect on the ‘Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.’  It is that basic teaching about God – our Christian attempt to unpack the mystery of God and yet remain monotheistic.

The doctrine of the Trinity evolved over many centuries and became concretized in our creeds – namely the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.  All three attest to three persons of God – Father, son, and Holy Spirit. 

Turn in you hymnal to pages 104-105 in the very front part of the hymnal and you will see the two creeds.  The Apostles Creed on the right hand page evolved out of the rite of Holy Baptism.  We see snippets of it in the New Testament, especially some of Paul’s letters. 

The Nicene Creed came out of a 4^th century controversy over the nature of Christ.  It was a nasty church conflict.  Arius, a popular preacher – based on some of Paul’s writings claimed that Jesus was God’s adopted Son. 

Athanasius another church leader countered by claiming

Jesus was ‘very God, of very God – begotten, not made, being of on substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.’  And his position won. 

The Athanasian Creed took shape from 400–700 CE.  It takes up the relationship of the Trinity to one another.  Not written by Athanasius but given his name due to how it deals with the relationship of Christ to the Father and Holy Spirit.

All three creeds have their place – they are liturgical and historical dogma. Yet, we have to remember that they are attempts to word a wordless God.

The mystery of God cannot be divulged in 3 creeds.  In fact the creeds can be a kind of head trip:  sterile propositions about God to which we nod our ascent. 

We’ve used the symbol of the triangle – three sides one geometric figure, an egg – outer shell, egg white, egg yolk, the three-leaved shamrock to try and explain the three in oneness of God.  Those are rather cold symbols to explain an intellectualized dogma.  They remain sterile and distant.

If all we get out of Holy Trinity Sunday is a sterile doctrine and cold symbols, than we have missed the point.  The nature of God is about the heart not just the head.  Coming to know the nature of God is an act of devotion not simply intellectual ascent. 

Holy Trinity is about our heart not just our heads.  Holy Trinity is about devotion not dogma.  Holy Trinity Sunday is an invitation into a dance.

God woos us into a relationship.  God seduces us into a dance.  God teaches us to dance as God’s self dances.  The dance of Trinity is an invitation into a relationship with God.  A relationship that is distant and intimate, imminent and transcendent.  God is both close and far way.

Please turn to Hymn 412 - Come join the dance of Trinity

Come; join the dance of Trinity,

before all worlds begun—

the interweaving of the Three,

the Father, Spirit, Son.

The universe of space and time

did not arise by chance,

but as the Three, in love and hope,

made room within their dance.

The Creator-God interweaves God’s self into the creation.  All creation sings of a communion with God.  The universe beats to the heart beat of its Creator.  Creation did not arrive by random chance.  When Scripture gives witness to a Creator God it proclaims the ‘who’ of creation – not the how.

Christians should not get hung up on debates over evolution.  Scripture is not a science book telling us how creation came to be.  No!  The Bible is a witness to a Creator God who is full of mercy, justice, and compassion.

God continues to create.  The Creator God invites us to be open and creative in our lives.  As we participate in the dance we enter into the mysteries and marvels of the creation – not just to understand and dominate them – but awe-struck, worship the God who gives life!

Come; see the face of Trinity,

newborn in Bethlehem;

then bloodied by a crown of thorns

outside Jerusalem.

The dance of Trinity is meant

for human flesh and bone;

when fear confines the dance in death,

God rolls away the stone.

For the Christian tradition – God has a face.  The unwordable Word became flesh.  God pitches God’s tent among human beings.  Once recognized, the radical mercy of God in Jesus was a threat.  So human beings disposed of that threat – bloodied the Son of God outside Jerusalem.  But the dance of the flesh and bone God would not be confined by death and the stone was rolled away on Easter Day.

It is Christ and his life and teaching that enlighten us about the nature of God as Father and Spirit.  Through Christ we come to know the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth as ‘Father’ – a loving concerned parent.  Through Christ we see God as healer, story teller, lover, life giver.

In Christ God’s hand is extended to us to join the dance of Trinity. 

Come, speak aloud of Trinity,

as wind and tongues of flame

set people free at Pentecost

to tell the Savior's name.

We know the yoke of sin and death,

our necks have worn it smooth;

go tell the world of weight and woe

that we are free to move!

In our dance in life we know the yoke of sin and death.  Life is very fragile.  We’ve seen how wind can be destructive.  Tornados tear up life.  We live under the yoke of sin and death – each of us have experienced small and large losses – our necks have been worn smooth.

Yet, the promised Spirit comes amidst the storms of life and invites us into the dance of Trinity. 

Now some morally upright, self-proclaimed preacher of the ‘truth’ will announce that a particular disaster is God’s punishment for something or another.  Note:  no matter what anyone tells you, the God revealed in Jesus Christ and worshipped as the Holy Trinity does not punish people by sending tornadoes, or diseases, or earthquakes, or disasters.

God did not have a so called ‘plan’ to strike a certain city or any place else in order to serve some mysterious purpose.

Disasters happen as a natural course of things.  God does not point a divine magic wand and conjure up natural disasters. 

Tornados happen because of wind currents, cancer happens because cells grow and these things are out of our control. 

The dance of Trinity means that the Spirit bears with us in our weakness.  If you want to find God in such disasters you will find God bearing the cross – standing with those who suffer, bearing the brokenness and responding to the cries for mercy.  The God of the cross is present in the one who races into the rubble to find the person wailing for help.

In the dance of Trinity God is already bringing new life and resurrection from this disaster.  The mysteries of suffering confound us.   But God enters and surrounds us with the promise that nothing can separate us from the love of our partner in the dance.

Within the dance of Trinity,

before all worlds begun,

we sing the praises of the Three,

the Father, Spirit, Son.

Let voices rise and interweave,

by love and hope set free,

to shape in song this joy, this life:  the dance of Trinity.

Holy Trinity Sunday is about a God who invites us into a dance -- by love and hope set free – God shapes in song, this joy, this life:  the dance of Trinity.

Amen