Trinity Sunday
Sunday 30th May 2021
This was Maureen’s last Sunday as Vicar of Pattingham with Patshull and almost identical services were held in the morning and the evening and this sermon was preached at both services. As not everyone was able to attend services in church both of these services were streamed live on YouTube and are still available now. They can be found here.
Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6.1-8
John 3.1-17
Revd Preb Maureen Hobbs
Farewell to Pattingham
At the beginning of this, my final week as a Vicar, I had an email from someone who was trying to gather “What is the Church of England’s image of God”, and “What is St Chad’s image of God” – by which I think they meant the views of this worshipping community, rather than those of the Saint himself!
Quite a theological challenge for a Monday morning!
So how would you have answered the question I wonder?
In Isaiah there is an image of God enthroned – high and mighty and surrounded by the cherubim and seraphim – it is an image related to earthly monarchs and courts and it also owes something to the image of the Greeko-Roman God Zeus.
There is a good argument that says our image of God forms our spirituality, and if that image is wrong or distorted in some way, then we are headed in the wrong direction on our faith journey.
So, how does the image of the Trinity help us to better understand God? In Genesis at the Creation, God speaks of godself in the plural…. “Let us make human beings in our image…” But Judaism was famously and ferociously monotheistic – to distinguish itself from the surrounding religions and cultures, and Christians rejected the multiple gods of the Romans and Greeks, so coming up with the doctrine of the Trinity took some time!
But eventually they hit on a surprisingly sophisticated image taken from Greek theatre – perichoresis – literally a ‘circle dance’. In this image there is no hierarchy – it is not a pyramid with God the Father at the top, the Son next and the Spirit somewhere in between… This, rather, is a dance of love and creativity – fluidly dynamic. So the Trinity means a dance and the Trinity means relationship.
That is not to say that there are three separate dancers – God is actually the dance itself – a flowing movement, not three statues. It is constantly evolving and creating new forms of communion and interdependence.
And that I think is a wonderful image of God for me to leave with you today as I bow out of this particular dance floor and begin to look for new partners elsewhere.
I expect that many of you – like me – have found yourself at some time taking part in a circle dance at a barn dance or ceilidh? Now the joyous thing about this form of dancing is that everyone can take part. All generations, from tiny children to grannies and grandpas – and even those whose dancing days are over can sit and watch and tap their toes to the music and smile as they see the antics of the dancers on the floor…. some will be highly skilled no doubt. Others perhaps more enthusiastic than graceful! And there are always a few who seem to have two left feet and very little sense of rhythm – but who nevertheless have a whale of a time as they progress around the floor! (you can tell that I have been to a good many ceilidhs in my time!) And you don’t stick with the same partner either. Often it is what’s called a ‘progressive dance’ and after a short while spent with the person who brought you to the floor, they will bid you farewell and pass on to the next dancer and you will have a new partner – who may be wonderful, or not, but again who won’t be with you indefinitely.
God clearly loves diversity (we are all so different one from another) and wants us to enjoy and celebrate it too and if we have a Trinitarian view of our relationship with all humanity we can create authentic community and unity in diversity and freedom.
And we can take this concept of the Trinity into our relationship with Creation too, so that we are in a dance of love with the whole world. For we are not separate from creation – we are an integral part of it. We are one part of the Community of Creation. And amazingly we are seeing patterns of the Creator God in so much of the world around us. Scientists tell us that everything is in relationship with everything else. (And even the spread of the wretched Coronovirus teaches us how closely we are all in contact with one another around the globe!) Trinity is even mirrored in the three particles of every atom orbiting and cycling around one another.
So perhaps we should see the entire world as sacrament – as something holy and not just separate parts of it? In the traditions of Native Americans the phrase “the people” refers to all species, minerals and even the stars in heaven. So among them will be the human people (us), the plant people, the four-legged, flying or swimming peoples, rock people, star people and more… God gives strength to his people, God blesses his people with peace, and thus has a powerful message of hope for the whole of creation – which as Paul writes, “waits with eager longing for the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
So this Trinity Sunday can we embrace (even if socially distanced!) the Circle dance of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and extend the dance to mould our relationship with other humans and to all of creation?
I will end with a poem from Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth century German Dominican mystic.
Do you want to know
what goes on in the core of the Trinity?
I will tell you.
The Father laughs
and gives birth to the Son.
The Son laughs back at the Father
and gives birth to the Spirit,
The whole Trinity laughs
and gives birth to us.
Keep on laughing, keep on dancing and God will surround us all with glorious music. Amen.