Almighty and
everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the
confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal
Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity:
Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see
you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the
Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Have
you ever come into a room alone, only to find everyone else already gathered
into private little clumps of friendship, backs to the world? Children, I’ll
bet you might have experienced that lonely feeling in the school lunchroom. You
stand there awkwardly with your tray and scan the room for a table where you
might fit in. Teens, I’ll bet you might have experienced that painful
awkwardness in the hallways at school. You come up behind happy classmates
clustered by the lockers and stand there with your hands dangling by your
sides, trying to find a way to join the closed conversation. Adults, I’ll bet
that you might have experienced this kind of discomfort at big, crowded cocktail
parties--and yes, even at church.
Long
ago, as a newly divorced single mom, new in town and with young children in
tow, I found my way to an Episcopal church. While I might have looked as if I fit in, there probably weren’t many parishioners more lost,
lonely, and spiritually desolate than I was. With my toddler on one arm,
balancing a cup of punch and a flurry of Sunday School coloring pages in the
other hand, alternately prodding and luring my whining older children with bribes
of doughnuts, I would head over to whatever fellowship opportunity was available
after the service. I would peer through the doors of the fellowship hall and
survey with wary eyes the groups clustered around the tables. Invariably, I
would find happy families and friends huddled together-- laughing, sharing
smiles, turned toward each other in closed circles of complicity. There was
little room for me and my rowdy bunch to slip smoothly into any group. Almost
as a kind of dare, I would plop down at a totally empty table and busy myself
with my children, waiting to see if anyone would join us. They never did.
The
good news for us today is that God offers the possibility of a different kind of table conversation ... in the doctrine of the Trinity! Take a look at the image of the Trinity on the front of your bulletin.
This is a 15th-century icon called The Visitation of Abraham by the Russian Orthodox painter Andrei Rublev. The story behind the icon is the
Genesis account of God’s visit to Abraham and Sarah in the desert. One day, Abraham
and Sarah welcome three strangers with open arms, bathing their feet and
preparing a feast for them, and as the men leave, they promise the aging couple
that Sarah will soon give birth to a son. Interpreting
the Old Testament allegorically, ancient Christians saw these three divine
messengers as a manifestation of the Trinity.
Notice
in this icon that these three figures are wearing gender-neutral robes and
hair-styles. They are neither strictly male nor female. The central figure, who represents Christ, is holding
his hand over a golden chalice in blessing, as the other two look on. What is
most interesting about this icon is that there is both an openness and a
swirling movement to it. Christ is neither looking down nor out at the viewer.
Instead, he cocks his head clearly toward the figure to his right. That figure,
representing the Father, nods his head across the table to the Holy Spirit on his right, who, in turn, inclines his
head back toward Christ. The wings and background objects bend as if caught in
a gently turning, circular breeze.
Notice
that the figures aren’t huddled around the table in the way that we huddle with
our friends in the lunch room, either. Here, there is a clear break in the
circle, a clear empty seat at the table, right at the front of the icon, right
across from Christ and in front of the chalice. Anyone who looks at this icon automatically becomes the fourth person at the Table and is caught up in the
circular fellowship of the other Three. There’s no looking on, waiting to get
into the group. This Trinity excludes no one from its conversation. Even if we
were all looking at one big copy of this icon at once, we would all have immediately
joined the Trinity at the Table.
Today,
more than ever, our world needs this open, welcoming, living image of God. Left
to our own devices, we can now love and hate from a distance. When I’m waiting
for a plane in the airport now, I no longer seek to connect with my fellow
travelers. I no longer even look at them. Instead, I poke at my i-phone and
check Facebook. And everyone else is doing the same thing. When I want to reach
out to my grown children or to parishioners, I can send heartfelt greetings
with a quick email or a text—but these greetings don’t open up to you my voice
or my person or even the personal loops and squiggles of my unique penmanship. With
technology, we can even kill and destroy from a distance now. We can use cruel
words on social media that we would never utter in person. A sniper’s bullet or
bombs from a computer-driven drone can make human hatred an impersonal and mechanical
thing.
Not
only do we feel far away from one another, God can seem far away in this kind of a world, as well. God can seem to be a solid,
unchanging being that we have boxed up in our imaginations, a far-off Being who seems to watch the world ineffectually “from a
distance.” With this kind of a God, we might as well go sit at a table by ourselves, busying ourselves with our
human lives and daring God to join us.
The
Doctrine of the Trinity that Rublev paints for us reminds us that God is
not a changeless, distant object that we can view from afar. The Trinity shows us that God is Love. God is circling movement,
constant reaching out for the Other, constant exchange, constant conversation and active
relationship. Love is constant invitation. Love
both calls out and answers, “Here I am.”
What
if the Triune God longs for our company, as much as the needy single mom peaking longingly into our
fellowship hall? What is God is as desperate for our friendship as the child longing for an open seat at lunch? Imagine the
Trinity sitting at the Table in the Divine Fellowship Hall in the sky, Christ
with his hand raised in blessing over a cup of his own blood, whispering a
loving “here I am,” to the Father, who whispers, “here I am” to the Spirit, who
whispers, “here I am” back to the Son. They wait and wait for us to join them
at the Table. They wait for us to take the cup. They wait for us to cry out “here
I am” in response. They wait in love so that Love can flow into the distant,
empty spaces of our world.
I
got an advertisement this week for a new book called The Turquoise Table, by
Kristin Schell. It tells the true story of a suburban housewife who got a big
picnic table dumped on her front lawn by mistake. Feeling lonely in her world
of carpools and malls and evenings spent in front of the computer and the TV
set, she decided to keep the table where it was. She painted it bright
turquoise and started sitting out there, inviting neighbors and friends to join
her around the table. “’When you sit at the Turquoise Table,’”
Schell advises, “’make sure all people feel welcome, no matter how young or
old, no matter their mother tongue or attire, regardless of race or religion.
Invite them to sit awhile.’”
She might as well have called her table the “Triple T Trinitarian Turquoise Table.”
Schell
said that the turquoise table changed her life, bringing her closer to God and
to her fellow human beings. It has even inspired a whole “society of turquoise
tables,” as other people have followed her lead across the country. What about us? Instead
of daring others to love us, can we invite a stranger to sit awhile at our
table? Instead of daring God to join us in our busyness, can we invite God to
sit awhile in our hearts? Spend some time in conversation with Rublev’s Trinity this summer. Gaze
on the image and sit down at God’s open table. See where the unstoppable movement
of God’s love will take you.
