Long ago, as a
newly divorced single mom, new in town and with children aged 2, 5, and 7, I
found my way to an Episcopal church, pulling an invisible suitcase packed full
of needs behind me. While I might have looked on the outside as if I fit in,
there probably weren’t many parishioners more lost, lonely, and spiritually
desolate than I was. After each service, hungrier for companionship than for
any food or drink or even prayer, I would drag my squirming children to
whatever fellowship opportunity was available. With my toddler on one arm,
balancing a cup of punch and a flurry of Sunday School coloring pages with the
other hand, alternately prodding and luring my whining older children with
bribes of doughnuts and cookies, 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 at
small round tables, laughing, sharing smiles, turned toward each other in
closed circles of complicity, with 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.
I think that
those difficult memories are why I am so fond of Rublev’s famous icon of the
Trinity. Instead of depicting the Trinity in the usual way, as a stately,
white-bearded Father, joined to a crucified Son, with a chubby white Spirit dove
flying around their heads, Rublev’s 15th-century icon shows us three
angelic figures sitting at a table.[1]
Called The Visitation of Abraham,
this icon is based on the story from Genesis of God’s visit to Abraham and
Sarah in the desert, disguised as three strangers. Abraham and Sarah welcome
the 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, medieval
Christians saw these three divine messengers as a manifestation of the Trinity.
The Russian icon-writer Rublev paints
them as three figures with gender-neutral robes and hair-styles, seated around
a table that holds a golden chalice. The central figure, who represents Christ,
is holding his hand over the 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 but cocks his head clearly toward the figure to his right. That
figure nods his head across the table to the other figure on his right, who, in turn, inclines his
head back toward Christ, as the wings and background objects bend as if caught
in a gently turning, circular breeze. The figures are not huddled around the
table like the people in my old church fellowship hall, though, either, focused
only on their satisfying and already-established relationship. 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. This Trinity excludes no one
from its conversation; if our whole congregation were to look at the icon at
once, we would all be with the others at the Table.
There is in an increasing isolation
and distance in our modern lives, I find, that encompasses more than lonely
single mothers at church. Technology allows us to communicate without openness,
both to love and to 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 my mail or the latest
weather alerts. Everyone else is doing the same thing. The last time that I
taught Sunday School to young third and fourth graders, I was surprised to look
out to find them all pressing buttons on their I-pod Touches, rather than
engaging in the lesson. When I want to reach out to my beloved children or to
you, my dear parishioners, I can send heartfelt greetings with an email or a
text, greetings that do not share 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, a sniper’s bullet from a fancy gun or bombs
from a computer-driven drone, making human hatred impersonal and mechanical and
therefore somehow more acceptable. These days, we desperately need the Doctrine
of the Trinity, not so much to describe the perfect recipe that will whip us up
a serving of Divine Being, but to keep us from clustering around tables closed by
technology and distance, as well as by plain old human insularity.
Not only do we tend to exclude one
other in our human communities, but we tend to shut out the openness and
movement within God, as well. Looking at God from our human vantage point is
like looking at the earth from outer space and seeing a solid, multicolored
rubber ball, lost in the darkness of the universe. From space, we cannot see
the busy life, the dizzying relationships, the movement of the oceans, the
zigzagging paths of cars and airplanes, the flowing love, or the ever-shifting
winds. Yet all of that movement, all of those relationships, is what makes the
earth our habitable, living home. God, too, is not that solid, unchanging being
that we tend to box up in our imaginations. Left to our own devices, we tend to
scoot our chair up close to Jesus, turning our backs to the world and gazing
only into our Savior’s understanding face, as we try to imitate his every
gesture. Or we dive only into the mystery of the Father, seeking rest and
security in the darkness of God’s “eternal changelessness.” Or we abandon
ourselves to the movement of the Spirit within us or our communities, totally
shutting our eyes to the equally powerful dance of suffering that is going on
outside. Or we give up on a Being who seems to watch the world ineffectually
“from a distance,” and we go sit at a table by ourselves, busying ourselves
with our human lives and daring Him to join us.
The Doctrine of the Trinity reminds
us that God is neither a changeless, distant object that we can view from across
the safe emptiness of space, nor is God three friends before whom we can pull
up a chair and visit individually according to our needs. Writes Rowan Williams:
“Knowing the Trinity is being involved in [God’s own] circling movement: drawn
by the Son towards the Father, drawn into the Father’s breathing out of the
Spirit so that the Son’s life may be again made real in the world.”[2]
If God is Love, then God must be movement, constant reaching out for the Other,
constant exchange, constant and active relationship. Theologians have
recognized this truth again and again throughout the ages. The Trinity is like Love, the
Beloved, and the Lover, explained St. Augustine, so long ago. The Trinity, as
Love, “supposes the one, the other, and their unity” writes modern theologian Hans
von Balthasar.[3] “We
are only able to love each other because the Father loves the Son through the
Holy Spirit,” proclaims our contemporary, Richard Lischer.[4]
Love both requires and bridges separation, differentiation. Love both binds and
rips open. Love is constant invitation. Love both calls out and answers, “Here
I am.”
In the book of Isaiah, God cries out,
“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those
who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a people that did not
call on my name.” Can the Trinity be as vulnerable as the needy single mom peaking
longingly into our fellowship hall? Can you see 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, as they wait and wait for us to join them at the Table, as they
wait for us to take the cup, as they wait for us to cry out in response, like the
prophet Isaiah, “here I am, send
me!” as they wait in love so that Love can flow into the distant, empty spaces
of our world?
[1]
My description and analysis of this icon are based on Rowan Williams’ wonderful
reflections in The Dwelling of the Light:
Praying with Icons of Christ (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2003),
45-63.
[2]
Ibid., 57.
[3]
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “A Resume of My Thought,” trans. Kelly Hamilton and
found on a friend’s Facebook page ….
[4]
Richard Lischer, Open Secrets (New
York: Random House, 2001), 81.
No comments:
Post a Comment