Trinity Sunday, Year B
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
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.
I’ve never met a preacher these days
who doesn’t worry over what to say on Trinity Sunday. “It’s so complicated!” we
moan. “Almost anything that I say is bound to turn out to be some kind of
heresy.” Throwing all of the complex theological concepts together in one
sentence, Catholic theologian Bernard Lonergan is said to have quipped, “The
Trinity is a matter of five … properties, four relations, three persons, two
processions, one substance … and no understanding.”[1] I
imagine, though, for all of my fretting, the problem for most of us in the
pews, is not how to understand the Trinity in all of its intricate complexity.
I imagine that the issue going through many minds today is instead: Why bother?
What does it matter to my faith how a bunch of theologians try to define God?
Does it change my relationship to Jesus? Does it change how I love God and my
neighbor in my everyday life? Why don’t we just sing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” have a
baptism, and go eat cake?
Kids
and kids at heart, maybe you can help us answer that question today. Who knows
the wonderful children’s book, Runaway
Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown? This classic, first published in 1942, was
one of my children’s favorite books when they were little, and it was one of my
favorite to read to them, too. Here’s how it goes:
Once upon a time there was a little rabbit who wanted to run
away. So he
said to his mom, “I’m going to run
away!”
“If you run away,” answered his mom, I will run after you.
Because you are
my little bunny.”
After that, the story
takes off, page after page, as the rebellious little bunny
dreams up all kinds of whimsical places to
which he can escape, and his mother plays along, dreaming of all the fanciful ways
that she will follow him. He threatens to become a fish and swim away in the
river, until she says that she will become a fisherman and catch him up in her
net, with a carrot for bait. He threatens to become a boulder high on a
mountain peak, a crocus in a hidden garden, a bird with wings, a sailboat on
faraway seas, and then a trapeze artist in the circus. Every time, she counters
with the way in which she will change herself to stay with him. The cute
illustrations show them transformed into their imaginary characters, yet still
looking like rabbits: a sailboat with rabbit-ear sails blown home by a
mama-bunny cloud. A tree shaped like mama rabbit holding out arm-like branches
for her baby-bunny bird.
Finally, out of ideas, the little
bunny huffs, “Then I will become a little boy who runs into a house.”
“If you become a little boy who runs into a house,” answered his mom, “then I will be your mother, and I will take you in my arms and give you a big hug.”
“You know,” said the Little Rabbit, “I would probably just as well stay here and be your little rabbit.”
“If you become a little boy who runs into a house,” answered his mom, “then I will be your mother, and I will take you in my arms and give you a big hug.”
“You know,” said the Little Rabbit, “I would probably just as well stay here and be your little rabbit.”
And
that’s what he did. “Here, have a carrot,” said his mom.
The
books ends with a picture of the two rabbits together in their warm, round underground
burrow, snuggling and eating carrots.[2]
OK,
cute, you might well ask, but what on earth does this have to do with the
Trinity?
Let
me be clear, I am not making an analogy here. I am not saying that God turns
Godself into a Father, and then a Son, and then a Holy Spirit in order to
follow us around like mama bunny. Besides sounding silly, that would reflect
the heresy of modalism. (See, I told you that heresies abound today!) God is
always Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all at the same time. God doesn’t morph
from one mode to the next in any kind of sequential way.
Instead, what I want you to notice with
this story is its playful, circular, dancing quality, and the poignancy of the deep
relationship that it reflects. Why does this story matter to generation after generation
of readers? Because Love practically bursts from the pages. We remember this
little book because of the powerful, undeterred, and active love of the mother
rabbit. It’s the playful way that she shows her child that he belongs with her.
It’s the dedication with which she goes out of herself to join in his world.
It’s the open welcome that she offers him when he decides to return home. The
mother rabbit teaches her son about the profound love that she has for him by
revealing it to him in the way that she presents herself. This story leaves us
knowing that, no matter where the young bunny goes or what he does, he will
always be in his mama’s lap. In the chaotic hide and seek of relationship, we
are always found by the one who loves us.
And so it is with God’s Love. Love cannot exist without a beloved.
As David Lose points out, there is no love that is not shared.[3] If
God is Love, then, within God, there must be relationship. On our own, we don’t
comprehend how God’s love works any more than the little bunny understands his
mother’s love. We, too, play with it. We pull away. We seek it. We brag that we
don’t need it. In order to experience God’s life of love, God has to reveal it
to us. And God reveals it as a living relationship between Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. We look at Jesus on the Cross; we look at God pouring Godself out
in Creation; we look at the Holy Spirit bringing joy and transformation; we
watch Jesus embrace sinners; we see miraculous healing; we taste forgiveness.
No matter where we go or what we do, God shows us that the life of God is love,
love that constantly reaches out in relationship, drawing us in. In today’s Gospel,
it’s almost as if Nicodemus, questioning Jesus in the dark of night, is like
the little bunny, both running away and seeking Love at the same time. It’s almost
as if Jesus is the Mother, showing how the living Trinity looks when it is poured
out into the world, poured out in order to gather in all of her wayward children.
If you wonder how the Trinity relates to your life, think
about the baptism that we will witness in just a few minutes. As I pour water
on the heads of Daniella and Dalida, I will baptize them in the Name of the
Trinity, in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Why don’t
I just baptize them in Jesus’ name? After all, isn’t it Jesus’ Body that they
are joining through baptism? I could say, “Daniella, I baptize you into the
death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.”That would surely be OK,
wouldn’t it? Preacher Tom Long answers best: “To be baptized is … a
rebirth into a new way of life, into God's own life.”[4] In
Baptism, we are not just changing the way that we think of ourselves. We are joining
the very life of God: the active, loving, powerful, playful, and undeterred love
that churns between and within Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And like the little
bunny, safe within that circle, we realize that it is in that Love that we have
always belonged.
[1]
Quoted by Jennifer Anne Herrick, “1+1+1=1:
Making Sense of Nonsense: The Concept of the Trinity at the End of the
20thCentury,” found at http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/SSR/article/viewFile/137/158.
[2]
My only copy of this book is the French version, which I used to read to my
French-speaking children. The above translation is my own. Margaret Wise Brown, Je vais me sauver! Trans. Catherine Deloraine. Paris: Flammarion,
1985.
[3]
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2015/05/trinity-b-three-in-one-plus-one/
[4]
Tom Long, Day 1, “The Start of the Trail,”
http://day1.org/3823-the_start_of_the_trail