The Trinity ... and "The Runaway Bunny"?!

 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.”

          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. 

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[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