Trinity Sunday, Year A
Us
versus them. Black versus white. Republican versus Democrat. Police versus protestor.
Christian Right versus Christian Left. American versus foreigner. Do you notice
anything about how we are identifying ourselves in our turbulent times? There
is a definite binary, isn’t there? One pushing over here. One pushing back over
there. And in between the two—the chasm of broken relationship, a diminishment of
wholeness and possibility.
Parents
and teachers know what happens in binary relationship gone wrong. I once knew a
father who believed that firm parental authority alone was the way to raise a
good child. From the time his little son could crawl and grab, this father
issued one loud command after another from his easy chair across the room. “Don’t
touch that,” the father would bellow, raising his head from his book. A few
minutes later, the exploring child would again be startled by a loud, “Leave it
alone!” Day after day. The baby learned quickly. When
the father issued a command, the baby—yet unable to talk--would raise up on his
knees, head held high, and holler back with an angry, “Ahhhh” as loudly as his
father had. He would then proceed to touch the offending objects. The stand-off
usually resulted in a spanking … and a broken father-son bond.
Every
good teacher knows that a power struggle between teacher and student, or
teacher and class, is to be avoided at all cost. A two-sided clash of wills,
once engaged, demands a winner and a loser. Either the teacher must crush her
student’s will—and lose his trust—or she quickly loses her authority and her
ability to maintain order in the room. As a new teacher, I once issued a
standard threat to an incorrigible child in the lunch line.
“Straighten up, or I’ll call your
parents,” I snapped.
His cutting reply, “Good, please do. At least then they’ll
know I’m alive” sucked the life out of both of us.
Locked
in a binary world, we are in desperate need of the “threeness” of the Trinity.[1]
The way in which we imagine God is of more consequence for our lives than we
often give it credit. For example, if we imagine God as a harsh Judge, we too
will value harsh judgements of self and other. If we picture God as ruler of
all things, we will place less emphasis on human freedom. What does it mean for
us, then, to describe God as a trio of persons, a trio moving together in an
energetic, joyful dance? What does it mean to imagine a holy Trinity engaged in
pouring love back and forth in an endless
circle, like water into an overflowing cup? To imagine God as a community of
three, a unity in the multiplicity of relationship, breaks through the stuckness
of binaries. As we heard in our first lesson, all of creation is good, made in
the image of the Creator. All of creation participates in God’s community of
outpouring love and generativity. For the very essence of God to be a harmonious outpouring
of love within Godself means that we too are created for the “threeness” of
relatedness in community. The question, of course, is how we human beings live
into our own “threeness.”
Educator
Parker Palmer proposes that we need a “third thing” in human interaction.[2]
Pointing away from ourselves toward a third object, we find common ground. Focusing
attention on a third thing outside of the binary levels the playing field. Many
families consciously create such a “third thing” with which to negotiate their
lives together: a set of family “rules” or guidelines. Monastic communities adhere
to a “rule of life.” Teachers write a shared “classroom covenant” with their
students. When disagreements arise, there is an accepted outside arbitrator to guide
negotiations. In modern times, the social contract often serves even more
widely as such a “third thing,” a shared reference with which an entire nation tacitly
agrees to align itself.
As
we know all too well, the problems arise when the “third thing” is devised unfairly,
in such a way that some members are privileged over others. Such a covenant serves
only to reinforce injustice and discord. If a family rule of life privileges
the older child over the younger, or the parents over the children, then
conflict is inevitable. When a social contract such as ours is built on a
foundation of bondage and racial injustice, it is untenable. It can’t
legitimately serve as a focal point for a just society.
And
yes ... How easy it becomes for the ones in power to clear the way for themselves
with violent and unjust actions. They can push into the binary with military
force and then claim victory by holding up a Bible, pointing to its closed cover
as if they are offering the “third thing” that can create common ground. Instead,
a true “third thing” must be set in the middle of what Palmer calls a “circle
of trust.” It must be placed in the midst of a circle where all are safe,
valued, and included. We base our children’s Sunday School program in such a
circle of trust. In the Godly Play classroom, children don’t focus on the
teacher and his content. Instead, everyone sits in a circle on the floor, all at
the same level. Together, story-teller and students are focused on simple objects
that tell the story found inside of the Bible, the story of our relationship
with our loving, Triune God. They listen together to what God might be telling
each of them through the story, and then wonder together about what it might
mean. The gentle open-endedness of this method is sometimes disconcerting to
adults, used to the direct binary of right and wrong answers. But the
outpouring of sharing and the focus on what lies “in between,” opens the space
to a deeper kind of understanding.
On
this Trinity Sunday, strife in our nation and even in our St. Andrew’s community
has only strengthened our harmful binaries. It’s time for us to sit down together
to create circles of trust. It’s time to “bind unto ourselves the strong Name
of the Trinity.” It’s time to submit ourselves to the loving, creative
relationality of our God. In today’s lesson from II Corinthians, St. Paul is also
writing to a deeply divided community, where
factions are set one against the other. Paul ends his letter with a blessing. It
is a blessing that bestows upon them the health and wholeness of a God who is loving
relationship: the living trinity of outpouring grace, of love, and of fellowship.
In such a blessing lies our hope, the reparation of broken relationship. May “the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love
of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with [us] all.”
