[Propertalk] Trinity

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Late because of a busy week, but here's the draft to be worked over ...

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY        THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER 
P’COST: TRINITY SUNDAY (A)
GENESIS 1:1 – 2:4a							            15th JUNE, 2014
2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13						                          PSALM 8
MATTHEW 28:16-20

	O.K.! The first person to spot five heresies in this morning’s sermon 
gets a prize!

	Last Sunday I quoted two short poetic excerpts by the medieval mystic, 
Mechthild of Magdeburg. Listen to what she said about she worked through 
her spiritual development.

	As a child, she tells us, she was a ‘simple spiritual creature.’ She 
says she knew nothing of God except the usual Christian beliefs,’ and 
she tried to follow these diligently … She also writes that before she 
received the Spirit’s outpouring, she ‘knew nothing of the devil’s 
wickedness, the veil of the world,” or the hypocrisy of religious 
people.” 1

	All this before she was twelve years old, at which point she had 
personal experience of God which transformed her life totally and ‘for 
the next thirty-one years (the Spirit) … brought her love and sorry, 
sweetness and glory.’

	She wrote that God ‘brought (her) such sweetness of love, such heavenly 
knowledge, such inconceivable wonders that I had little use for earthly 
things. Then I saw the beautiful figure of our Lord Jesus Christ with 
the eyes of my soul.’

	Along about this time we might have been inclined to call in for a 
mental health consult. Back in the thirteenth century, especially for a 
woman, mystical experiences were to be considered with a grain of salt, 
with maybe a touch of the rack or a stake. Today, unfortunately, we 
shift awkwardly in our pews when the preacher begins to talk in such 
language, perhaps driven to prayer that she or he won’t look at us when 
talking about such things and imply that we’re supposed to have similar 
experiences.

	What it comes down to, probably more often than we’d like to admit, is 
that we’d prefer to keep experiences of God, and especially talking 
about them, to ourselves. It’s much too touchy to get into discussions 
about something so personal because it gets right to heart of who we 
are. Perhaps more than anything else, talking about the core and 
centrality of our faith to us reveals more about us than makes us 
comfortable. So there are things of which we simply do not talk. We’d 
rather keep to ourselves what occupies our deepest longings, and 
questions, and hopes, and fears.

	But this is NOT how Jesus envisaged life for us as His followers, life 
as children of God’s creation. Remember that High Priestly prayer of 
Jesus in the Garden before His arrest? Part of that prayer formed the 
Gospel reading a couple of weeks ago. In it Jesus expresses His longing 
that, just as He and the father were one, so He wishes His followers and 
God to be one.

Jesus talked about the intense community of love which exists in the 
Godhead, so intense that it enabled Him to face up to even the deepest 
darkness which He experienced on the cross. Jesus referred to the fact 
that His will and the Father’s were in complete sync. They were separate 
Persons but one God and, as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, it 
follows that this is a triune community, three Persons whose being is 
pure Love.

  Here’s where I can interject a word about considering how thinking 
about this may impact our understanding of the Athanasian Creed which 
we’ll say in a moment. It’s all about relationships.

But back to community. This is what God is about. Whether we’re talking 
about the relationships God invites us to form – you know, business 
partners, best friends, spouses, soul mates – or whether we’re talking 
about God as the Trinity of Persons within the Godhead; whatever 
relationship we’re talking about we’re supposed to be thinking about how 
we interact with God and with one another.

I was struck by Mechthild of Magdeburg’s comment that up till she had 
that wonderful experience at age twelve, she knew nothing of God except 
the usual Christian beliefs. It sounds pretty sad; as if she had the 
basic confirmation requirements down – she knew the Lord’s Prayer and 
the Creed, but little else beyond that. It’s called “book learning”. 
It’s like reading the State Highway Department Manual without ever 
getting into a car, never mind turning on the ignition. It’s like 
qualifying as a counsellor without ever having listened to another 
individual. It’s like praying to God and beginning, “To whom it may 
concern”.
	
	There’s absolutely nothing wrong with knowing the facts, but they’re 
there to guide you move into your own personal experiences, which may be 
completely different from someone else’s and, of course, as Mechthild 
pointed out once you start to draw closer to God – note, I didn’t say 
“understanding God”, just drawing closer – once you start to draw closer 
to God then other things start to be revealed also – like all the 
temptations to cut corners, to fudge, or simply to lie outright, and 
character assassinate … including our own, by the way. Remember, when we 
talk of relationships we include ourselves, how we think about ourselves 
as God’s cherished people, because we are fully part of God’s creation, 
not removed from it.
	
	Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic priest who called himself a “geologian”, 
died in 2009 at age 94. Throughout his long and joy-filled life he 
searched out for signs of the activity of God in the world. He wanted to 
try to understand how God interacted with him and every other human 
being, as well as with the physical form of the earth. What he came up 
with he could summarise in a sentence, although he loved to expand on 
it. He said, “The universe is not a collection of objects, but a 
communion of subjects.” 2
	
	In one way or another, what absolutely everything in creation needs to 
do is to learn to work together, to function together; not identically, 
but with minds and hearts fully open to the implications of what we 
think, and say, and do. Our goal in life is to try to model the Three 
Persons of the Trinity and their interrelationships with one another.
	
	A friend commented that trying to pin down the Trinity, even trying to 
understand the Trinity, is “like bottling the wind”. 3 There’s no way 
that we can know more than a small piece of knowledge or experience at 
any one time, and, even then, what we experienced yesterday, or thought 
we comprehended yesterday, may be gone by tomorrow.
	
	Maybe this is as well – just as not having a pictorial representation 
of Jesus actually keeps our minds open to the possibility of seeing 
Jesus every day, in every situation. The wonderful thing about wrestling 
with images, though, is that it shows how we’re never content with what 
we hear or see at any given moment. And I think this is as God would 
have it. There’s too much to comprehend, yet it can also be so 
straightforward, and what we see, or picture, or experience this morning 
may be God’s way of helping us deal with today’s situations, which may 
only be muddled more if we settle for yesterday’s feelings.
	
	Maybe this is another way of combining Mechthild’s longing to move 
beyond mere words without vision with Thomas Berry’s belief of the 
relationship of everything in creation. Yesterday, after the celebration 
of a friend’s ordination to the priesthood at Mt. Angel Abbey I found a 
little volume in the bookstore, a series of meditations on the Trinity 
delivered by a preacher to the papal household.
	
	On the book’s cover is the comment, “Unity, Joy, Simplicity, Beauty, 
Truth(: t)hese are the hallmarks of the three Persons in one God, the 
Trinity … so that you can enter into and experience the relationship of 
love that the divine Persons share with one another” 4

	What intrigued me is the first meditation – that’s as far as I got last 
night! The chapter heading is “Contemplating the Trinity ‘to Overcome 
the Hateful Divisions of the World’” and it takes as its starting point 
the ikon of the Trinity which is this week’s bulletin illustration. The 
ancient ikon “cannot purport the directly represent the Trinity, which 
is, by definition, indivisible and ineffable … The dogma of the unity of 
the trinity of God is expressed by the fact that the three Persons 
represented are distinct but closely resemble each other. They are 
contained within a circle that highlights their unity, but their diverse 
motions and postures speak of their differences”

	This is what made me put the book down to think, especially on top of 
the analysis of creation by Thomas Berry. If we accept the Vatican 
preacher’s analysis, both of the ikon and of the Trinity, then what we 
read, and see, and think, AND experience – we’re never free of 
experience in our spiritual lives – if we accept this, then what is 
depicted in the writings and the ikons is supposed to be assumed by us 
as a model for our own lives. If Jesus prayed that we would be one as He 
and His Father are one, as John’s Gospel reports, then what we have in 
our consideration of the Trinity is a template and a prayer for the way 
that we interact with one another.

	We can consider the various ethnic groupings around the eastern end of 
the Mediterranean if we like, or picture the Pope’s visitors at the 
Vatican last week, and we should do everything we possibly can to 
influence our own leaders to demonstrate what communion is like. Think 
of ethnic groupings in that part of the world, but we cannot forget that 
the same spiritual logic, the same prayer of Jesus, applies to people on 
one side of our streets and the other; people who shop at upscale or 
generic grocery stores; people who don’t have to worry about arranging 
for and taking care of the latest medical test and those who don’t 
bother because they know that they may not be able to get in for an 
appointment for weeks, or will not be offered the possibility of the 
necessary scan. There are sisters and brothers on our own doorsteps who 
wrestle with all sorts of difficulties. But maybe it’s easier to look at 
the Middle East, because that’s on TV or the radio, and we can switch 
that off when we reach emotional overload.

	Mechthild’s comment about transitioning from book belief into personal 
experience of God certainly took me on a roller coaster ride this past 
week. So did Thomas Berry’s reminder of the intimate relationship we 
share with everyone and everything in creation. And then the Vatican 
preacher topped me off with such a simple statement as “The Trinity 
Teaches Us the Path to Unity.”

	“(I)n the end, knowing God is as illusive as predicting a firefly's 
trajectory over a field of hay after dusk, as futile as keeping track of 
a drop of rain fallen into the ocean in a storm, as blinding as gazing 
directly at the sun. But contemplating Trinity offers lessons in the 
dynamism of creation, incarnation, delight, genesis, the 
inter-relationship of being, of nothing, of everything, of darkness, of 
light. Image. Silence. And, again, nothing.” 5 So wrote Suzanne Guthrie.

	But God never lets us off the hook. As hazy as our understanding of the 
Trinity is, and will be, it DOES boil down to relationships which never 
end. And I think I’ve reached this point without limiting on that 
heretical standard!

NOTES:

1 	“Introduction” to “Meditations from Mechthild of Magdeburg” edited 
and mildly modernized by Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. Paraclete Press, 
Brewster, MA. © 1999. Pp. v – vi – see Book 4.2

2	Thomas Berry 1914-2009 quoted by Suzanne Guthrie in “At the Edge of 
the Enclosure” Trinity Sunday 2014 
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/trinityabc.html  see also “Thomas Berry, 
Writer and Lecturer With a Mission for Mankind, Dies at 94” By ANDREW C. 
REVKIN Published: June 3, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/04berry.html

3	Ann Fontaine	akhfontaine at gmail.com

4	“Contemplating the Trinity: The Path to the Abundant Christian Life” 
Raniero Cantalamessa, translated by Marsha Daigle-Williamson. The Word 
Among Us Press, Frederick, Maryland. © 2007.

5	“At the Edge of the Enclosure” Trinity Sunday 2014 
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/trinityabc.html

Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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