2022.06.12 - Trinity Sunday

Many of the thoughts and ideas from this week's sermon come from enfleshed's commentary on the passage. Many thanks for their work!

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, John 16:12-15
 
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
2On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
22The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
23Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth--
26when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
27When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

John 16:12-15 - First Nations Version
12“There are many more things I want to say to you, but your hearts are not strong enough to hear them now. 13When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will be the one to tell you. He will be your one true spirit guide and will lead you down the path of truth. He will fully represent me and will tell you only what I have told him. The Spirit will show you what is coming on the road ahead. 14He will honor me by making known to you everything I have shown him. 15All that I am and all that I have comes from the Father. He has not held back one thing from me, and the Spirit will not hold back anything from you.
 
Leader: A Word of God that is still speaking,    People: Thanks be to God.
 
*Hymn - Come, Join the Dance of Trinity (words insert needed)
 
 
Sermon

One of the things I’m enjoying the most these days about being a parent is watching my kids create things. Genevieve is only just discovering this idea that she can manipulate the environment around her - pour water over dirt to create mud that she can shape, shovel sand into mounds, put crayons and markers to paper to leave colorful marks - but Michael is turning into quite the pro. We have a box in our house of random things - toilet paper tubes, bottle caps, egg cartons and cereal boxes, strips of cloth, plastic meat trays (clean, of course!) - anything that can potentially be repurposed makes its way into what we call “Michael’s Maker Box.” Between that and the unlimited access to the craft supply bin of stretchy string, popsicle sticks, duct tape, paper and more, I am constantly amazed by what he can put together. Musical instruments, elaborate paper airplanes, houses for his 3D printer animal figurines from school, a bow and arrow set (he decided that since Mom and Dad won’t let him have play weapons, he will make his own). He’s constantly doodling, fashioning something out of clay, cutting paper or cardboard - and it’s fascinating to watch him playfully create and delight in his projects.

Today is Trinity Sunday - a day that in our liturgical calendar we set aside to talk about this doctrine that was finalized in the 4th century at the Council of Nicea as early Christians debated and fought about how to understand God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and the relationship between them. One God, three distinct persons, all coequal, coeternal, and of the same substance, sharing the same essence. If you followed the link to the video in the enewsletter, you are all caught up on how not to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and the major heresies that cropped up trying to explain how the Trinity works - and if you didn’t see it yesterday, I’ll show it after service, it’s a 4 minute video, very amusing and highly informative.

I love these texts for Trinity Sunday - the Proverbs text in particular, but also Psalm 8, which this morning we allowed to shape our prayer of confession and the John passage which shows this dynamic interrelationship between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Mother, Child, Womb. Lover, Beloved, Love. 

In our Proverbs passage about Wisdom - Sophia in Greek, Chokmah in Hebrew, there are some notes in translation where scholars disagree - where the New Revised Standard Version translates “rejoicing”, a viable alternative translation - and arguably more appropriate translation - is “playing.” Likewise “master worker” could instead be “child” or “nursling.” So I want to read that part of the passage again substituting those words, seeing how that might invite us to a different way of experiencing the text and provide a different image of God to us today:

27When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30then I was beside him, like a child;
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
31playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.

Wisdom has been there from the beginning. She’s there crying out for people to take notice of her, claiming her place as one playing, working, building, delighting in the world that is, helping it take shape, right on the front of the scene - dancing between God and God’s creation.

Catherine Keller, one of my seminary professors and noted process theologian, shares that Wisdom points us toward a God that creates with less “Intelligent Design” and more “Creative Wisdom.”

And I can imagine, much like watching a child at play or move to music or leap to catch floating bubbles the delight God has and pleasure God takes in creation and creativity and the Creative Wisdom dazzling us all.

Or as William P. Brown, presbyterian minister, theologian, and author has said, “Play requires partnership, and Wisdom has two partners: God and creation.”

For me this is a reminder that even though we talk about God as eternal and unchanging, there is, within God, a movement and dance. A relationship. Creative force cannot come out of a static being. Perhaps it’s more reasonable to talk not about God as never changing, but that God’s nature does not change - and that nature is one of an eternal dance as we see described this morning in three persons - perichoresis - (peri = around, choresis = dance) and in this divine circle dance I envision God shaping the universe, shaping the earth, shaping us the joy and abandon like one might see a child immersed in their work - and we see Wisdom dancing among us all, moving and inviting us to engage in that work as well. That we, too, in relationship and partnership with her and with God can be about that work of delight and creation, bringing about the world around us marked by that same delight and hope? What if that was the approach we took to engaging the challenges and problems of this world - to lean into our creative ability to discover new solutions, different ways of looking at things, finding the hope and life in the midst of struggle and death?

We don’t need any reminders about how hard and heavy the world is for many people these days. You may be one of those folks - I know there are days for me that I experience that weariness - and I grieve the hardship and pain that so many of us and our non-human kin know so deeply. Yet I am also reminded that we are in connection to a God who has seen it all - the devastation of the earth, the ways humans can hurt and wound each other, the way we separate ourselves from God…even the ways we turn against our own selves. Yet the dance suggests that Wisdom believes there are possibilities still among us - she still persists in calling to us, she invites us again and again into the dance, invites us to heed her call, invites us to follow her lead. For when we do, we are drawn into the mystery of the Three in One God who longs for us to delight in ourselves and the world around us in the same way God does.

But it takes time and practice and intention to do this - if it didn’t, Wisdom wouldn’t have to cry out for our attention! Wisdom comes to pursue us even as we find ourselves drawn in a thousand different directions. Wisdom doesn’t come easily - but comes as we search beneath the surface of things, as we discover connections around us and within ourselves and our bodies, naming the reality around us - pointing us back to God. 

And so what if this week, we took the time to make pursuit of Wisdom a daily practice? This is, after all, what we’ve been learning about in our Council meetings together - a practice of discernment, of paying attention, of noting what happens within our hearts and minds and bodies as we receive the world around us, and sorting out the way Spirit is moving us to respond. It is about paying attention to what our bodies are telling us (like when we experience emotion or when we’re actually tired and need a rest), or our gut intuition about a situation, or deciding to clear space in our lives for listening to the voices of those whose life experience is vastly different than our own. It could be a practice of learning how to ask really good questions as opposed to responding with advice or our own experience when talking with a friend. Or even sharing “I’m going to pause and think about this before I speak” and taking the time to seek Wisdom in the midst of it. It could be spending five minutes in silence, barefoot on the ground to connect with God and self and the earth. 

I believe our lives - our communities - even our churches - would look vastly different if we took the time to intentionally pursue Wisdom - discernment. Because in that space, as we open ourselves to the God in whom we live and move and have our being - we’ll discover again the divine dance that leads us into places of life and flourishing, grace and peace, hope and justice.

God’s own being is dance -- Wisdom is a part of that -- and we, being made in God’s image -- well, we are just made for the dance, aren’t we? Dancing with God, with one another, and with all of creation. The dance is one that binds us together and knits us into a community where we’re inviting others to dance along with us.

May we - like enthusiastic children engrossed in a creative endeavor - be so focused on pursuing this life within God’s circle dance, so deeply paying attention to the leading of the Spirit with our dance partner Jesus, hearing the love of God as our only tune, so that we as co-creators with God, can bring forth a world made new for ourselves and for those around us. Amen.