May 22, 2016 - The Trinity: Theological Song and Dance - Brandon McGinnis
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
Two years ago I had the privilege of presenting a paper at the Stone-Campbell journal conference in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was nervous about attending the weekend-long conference, not only because I had to present a measly undergraduate paper to a panel of biblical scholars, but also because the whole event itself – a gathering of some of the top theological minds from across country – was, let’s say, mildly intimidating.
Thankfully, my mind was put at ease when I checked in, got my welcome packet, and read the conference title: Stone-Campbell 2014: God in Culture: Music, Movies, and Video Games.
As a theology major, movie buff, and avid gamer, the second and third items in that title – movies and videogames – made me feel right at home. But that first one – Music – not so much. While I certainly enjoy listening to music, making it, not to mention analyzing it, fall outside of my interests and abilities.
As far as I am concerned, sheet music is gibberish and musical composition is nothing less than sorcery. Don’t get me wrong, I have a deep appreciation for those moments when I’m awestruck by a piece of music, but my ignorance of the subject means that any technical discussion on the matter becomes a source of deep insecurity for me, which I then subconsciously disguise as boredom.
My plan for that weekend was to skip all the sessions on music so that I could devote all my energy to validating my Netflix and Xbox binging as spiritual disciplines. That was my plan. So you can probably imagine my disdain when I learned that the conference’s keynote speaker would focus solely on theology in music. Of all the cool things we could talk about that weekend, we were going to talk about music. What could music, I scoffed, possibly teach me about God? It turns out, a lot, actually.
I didn’t know it yet, but the conference’s keynote speaker, Jeremy Begbie, a Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and a skilled musician, was about to teach me something that could only be taught though music. Begbie – a very articulate and very bald Englishman – began his address by recounting his early musical training and his subsequent conversion to Christianity. Admittedly I was zoned out for most of that part, but I was pulled back in when he sat down at the grand piano beside the podium and began to discuss the Trinity.
Now, as a side note, from here on out I’m basically going to paraphrase everything he said, so if anything I’m about to say really speaks to you, you have him to thank, not me.
He began his treatment of Trinitarian theology by reading John 14:8-17 – which was part our Gospel lesson from last week – where Jesus tells his disciples that “[he] is in the Father and the Father is in [him].” John’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus – God the Son – is intimately close to God the Father. They are part of each other’s lives; mutually indwelling in one another. The Greek Orthodox Church has a fancy word for this: perichoresis – the interpenetration of God the Father and God the Son.
Well, how do we picture that? You’d be hard pressed to draw a coherent diagram representing the idea of perichoresis. As Begbie put it in his address: The mind boggles, or at least the visual mind boggles.
In John’s gospel both Father and Son are divine – both are God – but they are not identical. And if that wasn’t confusing enough, we also have to deal with the Holy Spirit, who is also divine – also God – but, again, not identical to the Father or the Son. How can they all be together as one – because, remember, as Christians we are supposed to be monotheists; there’s only one God – yet distinctively three?
If we rely solely on the mind’s eye, the Trinity is a very difficult thing to understand. Throughout the history of the Church, we have tried to rationalize the doctrine of the Trinity with visuospatial analogies, but in every case, those analogies eventually break down, inadvertently leading us into heresy. By which I mean those ideas that are inherently sub-Christian and which fall short of the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the Trinity is like water. The chemical H2O can be found in three different states: solid, liquid, and vapor. At first glance, this seems to get the job done, but, unfortunately, this is the heresy of Modalism. Modalism denies the distinction of the three divine persons of the Trinity, insisting that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely three different “modes” of God’s self-revelation in subsequent eras of history, just like water can only assume one state at a given time.
Perhaps the Trinity is like a three-leaf clover. There are three distinct leafs that comprise the one clover. As much as St. Patrick might advocate for this one, it is in fact the heresy of Tritheism. Tritheism denies the unity of the three persons of the Trinity, insisting that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate gods affiliated by proximity, just like the three leaves of the clover are totally separate apart from their common location on the one stem.
Perhaps the Trinity is like the sun. The sun is a star that radiates both light and heat. Initially, this makes sense, but when we look closer, we can see it for what it is: the heresy of Arianism. Arianism denies the divinity and eternality of the Son and the Holy Spirit, insisting that they are both creations of the Father in the same way the light and heat are merely products of the activities within the star.
The Trinity is like a woman who is a mother, wife, and daughter – Modalism. The Trinity is like the three parts of an egg – Tritheism. The Trinity is like three-in-one shampoo – and on and on and on! These visuospatial analogies cannot explain the in-one-another-ness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without compromising their distinction, their unity, or their equality. Because the elements of each picture are competing for the same visual space at the same time, our mind’s eye becomes frustrated and we begin to look at the Trinity as little more than a philosophical problem to be solved.
Happy Trinity Sunday…
Here is where the mind’s ear comes into play – and here is where Jeremy Begbie made music an important part of my theology. (Here a triad was played)
What better way to think of the Trinity than as a musical triad? A three-tone resonance of life: the three individual tones mutually indwelling without mutual exclusion, yet without merger. Each note filling the same sonic space, yet recognizably and irreducibly distinct – enhancing and establishing each other; alive in and through each other.
The three-tone sound of a musical triad occupies no space, while each note simultaneously occupies every space. Nothing keeps the elements of that triad apart, yet they remain audible as different tones – those tones sounding through one another.
By articulating the intelligible simultaneity of music, the analogy of the triad does what no visual analogy could: describing the three-in-one-ness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without compromising their distinction, their unity, or their equality. This is, in musical terms, what is proclaimed by in the Creed of St. Athanasius: “That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.”
Where the mind’s eye sees the Trinity as a problem to be solved, the mind’s ear listens, and hears the Godhead as a reality to be enjoyed – to be awestruck by – like a beautiful piece of music.
But here’s the Good News: this isn’t just some fancy theological head-knowledge to impress our friends with. The reality of the Trinity matters to our daily walk with Christ, for participation in the life of the Trinity is the destiny of every believer.
As St. Paul explains in our epistle this morning: We are justified by faith and therefore have peace with God the Father, according to the grace obtained by God the Son and the sanctification accomplished by the Holy Spirit. St. Paul goes as far as to say that the Spirit pours into us the very love of the Trinity itself. By the co-operative work of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier, we have the hope of sharing in the glory of God – the very glory of the Trinity.
The Christian gospel is that God catches us up in the three-tone resonance of the musical triad – into God’s own resonance. The Holy Spirit tunes us in to the life of the Triune God: Carefully adjusting the strings that the Son has unstopped through the work on the cross, so that each one can resonate according to what the Father orchestrates. Together, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit transform the cacophony of our fractured world into a comic symphony in harmony with the Trinity.
The same St. Athanasius who composed the classic Trinitarian creed also said regarding the incarnation that, “God became Man that Man might become God.” This does not mean that humanity collectively becomes a fourth member of the Godhead or that we individually become demigods; it means that in sharing the divine glory, we have unity with God; participating and co-operating in the life of the Trinity itself.
That fancy word – perichoresis – that describes the interpenetration of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has developed another, informal meaning over the centuries: dancing. The members of the Godhead rotate around one another in perfect, eternal choreography.
In the same way that we are caught up in God’s own resonance, so too will we be caught up in the movement of God’s dance. As the post-Pentecost Church whom the Holy Spirit indwells, we are being inducted into the divine perichoresis – the eternal dance of the Godhead. We don’t cut into the rotation of the three-in-one; indeed more beautifully, we orbit around the Trinity in perfect synchronicity.
The Trinity is more than theological song and dance. It is the heart of Christianity best understood through song and dance. There are plenty of wrong ways to think about the Trinity, and then there is the mysterious way to think about it. Don’t let your mind’s eye go cross thinking too much about it. Instead, listen with your mind’s ear. Let the Trinity get stuck in your head and let it move your feet. Let it move you into love, into community, into life. Let it move you into itself – into the Godhead, three-in-one. Amen.
May 15, 2016 - Pentecost Sunday - The Language of Love
Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, (25-27)
I have always been drawn to today’s Gospel reading and wondered why we didn’t hear more about it. WE can do great works than Jesus? What is this? I’ve always wanted to hear a sermon on these words. And since I always say yes to the opportunity to give a sermon before I look at the readings, it feels as though I got a divine nudging saying, Figure it out for yourself!
And so I did!
The twentieth century philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s most popular essay is entitled The Hedgehog and the Fox. In it, he famously invokes the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, who said, “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” On this, I can say that I am most definitely the hedgehog. I do know many things (we all do)—facts about the world and psychology and even the Bible, how to drive a car and play the flute, how to get a college degree and letters after my name—but there’s one big thing I know, and all these other things pale in significance to it. All my sermons are about it. It’s all that sacred scriptures say if we dare to understand below their surface level.
We are so like that ancient people of Babel. We think we can use language to build a tower and “make a name for ourselves”. That irascible Yahweh of the early Hebrew Scriptures was right in trying to show the people that what they were doing was dangerous—that acting out of fear will only scatter them and create confusion as to their true identity. And yet we still do it—we try to create names for ourselves. We try to become nice or successful or a professor or an electrician, and then we define ourselves by those labels, becoming hypnotized by the language used to describe us and creating a false self based on it. We forget about our deep inner life and the realms beneath the surface. We become more and more scattered and we misunderstand even those who seemingly speak the same language that we do. The world is fractured and divided and feels hopeless.
Centuries after the Tower of Babel, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, we began to understand that there is another language, not of words alone but of breath and fire and love. A new rush of understanding entered the world that transcended thought and language and set our hearts on fire. We began to see a new creation, a new way of being in the world—the way of love. Pentecost clearly demonstrates that when we enter into the divine life of love that we can begin to really understand each other—whether or not we speak the same language. We discover that there is another language below the surface of our lives that we are all fluent in. We can begin to understand the language of longing, of connection, of oneness.
The Gospel of John gives us a way to enter into this place of oneness, to understand this new language. Brad was very right last week when he cautioned us about the Gospel of John and how taking it out of the historical context of the small early Christian community it was written for has resulted in thousands of years of anti-Semitism and justified violence beyond imagination. The language of John, like all languages can be dangerous when taken on its surface level only. It can be a language of Babel. And I would like to add a further caveat to the reading and hearing of this Gospel. When read in its entirety is it clearly not just a collection of stories of what Jesus did and said. It is instead a road map into the mystical heart of God and Love, into mystical union with Jesus.
The gospel of John presents a paradigm for understanding our oneness with the Father—that utterly transcendent aspect of God who is beyond our language and our understanding and can only know through the person of Jesus. When we seek to embody and express our oneness with the creator, we are better able to let the trappings of false self fall away and come from a place of divine love. When we operate with divine love as our center, we become aware that we all speak the same language and are able to perform even greater acts of love than Jesus himself! What greater act of love is there than to be totally present with someone, laying aside our expectations, preconceptions and certainties to enter into the dangerous realms of love, perhaps being changed forever? The language of love leads us to a spaciousness of being that includes all things with compassion and understanding. It is a place of paradox where nothing can disturb your peace and happiness and perfect joy and yet you are able to enter into the pain of the world without being consumed by it.
The ability to express divine love pulls us out of our individual agendas and calls us to share the oneness of our being with each other. My years as a therapist and now spiritual director have shown me so clearly the importance and impact of listening to each other with divine love. To listen not only with my ears, but with my spirit, to hear not only the language of words, but the language of the souls longing to live in a connected state of oneness with each other. When we listen on the level of love we find that we can become new people. James Carse says, “A creative listener is not someone who simply allows me to say what I already want to say, but someone whose listening actually makes it possible for me to say what I never could have said, and thus to be a new kind of person, one I have never been before and could not have been before this deep listening.”
This last week, we put my 102 year old mother-in-law into hospice and brought her to our house to die. I’m sure many, if not most of you, have been in a similar situation. Standing on the brink of eternity—standing still in the face of death, letting its inevitability sink in, accepting each moment as possibly the last one, in awe of the mystery of life and death. Jesus calls us to live this way always. He calls us to live and pray in His name—from a place beyond the false self, from the heart of love to the heart of the beloved.
So what is the one big thing that I know? That we are surrounded in each moment by infinities of love, by eternities of peace and yet we most often choose to enclose ourselves in the languages of Babel with their expectations, preconceptions, criticisms and separation. It is a tremendous and awesome thing to choose the language of fire and breath and love, which is a language beyond words and which reaches into the realms of boundless freedom.
This Grace That Scorches Us
A Blessing for Pentecost Day[1]
Here’s one thing
you must understand
about this blessing:
it is not
for you alone.
It is stubborn
about this;
do not even try
to lay hold of it
if you are by yourself,
thinking you can carry it
on your own.
To bear this blessing,
you must first take yourself
to a place where everyone
does not look like you
or think like you,
a place where they do not
believe precisely as you believe,
where their thoughts
and ideas and gestures
are not exact echoes
of your own.
Bring your sorrow. Bring your grief.
Bring your fear. Bring your weariness,
your pain, your disgust at how broken
the world is, how fractured,
how fragmented
by its fighting, its wars,
its hungers, its penchant for power,
its ceaseless repetition
of the history it refuses
to rise above.
I will not tell you
this blessing will fix all that.
But in the place
where you have gathered,
wait.
Watch.
Listen.
Lay aside your inability
to be surprised,
your resistance to what you
do not understand.
See then whether this blessing
turns to flame on your tongue,
sets you to speaking
what you cannot fathom
or opens your ear
to a language
beyond your imagining
that comes as a knowing
in your bones
a clarity
in your heart
that tells you
this is the reason
we were made,
for this ache
that finally opens us,
for this struggle, this grace
that scorches us
toward one another
and into
the blazing day.
[1] Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace, Wanton Gospeller Press, 2015.
May 8, 2016 - 7th Sunday in Easter - Making God Known
May 1, 2016 - 6th Sunday in Easter - Letting Jesus be our Peace - The Rev. Bingham Powell
April 24, 2016 - 5th Sunday in Easter - The Rev. Bingham Powell
April 17, 2016 - 4th Sunday in Easter - Shepherd Sunday
Photo by Ppvanderlee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30692309
