We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.
The Trinity is most commonly seen in Christian art with the Spirit represented by a dove, as specified in the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Christ; he is nearly always shown with wings outspread. However depictions using three human figures appear occasionally in most periods of art.
The Father and the Son are usually differentiated by age, and later by dress, but this too is not always the case. The usual depiction of the Father as an older man with a white beard may derive from the biblical Ancient of Days, which is often cited in defense of this sometimes controversial representation.
The Son is often shown at the Father’s right hand.[Acts 7:56 ] He may be represented by a symbol—typically the Lamb or a cross—or on a crucifix, so that the Father is the only human figure shown at full size. In early medieval art, the Father may be represented by a hand appearing from a cloud in a blessing gesture, for example in scenes of the Baptism of Christ.
Later, in the West, the Throne of Mercy (or “Throne of Grace”) became a common depiction. In this style, the Father (sometimes seated on a throne) is shown supporting either a crucifix[111] or, later, a slumped crucified Son, similar to the Pietà (this type is distinguished in German as the Not Gottes)[112] in his outstretched arms, while the Dove hovers above or in between them. This subject continued to be popular until the 18th century at least.
By the end of the 15th century, larger representations, other than the Throne of Mercy, became effectively standardised, showing an older figure in plain robes for the Father, Christ with his torso partly bare to display the wounds of his Passion, and the dove above or around them. In earlier representations both Father, especially, and Son often wear elaborate robes and crowns. Sometimes the Father alone wears a crown, or even a papal tiara.
In the 17th century there was also a brief vogue for representing the Trinity as three identical men (example), conceivably influenced by Hospitality of Abraham images. This period coincided with the Spanish ascendancy in Latin America and the Philipines, so examples can be found in older churches in those areas. One odd example represents the Trinity this way in an image of the Coronation of Mary.
Soon, however, this type of Trinity image was condemned and supplanted by one in which the Father is represented as an older person, the Son as a younger one seated at his right and shouldering a large cross, and the Holy Spirit as a dove that hovers above the space between them. In the latter type the Spirit is represented as casting light upon the other two persons (symbolically, making it possible for humans to know them), but in one unusual variant he emanates from both their mouths simultaneously, a reference to the Latin trinitarian theology in which the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (a phrase from the Roman Catholic text of the Nicene Creed that reads simply “proceeds from the Father” in the Orthodox and Anglican versions).
Today’s sermon is almost completely taken from the first sermon I preached on Trinity Sunday here at St Peter’s.
The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the ways that we Christians try to understand the nature of God. In today’s reading from Proverbs, the woman called Wisdom gives us some insight into God’s nature.
Ellen Davis, who teaches at Duke, and is one of our most important Old Testament theologians and Hebrew scholars, says that “the picture of Wisdom playing, even giddily, before God, must be allowed to stand as the important theological statement it is.”
Davis offers this translation of Wisdom speaking about herself at the end of today’s reading from Proverbs.
“And I was delights daily, playing before him continually, playing in his inhabited world, and my delights were with human beings.”
Davis says that here the writer of Proverbs emphasizes the element of play in God’s nature.
After all, God didn’t have to create this world, or us, for that matter!
Davis points out that God’s decision to create the world was a matter of absolutely free choice, and in fact, creation, and especially humanity, God created simply for “the sake of God’s own pleasure.”
The freedom to create and delight in what is created belong together, in divine play just as in child’s play. In this “boisterous” image we see Divine Wisdom freely playing with, and delighting in human beings!
The fact that God plays in creation reminds us that God is here with us and is intimately involved with every aspect of our lives, just as God is intimately involved with all of creation.
And the fact that God is intimately involved with us and with all of creation finds expression in the doctrine of the Trinity,
because as Davis goes on to point out, we “Christians confess that God not only created the world but dwelt in it as a human being and God now continues to be present in our midst through the Holy Spirit, one of whose seven gifts is the wisdom of God.”
An understanding of the Trinity that was popular in the first few centuries of the church captures this playful nature of God.
This understanding is known as perichoreisis.
Catherine LaCugna, a theologian who wrote about the Trinity, tells us that perichoresis expresses the idea that the three divine persons mutually exist permanently in one another, draw life from one another, and are what they are by relation to one another.
If we take the Greek prefix peri (around) and link it with the root of the verb choreuein (to dance), we get a lively metaphor that describes the “one nature in three persons” of the Trinity. Literally God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit “dance around.” The choreia or dance of God is “the choreography of the cosmos—it’s the interrelationship of Creator, creation, and life itself, the holy creativity of the All in All.” (from notes on Perichoresis from The Rev. Susan Sowers)
And LaCugna goes on to add that we, yes, all of us, all of humanity, have been made partners in this divine dance, not through our own merit, or because we’re good dancers, but because God has chosen us to join in this cosmic dance of love. We have been made partners in the divine dance, because everything comes from God, and everything returns to God, and this coming and returning happens through Jesus Christ in the Spirit—“the choreography of the divine dance which takes place from all eternity and is manifest at every moment of creation.”
LaCugna points out that this “one mystery of communion includes God and humanity as beloved partners in the dance.”
Dancing is good for us. A recent article in The Washington Post, “Anxious, lonely, or angry? Try Dancing,” quotes Lucia Horan, who teaches a specific kind of dance that helps people to deal with stress. She says that the “beauty of dance is that it addresses these quadrants of healing—the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.” She goes on to say that dance works for many people because if forces people to focus on the present moment, which can bring relief from worry, grief, and emotional pain.
The early church fathers used the metaphor of dancing as a way of elevating the soul.
St Augustine says this about dancing.
“I praise the dance, because it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the centre of his life…I praise the dance. O Man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you.”
Brendan O’Malley tells us that in the Christian Church for the first thousand years Christians danced in procession to and from the church. This dance was known as the “Tripudium, which means three steps or transport of joy… The dancers linked arms and danced in row after row, three steps forward, one step back, moving through the streets and into the church and around it during the hymns of the service, and then out through the streets as a recessional.”
Three steps forward, one step back, three steps forward and one step back—this is how we move toward God in this lifetime, stepping backward periodically, but then advancing again.
So the early Christians danced into, and in, and out of their churches, and felt in their bodies the pull of the divine dance of the Trinity, a dance of mutual love, breathing in together the breath of life, and pouring out to one another in mutual giving.
So what does this understanding of the Trinity, this divine dance that we’re a part of, have to do with how we live our lives today?
Brain McLaren, a current theologian, offers this simple thought experiment.
Imagine God as “this loving trinity of perichoresis, a sacred choreography of self-giving, other receiving; honoring, being honored; fully seeing the other, fully revealing the self.”
Now imagine the universe that this God has freely and playfully chosen to create. Imagine dancing to the music of this universe—“a wild and wonderful symphony, full of polyphony and surprise, expansive in themes, each movement inspiring the possibility of more movements as yet unimagined, all woven together with coherent motifs and morphing rhythms, where even dissonance has a place within higher more comprehensive patterns of harmony and wholeness.”
And finally, McLaren asks us to “imagine how people in this universe would manifest trust in this triune God—with undying creative love toward creation, and all of humanity, and even love toward those people who hold differing beliefs.”
This doctrine of the Trinity as perichoresis is a gift to us, because it allows us to imagine God-in-God, dancing in community, God electing us, choosing you and choosing me, to join in God in this divine dance, stepping with joy into God’s dance with the rest of humanity and all of creation.
And because God has no limits, we know that God has elected all of humanity, not just us, to dance divinely, our arms outstretched and linked in love to one another, taking three steps forward, one step back, and three more steps forward, in a transport of joy, as we learn to dance this divine dance with one another and with God right here in God’s good creation.
And if we fully enter into this divine dance, then surely, as Clement of Alexandria said, even now, “we raise our winged souls to the heavens.”
References
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, by Ellen Davis. Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. HarperSanFrancisco, 1973.
The doctrine of the Trinity is the Christian belief that there is One God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Other ways of referring to the Trinity are the Triune God and the Three-in-One.
The Trinity is a controversial doctrine; many Christians admit they don’t understand it, while many more Christians don’t understand it but think they do.
In fact, although they’d be horrified to hear it, many Christians sometimes behave as if they believe in three Gods and at other times as if they believe in one.
Trinity Sunday, which falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost, is one of the few feasts in the Christian calendar that celebrate a doctrine rather than an event.
A fundamental doctrine
The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most difficult ideas in Christianity, but it’s fundamental to Christians because it:
-states what Christians believe God is like and who he is
-plays a central part in Christians’ worship of an “unobjectifiable and incomprehensible God”
-emphasises that God is very different from human beings
-reflects the ways Christians believe God encounters them is a central element of Christian identity
-teaches Christians vital truths about relationship and community
-reveals that God can be seen only as a spiritual experience whose mystery inspires awe and cannot be understood logically
Unpacking the doctrine
The idea that there is One God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means:
-There is exactly one God
-The Father is God -The Son is God -The Holy Spirit is God -The Father is not the Son -The Son is not the Holy Spirit -The Father is not the Holy Spirit
An alternate way of explaining it is:
There is exactly one God
There are three really distinct Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
