June 19, 2011, Trinity Sunday - The Reverend Canon Brad Karelius

St. Augustine was strolling along a sandy beach on the coast of North Africa in deep contemplation about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As he walked with his head in the clouds, he almost stumbled over a boy with a little pail. The boy was running back and forth, empting bucket after bucket into a hole in the beach sand. When Augustine asked the little boy what he was doing, the child answered that he was putting the ocean back into that hole. When Augustine told him that was impossible, the boy responded that it was just as impossible for Augustine to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity.

On this Trinity Sunday many clergy throughout the world will attempt the impossible, to explain in some way the nature of the Trinity. Augustine wrote some where that if we ever think we finally have understood God, then what we understand is not God. I think this is true, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t know something about the triune God. We can work at expressing in words and images and symbols what we have personally experienced of God, knowing that we only have a brief glimpse of God’s mystery.

I am sitting on the remains of a huge old cottonwood tree that fell during a horrific windstorm that recently blew through the Owens Valley, near Olancha. I sit on the tree and contemplate another living cottonwood tree standing majestically in a rocky field strewn with sage brush, Angus cattle munching tender green grass near by. The leaves on the cottonwood twirl and flutter. Sitting with me in my imagination of this scene is the Hassidic Jewish mystic Martin Buber. He tells me: “Look at that tree, Brad. We can give it a name in the Linnaean system. We can describe it’s height, color, texture, and how it’s root system goes very deep searching for water. We can make a complete, informed description of the nature of this Freemont Cottonwood. And we think we know it.”

Martin Buber continues, “But let me tell you about one day when I sat like this contemplating another tree. I first saw it as another tree. But as I was captivated by the rhythmic movement of the branches swaying in the wind, back and forth, back and forth, time stopped. I forgot where I was. And I had this weird feeling that the tree was moving toward me and I was moving toward the tree and then we were one. The tree was no longer an it, object, thing, but had become a Thou.”

“Stay with me a little more, Brad. There is more. Some time later I was sitting back on the tree truck, reflecting on that surprising encounter, thinking that maybe I was hallucinating and it came to me: This is how God is.”

“I can be reading Torah or arguing with the Rabbi about some theological question. But that tree embraced me, reminding me that God is not an it to be dissected or fixed in some static theological place. God is a Thou and I am a Thou to God. God deeply desires relationship with me.”

I imagine this encounter with Buber, based on his book, I and Thou, I believe that our encounters with creation can be similar invitations to relationship with God.

As Karl Rahner wrote, “Knowing God is more important than knowing about God.”

Our celebration of the Holy Trinity today is another encounter with God’s deep desire for relationship with you and me.

The Trinity is not a monad. Our God is a tissue of relationships. Therefore in all of our relationships we are who we are and God is implanted there. Katie and Erik and my marriage are thous to me and God is revealed as Thou in relationships and you are Thou to me and I to you. God, the Trinity, is within the tissues of all those relationships.

The icon of the Trinity painted in 1410 by Andrei Rublev depicts the Holy Trinity. Three angelic figures are seated at a table on three sides, the front is open to you and me as we look at the icon. The faces look toward us. On the table is the Eucharistic Bread. The Trinity invites us to come close in intimate relationship.

If you have participated in Greek folk dancing, you have been arm and arm dancing in an open circle. The Greek Orthodox Church has a term they use to describe the relationship of God as Trinity as perichoesis. It means literally “going around.” It suggests a dance where each person circles, interweaving, whirling in vibrant interaction with others. The dance is an open circle that invites all onto the dance floor, drawing them right into the midst of the energetic flow of divine light. If some hesitate, preferring to sit on the sidelines, the Three in One circles back again and again, extends the invitation over and over to each and to all, changing the pace and the rhythms so that even the most introverted or clumsy of us can learn the steps in this divine dance of love.

The Trinity is then:

• The open table inviting you to draw close to the circle of relationship.
• The dance encircling around you, enticing you to join the circle
• The precious relationships of Thous in your life.
• All giving you and me eyes of the heart to see the mystery of God.

Amen.

Resource used: America, “A Dance of Love”, Barbara Reid, June 6, 2011.