Remembering the Trinity
This Sunday, May 30, is Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday of the year when the church remembers with our worship our belief that God exists in three ways or persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or, if those images don’t work for you, consider some other ways modern theologians attempt to describe the Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Or, Lover, Beloved, Love. Or, Mother, Child, Womb. However you want to speak of God, this Sunday, we will remind ourselves that we believe that God exists and lives in a three-fold community: the life giver or Creator or Father, the coming of God as a human being in the person of Jesus, and the continuation of God’s work each day in us through the Holy Spirit or Wisdom or Sanctifier.
The way God lives in a community as Three-in-One and One-in-Three is a mystery to us. Some theologians speculate that the community of God is lived out in a state called perichoresis, which, loosely translated, means God-in-an-eternal-circular-dance. So imagine the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in constant connection with each other, in an intricate, beautiful dance, mixing between intricately rehearsed and practiced moves and more spontaneous ebbing and flowing. I am not a dancer, but the idea of one God, dancing together, in three Persons, in beautiful step and flow, inspires me. In what ways might the communities we create in our church, in our families, and in our workplaces mirror this artistic, balanced, harmonious understanding of God? And if we more fully embraced a belief in a truly communal, dancing God, how might we live our lives differently in the communities of the world?
— The Very Rev. Gray Lesesne, D.Min.
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