Don't Do the Math

Don’t Do the Math!

John 16:12-15

As I write this, it is the closing hours of Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost.  Trinity Sunday is celebrated by those churches that follow the liturgical calendar of the Christian year.  It is the Sunday set aside for remembering the Trinity and what it means for the Christian church.

The question many of us ask is, “How do you explain, and how do you understand the Trinity?”  It is important to remember that the Trinity is an attempt to explain the unexplainable.  The Trinity is a doctrine of the Christian Church—that is, it is one of the tenets of our faith on which the church stands.  In fact, Philip W. Butin, in his book The Trinity (Geneva Press, 2001), states that it is the tenet on which our faith stands or falls. 

The Trinity is a theoretical model intended to help Christians understand several expressions in the Bible.

            There is only one God.

Each of the three divine persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is recognized to be God.

            God’s self-revelation recognizes distinctions among the three.

            There are interactions among them

            All are eternally present in the Godhead.

Having said that, are we any closer to understanding the Trinity?  Probably not, and John helps us understand why.  Chapters 14-17 of the Gospel of John are Jesus’ farewell address to His disciples at the Last Supper.  In the 16^th chapter, verse 12, Jesus says, “I still have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now.”  In other words he is saying, “I’ve told you all you can handle for now.”  It reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons.  There is a class full of students, and one boy says to the teacher, “Mr. Jones, may I be excused?  My brain is full.”

   The spiritual immaturity of the disciples prevented Jesus from saying more.  Throughout the Gospels, Jesus faced this problem.  We often sense his frustration and share it, wondering how the disciples could be so stupid.  What we fail to realize is that spiritual immaturity is our problem, too.  It will always be humankind’s problem, because it is so easy for our brains to be full.

We’re still left with the problem of understanding how the Trinity works.  How can three persons be one entity?  The simple answer is, don’t do the math!  This is a distraction from the real question.

   To understand the Trinity, or anything about God, we need metaphors.  One metaphor that may help us understand the Trinity is the dance.  We have all seen Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip dancing with unrestrained joy.  I suspect that many of us wish we could share his freedom to “dance as if no one was looking.” 

The dance I’m talking about is not for one person, and not for a couple, but for a larger group.  Henri Matisse, the French artist painted a picture of five dancers moving in a circle while holding hands.  The figures are nude—and that’s important, because it signifies the complete freedom and complete openness of the dancers to each other and to the dance.

   Square dancing comes close to the kind of dancing I’m talking about, but it’s not exactly right because there is a caller.  The kind of dance I mean is closer to what we see in movies about life in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, where the dancers perform intricate patterns.  These dances are executed without commands because everyone knows the steps.

One of the words that theologians use frequently to describe the relationship within the Trinity is perichoresis.  It’s a Greek word. It’s also a compound word.  The first part, peri, means “around” (think perimeter).  The second part, choreia gives us our word “choreography.”  Perichoresis, therefore, means “to dance around.”

This is the way God dances:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in complete freedom, complete understanding, with unrestrained joy, knowing the patterns and steps so well that they need no commands.  They understand the dance perfectly because they made up the steps.

   The wonderful part about this is that we are called to be part of this dance.  This is, in part, I believe, what Paul means when he says we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).  We dance clumsily, of course, because we don’t understand the steps; but that’s all right with God, just as long as we dance.