Lord Of The Dance
John 16:12-15

Today is “Trinity Sunday.”  And that means that in Christian churches all over the world, there are preachers struggling to explain the concept of the Trinity: the ancient understanding that God is One, yet three.

It’s an idea that is never fully articulated in Scripture. Today’s Gospel text comes close … I guess. Though if you were able to understand it, you can go to the top of the theological class.

All sorts of examples will be used in these myriad of sermons, given from around the globe … some more colorful than others. Examples like:

Trinity is like an egg—in three parts: shell, white, yolk. Of course, one preacher trying to demonstrate this in a children’s talk was a bit taken aback when he cracked open his egg to find that it was a double yolker! Oops!

Another attempt: Trinity is like a book, first conceived in the mind of the author, then published as a tangible work and later surviving as an influence.

How about: Trinity is like family, different people making one family – father, mother, child.

Trinity is like different roles played by one person. For example, right now I am a preacher, I am also a man … and of course, first and foremost, I am loving and devoted husband!

Or: Trinity is like H₂O existing as water, steam and ice—same essence, just different properties.

For the theologically inclined there’s Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Or how about: Presence, wisdom, power; or Almighty God, incarnate word, holy comforter.

Then there is the ever popular Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Or my personal favorite: primordial nature, consequent nature, superjective nature. Okay, I admit – those are even above my head!!

In any event, all of these phrases have been used to refer to the Trinity – all ways of talking about God. But none get it just right.

Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity to someone? Or better yet to understand it yourself? God is one and yet we’ve got these three, what? Persons? Spirits? Beings? Things?

So what is God? A triangle, maybe a prism–whole, but with three sides? Or maybe God is a shape-shifter, one minute holy parent, another holy child, another holy spirit. “God in three persons,”

...or per my theology professor’s tweaking: “God in three hypostatic modes of being...” Try and figure that one out!

Talking about the Trinity is not easy. So I went to the other theologian in our house – no, not the cat. Our cat doesn’t study God; she thinks she is God.

No, I asked my kind, thoughtful and very smart wife, DeLynn how I might speak about the Trinity this morning. Her response? “Don’t get too deep – if you try and go too deep it gets too complicated.”  Probably good advice, but I’m only on page two of my sermon … 

Okay, maybe I should start with our text.  In this morning’s Gospel reading from John, Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit, mentioning God, the Father. All the elements of the Trinity are there: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But to be honest, it’s highly doubtful that when John wrote this account down on paper, he had in mind a doctrine of the Trinity. Nowhere in the Bible does it actually speak of the Trinity as such. Jesus didn’t talk about the Trinity; neither did Paul, not really.

The doctrine of the Trinity is sort of there in the cracks. That is until the fourth century – 300 years after Jesus.  That’s when Christian leaders formalized the concept of the Trinity. They did it at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The result? The Nicene Creed.

Then some more Christian leaders in the fifth century wrote another creed trying once again to clarify the Trinity for folks, particularly the Jesus part. That Council resulted in the Apostles’ Creed.

Now, I guess, that’s all well and good. But what do these ancient councils and creeds have to do with us today?  Maybe they just make it all the more confusing. How about we just ditch it? After all, the idea of the Trinity is relatively new, it’s hard to understand, and nearly impossible to explain, so maybe we should just chuck the whole thing.  

I wonder if that was where Nicodemus’ thoughts were headed that night on the roof with Jesus. He’d just come for a little dialogue, but he ended up with lots more questions than answers from Rabbi Jesus.

You remember the story.  Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council, comes to Jesus, under cover of darkness, impressed by Jesus’ miracles and convinced he was of God. 

And Jesus talks to him about being born again. Born again? Hadn’t Nick already been born once? Why be born again? And how does one get born again? And what’s this business about being born of the Spirit?

So, Jesus asks him, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

“Exactly!” I would have said. “Forget this heavenly stuff. It’s too hard to understand. I am out of here!”

Frustrated though he might have been by these mysterious things Jesus was saying, Nicodemus stayed. He stayed on that roof and listened to everything Jesus said.

In the end, he was rewarded by being the first person in all of Scripture to hear that gem of Jesus’ teachings, the kernel of the Gospel:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

If he didn’t understand anything else Jesus had said, surely, he could understand this bit about God’s love being for everyone. Whosoever, Jesus said. Whosoever.

Now that’s worth keeping.  So maybe there is something helpful about the idea of the Trinity. Maybe it is worth taking another stab at it.

I recently read about one pastor who believes that the best way to explain the Trinity is to talk about in terms of the creative, the ethical, and the mystical.

See, the essence of God is creative. That’s what God does, God creates. And Jesus’ whole thing was doing good, right? God sent Jesus to show us how to live – that’s ethics.

And the mystical? The mystical is all that Spirit stuff – prayer, meditation, being fully present with God, with ourselves, and with others.

And the important thing about the Trinity: Father-Son-Holy Ghost/creative-ethical-mystical … however you name it … the important thing about the Trinity is that all three partners go together; all three are equal, mutually-related, interdependent.

Since God’s essence is this three-way dance of the creative, ethical, and the mystical and since we are created in God’s image, then we are most whole, which is to say, most God-like when the creative, ethical, and mystical dance interdependently in our lives.

And when the creative (our imaginative thinking), the ethical (what we do and how we decide to do it), and the mystical (how we talk and listen to God) … when the creative, the ethical, and the mystical dance interdependently in our lives, then we are dancing with the Trinity.

So what does this Trinity dance look like? It looks a lot like the Stations of the Cross wall hangings in the chapel at the Sisters of Zion hostel in Ein Karem, Israel. The Sisters of Zion established the hostel specifically to minister to Jewish people.

“We are here as a sign of God’s love for the Jews,” one of the sisters said. In the hostel, the sisters play host to Jews and to anyone else who needs a place to stay.

In their continuing efforts to establish relationships with and minister to Jewish people in the community, the sisters once commissioned a local artist to create a plaster set of the Stations of the Cross.

Once the beautiful abstract paintings were completed, the sisters proudly displayed them in the chapel.

Then the bishop came to visit. Saying that it was disrespectful for a Jew to create artwork depicting the Stations of the Cross, he ordered the stations removed. Sadly the sisters took them down.

“But when the bishop died,” the sister exclaimed, smiling broadly, “we put them back up!”

Through their life of prayer, the sisters opened themselves to the creativity of God’s spirit – a Jew to create Christian art. Who would have thunk it? Not only did they think it, they also acted on it. They did something to demonstrate God’s love for the Jews.

And even when thwarted by an uncreative bishop, the sisters’ creative-ethical-mystical dance continued -– even though it had to go underground for a while.

So … what does your Trinity dance look like?

Max Lucado, one of my very favorite authors, talks about “the Dance” in another way.  He likens it to a guy who wants to learn to dance.

This fellow is a rational, intelligent sort, so he goes to the bookstore and buys a how-to book. He takes it home and starts reading. He carefully does everything it says.

When the instructions say sway, he sways. When the instructions say lean, he leans. When the instructions say spin, he spins. He even cuts out paper footprints and arranges them on the family room floor so he will know exactly where to step.

At last, he thinks he’s got it down pat. He calls his wife in and says, “Honey, watch!” With book in hand and reading aloud so she’ll know he’s done his homework, he follows the instructions step by step.

It says, “Take one step with your right foot.” So he takes one step with his right foot. Then it says, “Turn slowly to the left.” He turns slowly to the left.” He keeps it up, reading and then dancing, reading and dancing, through the whole thing.

Finally he collapses exhausted on the sofa and says to his wife, “Well, what do you think? Did I execute it perfectly or what?”

To which she replies, “You executed it all right. You absolutely killed it!”

The befuddled husband says, “But I followed the rules, I laid out the pattern, I did everything the book said...”

“But,” she sighs, “you forgot the most important part--the music!”

She sticks a disc into the CD player. “Try it again. And this time quit worrying about the steps and just follow the music.”

She holds out her hand, and he gets up and takes it. The music starts, and the next thing the guy knows he’s dancing--without the book!

Lucado observes: “We Christians are prone to follow the book while ignoring the music. We master the doctrine, outline the chapters, memorize the dispensations, debate the rules, and stiffly step down the dance floor of life with no music in our hearts.

“Dancing with no music is tough stuff. Jesus knew that. For that reason, on the night before His death He introduced the disciples to the song maker of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.”

And with that, the Trinity Dance began and continues to this day.

What does your Trinity dance look like? What happens when your creating or imagining, your doing, and your communicatin’ with God all get going at the same time?

What might that dance look like? How might that dance help us live into the reality of that famous verse from John 3:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

What might happen if we lived truly Trinitarian lives?

(PAUSE)

Wanna dance?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, in the name of the Lord of the Dance!

Amen.