Trinity

Trinity B: Come, This Way

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Trinity (Celtic)OLD TESTAMENT: Isaiah 6: 1-8

To read the Old Testament Lectionary Passage, click here

The year that this was probably written was around 742 BCE (dated by the death of King Uzziah). King Uzziah, also known as Azariah, had ruled for about 45 years and then when he contracted leprosy, it was necessary to appoint a regent to rule in his place. Essentially, the kingdom was in chaos. The air is full of uncertainty. Assyria is expanding its borders and so the northern kingdom, Israel, is trying to coerce Judah into a military alliance against the Assyrian threat. In the midst of this, the prophet Isaiah has a vision of God enthroned in a heavenly court. The vocation of the heavenly court is to continuously sing praises to God. The prophet sees only the hem of God’s robe. (Because remember, it was believed that if one actually saw God, it would mean death.)

God is surrounded by seraphs, part of the heavenly court, hovering over God, guarding. One pair of wings cover their faces in the awesome presence of God (so they won’t see God) and a second pair cover their genitals (feet is a euphemism, since it was wrong to speak of genitalia). This is a sign of commitment to purity. Isaiah feels inadequate in God’s presence. He feels unclean, unfit to stand before God, yet he sees God. But he is made clean by one of the seraphs. This is the technical language of the rite of forgiveness of the temple, symbolized by refinement through fire. Isaiah accepts his calling as prophet to Judah. He has been forgiven and has seen God.

The vision is one of grandeur that lies outside the scope of what we see and know, outside the boundaries of normal human experience. It is believing in the unbelievable. Isaiah is brought to the ultimate realization that he is lacking in the face of this magnificence. He has “unclean lips” and his life is lacking. And yet, he offers himself, presents himself for the cleansing by God that he now sees that he needs. He knows that he cannot do it himself.

And so the nation enters a transition from a time of power and prosperity to one of desolation. But Isaiah knows that God is carrying the people through this time. Once again, one must empty oneself to see and truly experience God. It is his call to ministry. But it was a call that Isaiah could not hear without some preparation. And yet, he goes willingly, almost as if he could not do anything but. But this is not a call to preach comfort and joy. Remember, it is a time of desolation and destruction. Isaiah, then, is called to preach words that will finally convince the people to listen, to turn from the destructive path that they are on. These are people that think they are living out the will of God but who are actually far from that. It is time to hear a different tune.

What the prophet is called to speak will not make their lives easier, their road smoother, or their pathway plainer. In fact, it will actually be more confusing and less certain. It will, instead, be a journey of faith, rather than certainty. (In fact, just a few verses after the ones we read, Isaiah’s “here am I’ turns into “How long, O Lord?”) But maybe God’s wisdom is to choose those who continually question themselves and their mission so that they will look to God for direction. In a commentary on this passage, Dr. John Holbert says:

By all means, call your people to follow the Lord, bid them give their lives for God’s service. It is what we do! But to follow God rightly does not always lead to great congregations, vast religious campuses, and budgets that rival those of small nations. What we are called to say to our world is that the last are first, the least are greatest, and the greatest among us is a servant. Such two thousand year old words have regularly been met by dull ears, sightless eyes, and clouded minds; all of which have led again and again to wasted cities and empty lands, ravaged by wars and famines and hopelessness.

Another hymn rises to mind: “The Voice of God is Calling,” John Haynes Holmes’ 1913 poem. “From ease and plenty save us,” begins the fourth verse, and it ends, “Speak, and behold! we answer; command and we obey!”1  By all means, respond to the call of God. But be careful to know that the call is never easy, never simple to grasp, never designed for ready comfort and success.  Just ask Isaiah.  (From “Preaching This Week”, by Dr. John Holbert, 06/07/2009, available at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/7/2009&tab=1,  accessed 30 May, 2012.)

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What parallels do you see with today?
  3. What do you think Isaiah really saw in this God-experience?
  4. What images of God does this bring about for you?
  5. What calling do you think God has for us in this time?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT: Romans 8: 12-17

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

Put very simply, Paul is contrasting two ways of living—the way that we are tempted to live in this world and the way that God calls us to live. He plays with notions of slavery and freedom—slavery to the perils of this world or freedom in God through Christ. Slavery meant fear. Slavery meant having no rights of inheritance. Slavery means no hope. In this first century Roman world, unwanted children were frequently sold into slavery. (And, sadly, that practice still exists today in our world.) Freedom, then, means to belong to a family and to have the rights to an inheritance. We have been adopted by Christ and will share in the inheritance that God provides. When we realize we need God, then we also realize that we are children of God.

But this also means that we share in suffering with Christ as well. Faith is not always a perfectly-paved road, as we know. But this, too, is part of God’s promise of the renewal of all of Creation. It is a hope that we cannot see on our own but are rather empowered to see through the Spirit of God. Here, there’s more to being a Christian than just knowing the right stuff and doing the right things. To be Christian, you must open yourself up and invite God’s Spirit to enter your life. That is the way that you will be glorified through Christ in God. That is the way that you truly become a child of God.

Life is not about things going well or about figuring it all out; life is about hope. That’s what moves us beyond where we are. Slavery and fear move us backwards or leaves us standing here glued to our own inventions. But freedom and hope propels us forward. We all hope for a happy ending. It is the stuff that makes great fairy tales. We all look for that vision that God holds. But hope is not just some futuristic condition. Our hope for today manifests in our belief that God is here, pulling us or prodding us or dragging us out of the mire in which we sometimes find ourselves. It’s happened before. It’s called resurrection. Maybe that’s Paul’s whole point. Hope is illumined by both hope itself and a perception of hopelessness. And a life of faith is one that is lived both actively working for change and patiently waiting for the change to emerge. Hope is about balancing both persistence and patience.

 

  1. How does this passage speak to you?
  2. What does the “adoption” language mean to you?
  3. What images of God does this bring about for you?
  4. How do you depict hope?
  5. What do hope and patience have to do with each other?

GOSPEL: John 3: 1-17

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Nicodemus was having trouble getting it, even though he was a leader of the Jews. The passage says that he came to Jesus by night, as if he was trying to hide the fact that he was having trouble understanding it all from the rest of the community. So Nicodemus came looking for answers. He wanted Jesus to get rid of all the doubts that Nicodemus had. He wanted Jesus to make it all perfectly clear for him so that he could go on imparting that knowledge to the rest of the community. Part of the problem may have been semantics. After all, he did believe what Jesus had done, what Jesus had told him. He knew that Jesus had done numerous miracles. He had seen it with his own eyes. So he knew that Jesus was good, he knew that Jesus was worthy as a teacher. And yet, Jesus seemed to talk in circles. He preached that one had to be born from above. But how can one be born unless he or she re-enters the mother’s womb? He preached that one must be born in the Spirit, and yet admitted that the place from which the Spirit blew was unknown and unknowable. How can this be? And he preached that one must believe. Nicodemus believed what Jesus said. What was Jesus talking about, then?

When you read this, you do sense that Nicodemus must have been a good teacher. He was astute and knew what questions to ask. He was diligent as he studied and explored to get to the truth. But how could he believe this circular reasoning that Jesus was espousing?   Part of the problem, it seemed, was that Nicodemus and Jesus had completely different understandings of what “believe” was. Nicodemus had, after all, accepted Jesus’ propositions. He had probably even taught it. But Jesus was not asking for people to believe what he did or believe what he said. There is a difference between believing Christ and believing IN Christ. Believing IN means that you enter into relationship, that you trust with everything that you are, with everything that is your life. It is much more visceral than Nicodemus was really read to accept. Nicodemus wanted to understand it within the intellectual understanding of God that he had. But Jesus was telling him that there was a different way. Jesus was inviting, indeed almost daring, Nicodemus to believe in this new way, to turn his life, his doubts, his heart, and even his very learned mind over to God.

“How can this be?” Those are Nicodemus’ last words in this passage, which sort of makes him a patron saint for all of us who from time to time get stuck at the foot of the mountain, weighed down by our own understandings of who God is, without the faintest idea of how to begin to ascend. But there’s Jesus. “Watch me. Put your hand here. Now your foot. Don’t think about it so hard. Just do as I do. Believe in me. And follow me….this way!

 

My Take on the Trinity:

 

In the beginning was God.  God created everything that was and everything that is and laid out a vision for what it would become.  But we didn’t really get it.  So God tried and tried again to explain it.  God sent us Abraham and Moses and Judges and Kings and Prophets.  But we still didn’t get it.  God wove a vision of what Creation was meant to be and what we were meant to be as God’s children through poetry and songs and beautiful writings of wisdom.  But we still didn’t get it.

“So,” God thought, “there is only one thing left to do.  I’ll show you.  I’ll show you the way to who I am and who I desire you to be.  I will walk with you.”  So God came, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and was born just like we were with controversy and labor pains and all those very human conceptions of what life is.  Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, was the Incarnation of a universal truth, a universal path, the embodiment of the way to God and the vision that God holds for all of Creation.  But we still didn’t get it.  We fought and we argued and we held on to our own human-contrived understandings of who God is.  And it didn’t make sense to us.  This image of God did not fit into our carefully-constructed boxes.  And so, as we humans have done so many times before and so many times since, we destroyed that which got in the way of our understanding.  There…it was finished…we could go back to the way it was before.

But God loves us too much to allow us to lose our way.  And so God promised to be with us forever.  Because now you have seen me; now you know what it is I intended; now you know the way.  And so I will always be with you, always inside of you, always surrounding you, always ahead of you, and always behind you.  There will always be a part of me in you.  Come, follow me, this way.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life.  She read and studied but she just didn’t get it.  So she set off to search for it.  She went to South America.  She went to India.  And everywhere she went, she heard the same thing.  They didn’t know but they had heard of a man who did, a man deep in the Himalayas in a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain.   So she traveled and traveled and then climbed and climbed to reach his door.  She knocked.  When the door opened, she hastily said, “I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question:  What IS the meaning of life?”  “Come in,” the man responded, “and have some tea.”  “No,” she replied, “I didn’t come for tea.  I came for an answer.  What IS the meaning of life?”

“We shall have tea,” the old man said, so she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea she caught her breath and began telling him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened (which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as she talked he placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea. She was so busy talking that she did not notice when the tea cup was full, so the old man just kept pouring until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall. “What are you doing?!” she yelled when the tea burned her hand. “It’s full, can’t you see that? Stop! There’s no more room!” “Just so,” the old man said to her. “You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk.”

You see, God cannot be defined in our terms. We have to somehow let those go. God is God—still immeasurable, unprovable, unsearchable, and unknowable. But for those of us who believe…God is also Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, our Source, our Savior, and our Sustenance of life. And as we come closer to knowing God, closer to approaching the center that is God, we are more and more aware of the vastness and limitlessness that is God. God cannot be defined in human terms; it is we who must redefine ourselves in “God” terms, to place ourselves within that Trinity. The Trinity calls us to a new spirituality, a new humanity, and a new community. The Trinity calls us to become a part of this unlimited God. But we are not alone; God is always present leading us on the journey and when we get a little lost, God will be there to show us, “Come, this way….”

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does “believing” mean to you?
  3. What does the Trinity mean for you and how does it depict God for you?

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me–that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.” (Ann Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

 

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions. (Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926))

 

To know God is to know one cannot speak adequately about God; it is to know the impossibility of describing God in any compete way; it is to know that every theological statement falls short…We must speak, but not to capture God, not to master God…we speak in response to our having been spoken to. (Thomas Langford)

 

 

Closing

 

If you want to understand the body of Christ,

listen to the apostle telling the faithful,

“You though, are the body of Christ and its members.”

So if it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members,

            it’s the mystery meaning you that has been placed

on the Lord’s table;

                                    What you receive is the mystery that means you.

                                    It is to what you are that you reply “Amen”

And by so replying you express your assent.

                                    What you hear is “the Body of Christ”

And you answer, “Amen.”

                                    So be a member of the body of Christ in order to make that

“Amen” true.   (St. Augustine)

Trinity A: Together

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Celtic TrinityOLD TESTAMENT:  Genesis 1:1-2:4a

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

The writing that we know as The Book of Genesis is actually a composite of three (or possibly more) unrelated oral traditions—Yahwist (J) (10th century bce), Elohist (9th century bce, and Priestly (P) (about 5th century bce).  Each have a different understanding of God and a different focus.  It is important when we read it that we remember that, for all practical purposes, we come as aliens to the culture in which it was written.  This is a story through which we can understanding humanity’s beginnings.

Genesis makes the first claim about God’s character, God’s relationship to the world, and God’s relationship to humanity and to us as individuals.  So, Genesis is not a book that provides easy, historical lessons to life’s questions.  Genesis is an experience that you have to enter.  Theodore Hiebert says of the book:  “Genesis shares the scientist’s fascination with the birth of the cosmos and the origin of life on earth, the anthropologists’ curiosity about the first human beings, the historian’s interest in the beginning of civilization, a family’s esteem for their earliest ancestors, and the theologian’s concern about the founding events of religious traditions.”

To claim that God created the world and all that exists is a matter of faith, grounded fundamentally in God’s self-revelation.  At this level, the opening chapters of Genesis are a confession of faith.  In the passage, the phrase “in the beginning” probably does not refer to the absolute beginning, but to the beginning of ordered creation.  After all, God was there as well as chaos!  “Heaven and earth” is probably not intended to be two separate places but a reference to the totality of Creation.  In fact, Norman Habel contends that this verse IS the account of Creation, followed by a more detailed account in the form of an inclusion.

Light here is not sunlight, but a pushing back of the darkness with life.  The phrase “it was good” does not imply perfection, but rather implies the fulfillment of divine intention.  It was not perfect; it was the way it was meant to be.

According to ancient Israel cosmology, the dome is an impermeable barrier that holds back a great reservoir of water in the sky, separating it from the great reservoir under the earth.  When the “windows of the sky” (7:11) are opened in the Priestly flood story, the water in this reservoir falls as rain.

In verses 11-13, there is a shift in God’s way of creating; the earth itself participates in the creative process.  The description of the plants and trees with their capacity to reproduce by themselves gives evidence for a probing interest in what we would call “natural science”.  (Keep in mind that when this was written, there was no understanding of photosynthesis.  It was ascribed to the powers of the earth.)

“Let us”—refers to an image of God as a consultant of other divine beings.  God is not alone but chooses to share Creation with what God has created.  In the phrase “In our image, according to our likeness”, image should not be construed as identity.  The image functions to mirror God to the world, to be God as God would be to the nonhuman, to be an extension of God’s own dominion.  We are not created to be God.  Think of a photograph, an “image” of the subject in the picture.  The “image” is NOT the subject; it is rather a reminder, something that points to and makes the subject more real.

Abraham Heschel said that “Eternal life does not grow away from us; it is “planted within us, growing beyond us.” (Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath, 74).  The divine resting concludes creation—namely, Sabbath belongs to the created order; it cannot be legislated or abrogated by human beings.  “Finishing” does not mean that God has quit creating.  The seventh day refers to a specific day and not to an open future.  Continuing creative work will be needed, but there is a “rounding off” of the created order at this point.

Also according to Heschel, “The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds—this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds.  For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come…The Sabbath is more than an armistice, more than an interlude; it is a profound conscious harmony of man and the world, a sympathy for all things and a participation in the spirit that unites what is below and what is above.  All that is divine in the world is brought into union with God.  This is Sabbath, and the true happiness of the universe…“There are two aspects to the Sabbath, as there are two aspects to the world.  The Sabbath is meaningful to [us] and is meaningful to God….The Sabbath is holy by the grace of God, and is still in need of all the holiness which man may lend to it…Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.  Sad is the lot of [those] who have no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath…” (Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath, 19, 31-32, 53-54, 74)

The high point of Creation is the Sabbath, which is delight in God, one another, and Creation.  It is where it all comes together.  This is the revealing of the God who made us, who conversed with us and with all of Creation even from the beginning, and who saw something in the world that we have not yet been able to see—an order and equality and justice that has been there from the very beginning.  And God saw that it was good. 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What stands out the most for you?
  3. What do you think is the central point of Creation?
  4. What does the “Sabbath” mean for you?
  5. Why do you think we read this passage in this week in which we are remembering and celebrating the Trinity?  

 

NEW TESTAMENT:   2 Corinthians 13:11-13

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This passage is the concluding admonition for this entire second letter to the Church at Corinth.  The “holy kiss”, which is probably a little odd-sounding to us, was essentially a known and usual social convention that Paul has brought into practice in his churches.  The “holy” reference suggests that it was a social convention that was assumed into the church and made acceptable as an intimate greeting.  It became the demonstration of love and peace between members.  The extension “be with all of you” once again affirms that all the Corinthians stand on the same ground (no one is better than the next) and that they belong to one another because of God’s love, the grace in and from Christ, and the fellowship generated by the Holy Spirit.

This short passage is about relationship, that sense of unity that comes from being one with God and one with God’s people.  Kissing, of course, connotes real intimacy. It is closer than just being friends.  It means entering each others’ lives and becoming part of each other.  Although this isn’t a specifically “trinitiarian” text in the classic sense of what that means, it still depicts that close relationship, inseparable and mutual, without any part of the relationship being held above the other.  It depicts who we are called to be and how we are to relate to others within this Kingdom of God in which we already reside. 

  1. What does this closing admonition mean for us?
  2. How can we “live in peace” when there is so much disunity, strife, and suffering in the world?

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 28:16-20

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

This is the first scene in which the disciples have appeared since they fled during the arrest of Jesus.  Jesus appears to them and they “see” him.  There is also the element of doubt.  But Jesus comes to this somewhat wavering church and speaks.  The basis for the words of The Great Commission is the claim of that risen Jesus that all authority has been given to him by God.  The commission is to all the “nations”.  The “nations” are to be discipled—go, make, baptize, teach.  Essentially, Jesus has handed the authority given to him by God to those whom he has commissioned.  Jesus’ last words are a promise of his continuing presence during the church’s mission.

When we look more deeply at this passage, we see that there are actually several different ways to translate the phrase “but some doubted”.  To whom do we think the word “some” refers?  We would like to think that it was those outside of the small circle of disciples, those that did not know Jesus as well in the first place.  It is easy, then, for us to dismiss this doubting as unfounded and even wrong.  But this phrase can also be translated as “but some of them doubted”, implying that there were some of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples that had their doubts.  That becomes a little bit more difficult for us to swallow.  After all, if THEY had doubts, where does that leave us?  Or maybe the passage is then saying, “hey, THEY, even they, had doubts; maybe doubting is alright”.  It is no longer a phrase that condemns doubting but rather affirms that it exists.  In the New American Bible, however, it is translated “but they doubted”, meaning that all of the disciples were both worshipping and doubting, doubting and worshipping.  Maybe this is saying that doubt is the norm, something that is perhaps even expected to happen.  Here, doubt is not skepticism or unbelief but rather a part of discipleship itself.  It is a part of what it means to be the church—worshipping and doubting, doubting and worshipping.

Whatever the nature of the resurrection event, it did not generate perfect faith even in those who experienced it firsthand.  It is not to perfect believers that the mission of Jesus Christ is entrusted but to the worshipping and wavering community of disciples.

Hans Kung says this:  Doubt is the shadow cast by faith.  One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed.  At any moment it may come into action.  There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt.

Faith in the resurrection is a matter of worship, not of inference.  But it does not exclude doubt, but takes doubt into itself.  The Great Commission, then, is given to all of us worshipping and doubting believers.

But, ultimately, doubts are supposed to be resolved, right?  With careful study of the Scriptures, everything becomes clear, right?  Well, let me tell you, I have a Masters of Divinity degree on my wall.  And, sadly, I have to tell you…that I do not have all the answers.  That’s not the way it works.  You know what intense theological study does for you?  It doesn’t give you all the answers; it teaches you how to ask the questions.

Part of Jesus’ directive to the disciples was to “teach”.  How do you teach, how do you learn, without asking questions?  Constructive doubt is what forms the questions in us and leads us to search and explore our own faith understanding.  It is doubt that compels us to search for greater understanding of who God is and who we are as children of God.  And it is in the face of doubt that our faith is born.  God does not call us to a blind, unexamined faith, accepting all that we see and all that we hear as unquestionable truth; God instead calls us to an illumined doubt, through which we search and journey toward a greater understanding of God.

So can we live amidst the shadows, the doubts, the varying shades of grey?  Think about different amounts of sunlight.  We have difficulty living in darkness.  We try desperately to artificially light our way or find some way to compensate for our blindness.  But full sunlight is also blinding.  Our eyes cannot take it.  It is those cloudy, gray days that allow us to see the best.  Overcast days are a photographer’s dream.  It is the light mixed with shadows that provides the most clarity and allows every color of the prism to be illumined on its own.

Faith is like that.  For here we have not human truth which we can understand and prove but God’s truth.  True faith is never completely clear.  It remains obscure.  It is always intermingled with shadows and doubts that open our eyes to the only way to deal with them—not by proving them wrong but by looking to God for the light that will make them part of our faith.  “But some doubted”.  They were the ones that saw him and worshipped him and whose faith grew.  They were the ones that were blessed with that reasonable doubt.  It’s called faith.  Thanks be to God!

So, what does this all have to do with the Trinity?  Well, keep in mind that the Trinity is not a doctrine that is perfectly laid out in the Scriptures.  It is rather a human construct that for us Trinitarian Christians represents the fullest understanding of God that we can imagine.  Think of it like this…In the beginning was God.  God created everything that was and everything that is and laid out a vision for what it would become.  But we didn’t really get it.  So God tried and tried again to explain it.  God sent us Abraham and Moses and Judges and Kings and Prophets.  But we still didn’t get it.  God wove a vision of what Creation was meant to be and what we were meant to be as God’s children through poetry and songs and beautiful writings of wisdom.  But we still didn’t get it.

“So,” God thought, “there is only one thing left to do.  I’ll show you.  I’ll show you the way to who I am and who I desire you to be.  I will walk with you.”  So God came, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and was born just like we were with controversy and labor pains and all those very human conceptions of what life is.  Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, was the Incarnation of a universal truth, a universal path, the embodiment of the way to God and the vision that God holds for all of Creation.  But we still didn’t get it.  We fought and we argued and we held on to our own human-contrived understandings of who God is.  And it didn’t make sense to us.  This image of God did not fit into our carefully-constructed boxes.  And so, as we humans have done so many times before and so many times since, we destroyed that which got in the way of our understanding.  There…it was finished…we could go back to the way it was before.

But God loves us too much to allow us to lose our way.  And so God promised to be with us forever.  Because now you have seen me; now you know what it is I intended; now you know the way.  And so I will always be with you, always inside of you, always surrounding you, always ahead of you, and always behind you.  There will always be a part of me in you.  Come, follow me, this way.  Be with me.  Be who I know you can be. 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does the “doubt” mean for you here?
  3. What does “faith” mean for you here?
  4. Taking all three of these Scriptures, what do you think we’re supposed to make of the Trinity? 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so do not waste too much time protecting the boxes.  (Richard Rohr)

 

Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is an on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway—a journey without maps.  Tillich said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.  (Frederick Buechner)

 

So much depends on our idea of God!  Yet no idea of [God], however pure and perfect, is adequate to express who [God] really is.  Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about [God].  We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good.  [God’s] inscrutable love seeks our awakening. (Thomas Merton) 

 

Closing

God to enfold me, God to surround me, God in my speaking, God in my thinking.

God in my sleeping, God in my waking, God in my watching, God in my hoping.

God in my life, God in my lips, God in my soul, God in my heart.

God in my sufficing, God in my slumber, God in mine ever-living soul, God in mine eternity.

 

God our Creator, today you bring us to a new stage of our journey to you;  May the presence of your Son guide us, the love of your Spirit enlighten us, until we come at last to you, God blessed for ever and ever.  Amen.

 

(From A Celtric Primer, compiled by Brendan O’Malley, p. 150-151, 60.)