June 7, 2009
(The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Triangles, Both Human and Divine
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Ages ago, back when the last of the glaciers receded from North America, back when I was a child in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Jackson MI, sermons lasted approximately 3-1/2 hours and were about as interesting as watching paint dry. My usual means of coping with this intense boredom – fidgeting, yawning, sighing, rolling my eyes – generally were met with parental disapproval so I learned to while away the time by concentrating on the gold symbol that was embroidered on the green altar frontal. The symbol depicted 3 interconnected triangles, elegantly intertwined. There it was, Sunday after Sunday clearly before my eyes and yet equally clearly a logical impossibility. Three in one and one in three. Many were the Sundays that I’d go home from church with a headache from trying to make sense of it.
Perhaps some of you can relate.
Today is Trinity Sunday – a day set aside to celebrate a foundational doctrine of the Church. As Children of Abraham, we claim a monotheistic faith, but Christianity came to develop a particular way of approaching monotheism that recognizes one God in three persons – or personas – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine emerged slowly and not without a great deal of controversy – 100 years, two ecumenical councils, and a slough of excommunications to be exact. In many ways, it seems that we Christians have made this very difficult for ourselves. What the heck were we thinking?
In his book, The Joy of Being Wrong, theologian James Allison argues that the salvific nature of God is best understood in its Trinitarian or triangular formulation of Father, Son & Holy Spirit. He points out that a triangle is the pattern by which humans in virtually every culture relate to one another. If we, God’s creatures, live and move and find our being in the midst of triangled relationships, then God in God’ infinite mercy, meets us where we are and saves us by the same pattern, if not by the same means.
And we apparently are a species that works best in triangles. A host of social theories have emerged over time that explores this phenomenon.[1] One theorist sees triangles as the basic “molecule” of an emotional system, or the smallest stable relational system. Examples of these emotional triangles abound. A person experiencing conflict with a spouse forms a triangle with one or more of their children. A spouse deals with the emotional intensity of home life by forming a triangle with work or a hobby, or sometimes by having an affair. Two co-workers bond through their mutual dislike of another co-worker. We form emotional triangles because they function for us – sometimes in lifegiving ways, sometimes in lethal ways.
Certainly the story of the fall in the Garden of Eden suggests that we humans have been triangling our relationships from the very beginning. Consider the triangle of the serpent with the woman and the forbidden fruit. As one theologian puts it, the woman found the fruit desirable because the serpent suggested it to her. She fell for it, and then she persuaded the man to join her. She triangled him into that same desire that brought them into rivalry with God's desire. We were created to be of one desire, of one mind and one heart with God's love for creation. But we triangle with each other's desires instead of with God's desire, and so we trip up and fall into all kinds of petty rivalries and broken relationships. And that isn't all. The first man and woman aren't one flesh, one desire; and their brokenness with God and each other gets passed on to their children. Cain and Abel become rivals for their father’s blessing and in a particularly deadly example of a triangle gone horribly wrong, brother kills brother. And that’s not the end of it. The human story is one of contagious rivalry spreading like a virus from one to another.[2] To the extent that Original Sin makes sense to me, it makes sense this way: left to our own devices and desires, we triangle our way toward death.
But as that beloved Gospel passage appointed for today reminds us, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. John’s gospel spends a great deal of time talking about how Jesus and the Father are One – meaning, that Jesus, fully human and fully divine, never tried to rival his heavenly Father. He came among us so that he might love what God loves -- namely, us -- the world. John 3:16. Left to our own devices and desires, we humans triangle our way toward death. The only hope for us was for the Father to send the Son in order to establish a triangle that doesn't go bad. The uniqueness of the Christian faith lies in the necessity of the incarnation. It took God's love, incarnate in a human being, to establish this divine love triangle in history; and it takes the Holy Spirit to gather us up into it.[3]
In just a few moments, we will baptize little James Phillips with water, in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. His parents and godparents will make promises on his behalf and together, they will affirm and we will re-affirm our faith in this Trinitarian God. Jaz doesn’t know it now, but he has a lifetime of triangling and being triangled ahead of him. It is the human condition, after all. But what we claim in faith is that our own death-dealing triangles are not the end of the story. Through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are swept up into the triangle that gives life, and life eternal.
[1] Consider Dr. Murray Bowen’s Family
Systems Theory; Dr. Stephen Karpman’s work in Drama Triangles
among social scientists; and Rene Girard’s seminal work in
Mimetic Theory as a philosophical/theological construct.
[2] The Rev. Paul Neuchterlein,
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Trinity, June 2006.
[3] Ibid.
