“Lover, Beloved, the Love”
Guest Homilist: Kelsey Davis
Good morning.
First, for all who are close to your fathers, or have lost your father, or are in some complicated relationship with your father—I hope that today is what you need it to be. For the fathers and father figures in the room- Happy Father’s Day.
Heather and I will be sending our homemade cards a little late this year. We’ve just emerged from the wilderness of Yosemite. Yosemite is our sacred place, where we go to have our souls refreshed, vision sharpened, and hearts aligned. It is where we get to delight in butterflies and become friends with all that is natural.
An image that I have to share with you, because it was a gift to me, is this:
When we walked into Yosemite Valley at the Merced River, you could hear the rushing power of the river. The rangers told us that the snow melt this year is incredible, so all the water levels are high and powerful. As we approached the Merced, you could hear the rushing water smashing against granite rocks. And more than hear its power, you could feelthe mist of the river on your skin yards away. We stood on a bridge, rushing river underneath our feet, and were struck still by the power of the river. For several hours, we traced the river to its origin.
The origin of this mighty water was a tiny snow melt at the summit of Half Dome. The melt was almost so subtle and insignificant, it would be easy to miss. But that very trickle, mashed up with a hundred other trickles, combines to become the mighty river in the valley below.
We are interrelated, aren’t we?
What if all of our loving actions, the small quiet moments, are the trickle that make the mighty river transforming our world?
We celebrated our third wedding anniversary summiting Half Dome. A lot happened last week within and between us; something shifted in our relationship through sharing a wild, messy experience together…our love deepened for each other. I share this because I believe that Trinity Sunday, the first week of Pentecost, is about relationality.
Trinity Sunday is about recalling the interrelatedness of all things and our deep need for each other. The Good news is that we don’t have to go at life alone.
The Trinity is the foundation from which Christian life springs forth. Though it is doctrine, a teaching of our tradition, it is something that is not meant to go through our heads, but be experienced through our hearts.
The dynamics of the Trinity are the bedrock for the Way of Love of the Jesus Movement:
Loving, Life-Giving, Liberating—these are the Trinitarian qualities that give shape to our Christian life.
The Trinity is the icon, the lens, by which we learn who we areand how we are to liveas Christians.
We are Lovers, Life-Givers, Liberators.
For centuries, theologians have been trying to work out how God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are interrelated, separate persons but of the same substance. Like the snow melt, water, and mist—how could these three be distinct, and yet one at the same time?
There are metaphors upon metaphors that are used to make sense of the Trinity. One of my favorite attempts is from Saint Augustine who said the Trinity could be understood as this:
The Lover, the Beloved, and the Love.
The Lover, the Beloved, and the Love.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
But the Trinity is not a problem to be solved—it is a mystical possibility to be experienced.
What would happen within us and through us, if we started to experience the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and the Love?
The Proverb that we have heard this morning is sometimes titled Wisdom Calling. The writer tells us that wisdom calls to us, raising her voice at crossroads and besides the gates in front of town. In each portal, grocery store, street corner, and mundane moment, wisdom—or love—
is whispering to us.
The Proverb tells us that Wisdom, or the Love, is calling to all that live—to you, to us, to the birds, and to the creatures of the sea…Love is calling to you.
Where do you hear her voice?
The Proverb goes on that to say that Wisdom was in the beginning of all things with the Lover, co-working, co-creating and breathing life into all things.
Love stretches beyond, above, within, and through all of this. We are enveloped and cannot escape it.
And not only are we enveloped, but the Love says that she delights in the inhabited world—she is delighting in all that is—and delighting in the human race—delighting in you.
Do you believe that God is delighting in you?
Sometimes I wonder, if we believed that God delighted in us, just as we are, how we might be releasedto delight in one another. Consider that.
What if we allowed for mutual delight in each other—
might we become one, unified in our diversity, celebrating each other with joy and love?
might we see healing that maybe feels a bit like heaven on earth?
There is an image of this delight that I love. The Russian Artist Andrey Rooblave wrote an icon of the Trinity in the 15thcentury. The icon is one of the most famous depictions of the Trinity. Three figures are seated around a table, slightly leaning into one another.
If you gaze at the icon long enough, you start to realize that three persons leaning into one another creates a circular movement. There is no circle around them, rather it is their action of leaning into one another that creates the circular, mutual bond between them.
They are taking delight in one another, in full communion, giving and sharing with openness and love.
What would happen to our communities, to our society, if our economy was based on this concept of leaning into one another, delighting, and sharing freely?
And the Trinity teaches us that it is not just about us, here in this space. The relationality between the Lover, Beloved, and the Love is dynamic. John’s Jesus tells us that even he had more to say to the disciples, to us here at Calvary—something is and will always be emerging. So, this leaning in is about leaning into each other in here, and to the God on the move out there.
Fr. Richard Rohr has said that the nature of the Trinity is like “a rubber band that expands and contracts. It moves out and it pulls back in, like inhaling and exhaling.”
So, as you breathe,
remember
you were made to expand
and to be gathered,
to share,
and to be delighted in.
you were made,
to be in community,
with all living things,
all living things.
you were made
to be one with the God that loves you.
The Trinity is inviting us,
to breathe,
and lean in because,
Love is everywhere calling to us.
Amen.
Andrei Rublev, Trinity, 1411 or 1425-27, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Fr. Richard Rohr, “The Nature of Being: Trinity Week 1.” Wednesday March 1, 2017. Center for Action and Contemplation.
Saint Augustine. On the Trinity (Book IX).
Margaret Manning Shull. “Love, Lover, and Beloved.” https://www.rzim.org/read/a-slice-of-infinity/love-lover-and-beloved.
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