What We Mean When We Say GOD
Holy Trinity Sunday | May 30, 2021
-God the Father-
Genesis 1:26-27
No doubt, Mac was shocked when he first encountered God at the shack where his daughter had previously been killed. The Shack—a rundown, abandoned, dark, cold little building had been transformed. Filled with flowers and warmth, hope and love. It was a place for a family to dwell, not a girl to die. He had been pondering how to address God when he got there. “Should he call him ‘Father,’ or ‘Almighty One,’ or perhaps ‘Mr. God,’ and would it be best if he fell down and worshiped?”
Before he could even knock, “the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large, beaming African-American woman.” She embraced him. She smelled like “flowers with overtones of gardenia and jasmine, unmistakably his mother’s perfume that he kept hidden away.” She “stood with her arms outstretched as if they were the very arms of his mother.”[1]
I wonder, had he encountered God in another time and at another place, who would God have reminded him of then? And there? Here, in this place, in this redeemed shack, he needed his mother. But he needed more than his mother. He needed God.
Think of the most beautiful sunset or the most amazing experience you’ve ever had, and try to put that into words. You can’t. Not in a way that can bring someone else into it with you—to see what you see and feel what you feel. You can’t take a picture of fireworks and have them look and feel just as if you’re there. Language and imagery only goes so far—especially when we talk about the mystery of God.
Unfortunately, what we usually fall back on is imagining God in human terms. Gender. Disposition. Character. We imagine God can’t possibly love someone like me…or like them. We imagine God MUST be powerful—and we attribute powerful qualities to God. The kind of power the world has acknowledged for centuries—male, older (and therefore, wiser), bearded, strong, judging the people of the world. We refer to God as ‘the man upstairs.’ And nothing about that phrase holds any truth.
Because God isn’t a man. God isn’t a woman. God is God. God isn’t upstairs or up there or out there. God is here. With us. Within us. Within everything around us. God chooses to be near. To hold us. To weep with us and laugh with us. God chooses us when even we, ourselves, cannot.
Language matters. And the language we use evokes images. And the images we create tap into feelings. When we say, “Our Father,” some people cringe. They cringe because the image of a father is anything but godly. We sang, “Mothering God,” and some people cringe because they’ve been taught that women are weak or are incapable of bearing the image of God.
But that’s not what the poet in Genesis says. God said, “Let us make humankind in OUR image.” And God made male and female. God made humanity, in ALL of its diversity. In the image of the diverse and ever-flowing God, God created us. Beautifully diverse. Just as unable as God to be placed in a box, sorted, filed, and defined. Look at the beautiful faces of the world, and you’ll see God in every one of them. Familiar—and yet mysterious.
-God the Son-
John 1:1-5
“The Universal Christ” by Richard Rohr
Just like the very first moment,
When time and space exploded into being,
My life, just as it is right now,
is a perfect expression of Divine Love.
--Every dark night, every sunrise,
every back step, every happiness.
Like the stars, the
moon, the Earth, the trees
The oceans, the creatures,
and all human beings past, present, and future
--Everything visible, without exception,
is the outpouring of God.
The first cries of a newborn, Skyscrapers at night, The memory of a kiss, Blooming wildflowers after a forest fire, A cup of coffee, rice and beans, The quiet hum of a washing machine, Dancing barefoot, Patterns on the wings of butterflies, The gifts of healing passed down from my ancestors, The sound of a drum, and the hands that strike it.
In all of creation, there
is a unifying heartbeat
One word for it is Christ
It includes everyone, excludes no one.
Christ is not Jesus's last name,
but the blueprint for all of reality,
For the Big Bang and everything after.
Christ is wherever ordinary
matter and spirit meet.
Christ is wherever the
Divine unites with the human.
Jesus broke bread, and said, "This is my body."
He lifted a cup, and said, "This is my blood."
God loves things by becoming them.
By taking on physicality, flesh, tears, blood
The body of Christ is not somewhere out there,
It's in you.
It's in me.
Here and now.
Christ in the high school student afraid to go back to school; Christ in the heart of a woman marching for change; Christ in the gay couple searching for a church; Christ in the inmate alone in her cell; Christ in the immigrant family waiting under a blue tarp; Christ in the soldier
a long way from home; Christ in the one who hears voices, diagnosed with mental illness; Christ in the single mother-to-be; Christ in the black father teaching his young son about race; Christ in whatever holds quarks together.
To be a Christian
Is to see Christ in every thing.
"Incarnation is the oldest Christian story. Through Christ God is pouring God's self into all of creation. To be a Christian, then, is to see Christ in every one and every thing."
-God the Holy Spirit-
John 3:7-8; Romans 8:26-27
The Spirit is utterly exasperating. Just as God doesn’t stay in the little white, male box we try to put around God, the Spirit doesn’t let us keep the safe little box we prefer to stay in, ourselves. Instead, she blows the box away—blows us out into the world—blows us into places we’d rather not be—blows us into ways of thinking that we have resisted for years, decades, centuries. The Spirit refuses to let us stay stuck in our prejudices, no matter how hard we dig in our heels. As soon as we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives, she drives us into the wilderness where we are faced with the temptations of privilege, power, and prestige.
The Spirit can be as destructive to our constructs of hierarchy and righteousness as a tornado to a concrete building.
In the book, The Shack, the Spirit is described as a slight Asian woman. She is wispy, hard to capture in your vision—like a star that can only be seen when you look slightly away from it but never when looking right at it. But don’t let the description fool you. The Divine Spirit of God is a force to be reckoned with—and probably the most disturbing of the three persons of the Trinity, when we give her any thought, at all.
The Spirit is the fire behind protests for equality. The Spirit is the water that soothes the heart with God’s tender love. The Spirit is the restless wind that cannot be captured or tamed. The Spirit is the fuel that gives us breath and moves us from the safety of our congregations into a dangerous world. The Spirit opens our eyes to see God’s love being poured out on this world—including and especially those who drive us crazy or drive us into hiding. The Spirit is the force of creativity—for both hope and new life, as well as science, technology, and art.
She does not respect social boundaries but moves us to put an end to them. And in that, the Spirit is dangerous—dangerous to patriarchy, to white supremacy, to societal distinctions, and to other forms of enslavement.
Therefore…we cannot receive the Spirit’s warmth without also risking a wildfire. We cannot wash ourselves in the water without risking a deluge or a tidal wave. The Spirit will not breathe life into us without also blowing us into wilderness places. This is the challenge of our faith—that through the Spirit, God breaks apart everything we know and all that we find safe so that we can be transformed. Changed. Re-born.
And the whole point of the Triune God is that we can’t just take part and leave the rest. God is all or nothing. We can’t celebrate Jesus’ resurrection without also being lit by the Spirit and sent into the world. We can’t simply ponder the Spirit’s movement without honoring God’s holy and beloved creation. We can’t love God without loving neighbor. We can’t have God for ourselves and think we’ve done anything more than create God in our image. The Trinity is the corrective to individualism—moving us to consider more than ourselves and our own.
This is why Trinity matters. It’s why relationship matters. And it’s why love wins. Every time.
Pastor Tobi White
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
[1] Young, William P., “The Shack,” Windblown Media, 2008, pg. 81 (kindlebook).
