Chances
are good the prayer book in your pew has never – and I mean EVER – been opened
to page #864. If you pick it up right
now, open to that page, and listen very closely you will hear the sound of the
binding breaking in a brand new place.
What you will find on the page – printed in very small type – is an
ancient 6th century document known as the Athanasian Creed. Written to combat one heresy or another, it
is the first Christian creed to state explicitly the equality of the Three
Persons of the Trinity. Here is some of
what it says:
The catholic
faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither
confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is
one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy
Spirit.
But the
Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory
equal, the majesty coeternal.
Such as the
Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.
The Father
uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated.
The Father
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit
incomprehensible.
The Father
eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal.
And yet they
are not three eternals but one eternal.
As also there
are not three uncreated nor three incomprehensible, but one uncreated and one
incomprehensible.
Perhaps you
will find yourself in agreement with the English writer Dorothy Sayers who said
of this creed, “The whole darn thing is incomprehensible.”
Today is
Trinity Sunday – the one day during the church year when the preacher is
charged with the task of confounding the congregation with an esoteric presentation
of a doctrine beyond comprehension. Or
not! Today I choose not to describe who
God is, but to ponder how God works; how God interacts with all that God has
made, especially with us curious and (at times) contemptuous human beings.
I grew up in a
tradition that held to one degree or another God predestines all things. That
word is used in the bible several times and Scripture is clear that the end God
chooses will come to pass. How else can
this be true, some reason, if God does not control – or preordain – all that
happens? For some time now I have
rejected such thinking in favor of free will – the notion that we can and do
make free choices all of the time. But
how can God’s end be assured if there is no guarantee you or I will play our
parts?
For years I have
resolved this dilemma with the analogy of a chess match. If you sit me down opposite a grand master
and give me the first move, clearly I am free to move whichever piece I
choose. The grand master will
respond. I am free to make whatever
second move I want. We don’t know
exactly how the game will play out, but one thing is sure… the grand master is
going to win.
God, in
relating to us, is like the grand chess master.
We are free to move as we will, but God will counter and in the end the
outcome is certain. I am now beginning
to ponder if this is the right analogy.
It still seems a little too mechanical; too cold and calculated; a
pointless exercise. It lacks playfulness
and finesse. It doesn’t mirror how I
experience life.
Recently I
came across another analogy that has opened up new possibilities. It is put forward by the comedian Tina Fey
who, in her book Bossypants, articulates four basic rules of
improvisational acting – the art form where two or more actors play out a scene
with no predetermined script or plot.
According to
Fey the first rule of improv is “Agree.
Always agree and say yes.”
You are required to agree with whatever your partner is saying. For example, if your partner says, “Freeze, I
have a gun,” do not respond, “That is not a gun. You are pointing your finger at me.” A better response, she says, would be, “The gun
I brought you for Christmas! How dare
you!” Rule #1: Agree. Respect what your partner has created. Be open-minded. Say yes and see where it will take you.
Fey’s second
rule is “don’t only say yes, but yes, and.” Don’t just agree, contribute. If your partner starts a scene by saying “I
can’t believe how hot it is here,” and you respond by saying, “Yeah” there is
nowhere to go. But if you say, “What did
you expect? After all, we are in hell!”
the scene is off and running. Yes, and
requires the actor or actress not to be afraid to add something to the
discussion. It requires them to believe their
initiatives are valuable.
The third rule
is “make statements”. If you
continually ask questions – Who are you?
Why are we here? What is in the
box? – you put all the pressure on your partner to come up with answers. Fey suggests instead of asking “Where are
we?”, you make a statement like, “Here we are in Spain, Dracula.”
Which may not
sound all that great, but it leads to Fey’s fourth rule of improv: “there
are no mistakes”, only opportunities.
Fey says that if she starts out a scene trying to be a police officer
riding a bicycle, but her partner thinks she is a hamster in a hamster wheel,
she becomes a hamster in a hamster wheel.
In improv, she says, there are no mistakes, only beautifully happy
accidents.
Is it possible
that God relates to us in a way similar to how improv actors engage one
another: “yes”, “yes and”, “statement”, and “there are no mistakes, only
opportunities”?
Think about
the story of Jonah. Doesn’t it read like
an improv scene? God starts the scene by
telling Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim God’s judgment on the city. Jonah’s “yes”, and is actually a move to get
on a boat and sail away in the opposite direction. God brings about a storm and the vessel is in
peril. The ship’s crew and passengers
enter the scene. What will they do? They toss Jonah overboard. This might seem like a mistake, but God uses
it as an opportunity. God sends a whale
to swallow Jonah. Now that is a
statement! Three days later the whale
vomits Jonah on to shore and he proceeds to Ninevah. Once there, Jonah makes the statement God
told him to make: repent or be destroyed.
The people of the corrupt city provide a surprising “yes, and”, and
actually repent. The story ends in a
fascinating place with Jonah sulking because the city is not destroyed and God
defending God’s right to forgive.
It is a story
that feels wide open. It could go in any
number of different directions. God, far
from controlling everything in a predetermined fashion, participates in a
dynamic give-and-take with each of the partners in the scene. It is as if God is truly curious to see where
all of it will go.
Let’s look at
today’s first reading from the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The scene is set very quickly. The text tells us it takes place “in the year
that King Uzziah died”, creating a milieu similar to how we might react to the
opening “In the months following 9/11…”
Isaiah makes his opening statement: “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
high and lofty.” God makes the opening “yes”
by appearing to Isaiah in radiance and splendor. Heavenly beings add the “yes, and” with their
worship and words of praise. Isaiah’s
first statement in the scene is a good one: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the
Lord of Hosts.”
How will God
respond? If God says, “What was I
thinking? Of course you are completely
unworthy of me,” the scene will come to a screeching halt.
There are
plenty of other rules to improvisation Tina Fey doesn’t touch on. One of them is this: if you see your
partner in trouble, rescue him.
Don’t let him suffer. Come to his
aid. A seraph comes to Isaiah’s
aid. It flies over to the altar and
picks up a hot coal using a pair of tongs.
This is an interesting act in and of itself, but what happens next is
improvisational genius. The seraph
touches the coal to Isaiah’s mouth and makes a statement. Consider the possibilities: “Keep your mouth
shut in the presence of the Lord God,” or “Burn for your unclean words,” or
“Human words pale in comparison to the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ of heavenly creatures.” Again, every one of these derails the scene. What the seraph says is a classic “yes, and”:
“Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is
blotted out.”
God pushes the
scene forward by asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” A likely answer would have been a
seraph. They are impressive and know how
to get the job done. But the scene draws
to a close with a surprising twist. Isaiah
has the final “yes, and”: “Here I am; send me!”
This
is much how I experience God in my own life and particularly in and through the
ministry of this church. God engages us
more and more as we are willing to engage God.
Every development leads to new possibilities. The church feels alive when we view every new
thing as an opportunity even as we treasure all that has stood the test of
time. We are not cogs in some
mechanistic game preset and determined by God.
Rather, we are active participants whose contributions either further
the cause or end the discussion. We
either advance the work of the kingdom in our own interesting ways or we put it
on hold by disengaging from the improvisation God has started.
On
this day that we celebrate the incomprehensible Trinity let me put forward a
simple question: What will you add to the scene?
