Dancing with God

Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity

A sermon preached at St Ninian’s, Prestwick on Trinity Sunday 2019

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

John 16:12-15

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

That passage from Romans - we only read the first 5 verses, reminds me of so many sermons I heard as I was growing up. Filled with big, audacious, theological words.

Of course I didn’t understand them then - and I didn’t know what audacious meant.

But I loved the sound of them - and,  mostly, the preachers were charismatic enough, to keep my attention.

I’d love to tell you that all these years later, I have them sussed.

But that’s simply not the case.

But - what I did grasp as a child, and hold fast with now - is that, as we read there,  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Even as a child I knew myself loved by God and compelled, because of that love and in the power of God’s spirit to share that love.

In the words of the song:

God’s Spirit is in my heart

He has called me and set me apart

This is what I have to do

What I have to do

He sent me to give the Good News to the poor,

Tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more,

Tell blind people that they can see,

And set the downtrodden free

And go tell everyone the news that the Kingdom of God has come,

Go tell everyone the news that God’s kingdom has come

Last week we celebrated Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today we celebrate the Trinity, God 3 and 1.

And I’m glad of those words of Jesus in our gospel reading - 

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth;

The doctrines of the church are hard to explain. The neat formulas and creeds and confessions drawn up by scholars in the early centuries and that we still adhere to today are clunky and dense - completely at odds with the liberating Spirit of God.

Our creeds and confessions and doctrines often inhibit rather than bring freedom and clarity.

They exclude and restrict.

But time after time, as a church, we have demonstrated that we’d rather have order than allow the Spirit to wreak havoc.

We’d rather keep things neat and tidy than let the Spirit have her way, blowing through our sanctuaries, upsetting our complacency, ruffling feathers and upending rules.

We prefer control to unpredictability.

Yet our God is an unpredictable God - who loves and loves and loves again, against all the odds.

And invites us to do the same, by pouring love into our hearts and giving us the Holy Spirit.

So, this Trinity Sunday, rather than even attempting to explain any doctrine or defend any creed, let me share with you this picture of God who is three and one, whose spirit is in our hearts, a picture that I have fashioned in words:

In the beginning

God gathered God’s self together

to create the universe

Fashioning with goodness the sky

with its galaxies and constellations

its suns and moons

its  light and darkness.

And there was some fun and mischief along the way

as God messed about with incredible light shows

and sent the planets into orbit

and played around with tides and seasons 

and day and night.

And then God created the earth

with its mountains and valleys

its oceans and streams

its continents separated by vast seas and deserts

its forests and ice caps

and plains of fertile land.

And God enjoyed attending to detail - 

the bumps and the curves

the flow from one landscape to the next

the separation of water from land

and earth from sky.

And God loved that beautiful world and wanted to share it.

So God created animals

For the hills and the plains

for the sky and the sea

for above and below the earth.

Each with a place and, largely, a purpose.

And then, with a flourish, 

involving dust and breath,

God created human beings

who would care for all of creation

for all that God had made

and who would be co- workers with God 

in nurturing and sustaining creation.

God saw that it was good and delighted in all of creation.

As it was in the beginning, so it is now.

God delights in us.

Desiring nothing more than relationship 

Inviting us to be part of

the divine dance

The dance of Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer

God invites us to be caught up

in the mystery that is God...

Instead, we spend our time 

trying to unravel that mystery

We tie ourselves in knots

instead of enjoying the different kind of knowing

that is offered by God

We distance ourselves

rather than entering into relationship

We ponder how we can change the world

when God’s invitation is simply to dance....

In that dance we discover compassion

that moves us to care for creation.

In that dance we discover anger

that fuels us to root out injustice.

And, in that dance

we discover freedom

made up of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, 

Faithfulness, Gentleness, 

the fruits of God-control,

the elements of the dance

that sustain the world.

God’s laughter and delight 

and tears and compassion 

form the rhythm that draws us in

and sends us out 

to dance.

May we find ourselves caught up in the rhythm today, dancing with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.