Trinity Sunday 2024

For this community
of Divine Providence
Trinity Sunday is known as Providence Sunday.

Providence is just one
of God’s many names.
And like any descriptor for God,
it says some things about God,
but not every thing.
God is truly beyond all names.

When we call God
by the name of Providence
we are speaking to the One
who designed,
governs
and sustains the universe.

This God of Providence
is the God of possibilities
who lovingly lures us
yet always
allows us freedom of choice.

Just as God is beyond all names,
God is also beyond
all images or analogies.

For centuries,
theologians have attempted
to explain and/or describe
the trinity.
Most explanations fall short.

However, one analogy
from the early church is particularly intriguing.

It is called perichoresis (perry-ko-ray-sis)
a particular kind of dance
Involving at least three dancers
They start to go in circles,
weaving in and out
in a pattern of motion.
They make room for each other,
move in and through one another,
dance with one another,
in such a way that creates a mutual indwelling
while still maintaining space
for each individually.

They start to go
faster and faster and faster,
all the while staying
in perfect rhythm
and in sync with each other.
Eventually,
they are dancing so quickly
(yet so effortlessly)
that as you look at them,
it just becomes a blur.
Their individual identities
part of a larger dance.

(Let’s listen to that music for just a few minutes)

https://youtu.be/cxeZbKigpd4?si=LXn4RG9CXSIlN5Dq

The early church fathers
and mothers
looked at that dance (perichoresis)
and said,
“That’s what the Trinity is like.”
It’s a harmonious relationship
in which there is
mutual giving and receiving,
Interconnectedness
and interdependence
This relationship is called love,
and it’s what the Trinity
is all about.
The perichoresis is
the dance of love.

Here is the wonderful
amazing
exhilarating
Incomprehensible truth—

We are made
in the image and likeness
of that same divine dance troup—
We are made in the image and likeness of the Trinity,
We are made in the image and likeness of Providence

We are chosen
to mirror the life of the Trinity, which is the dance of love.
The dance of love
is not just about Providence,
it is about us.

In that dance,
none of us are wallflowers
Rather,
we are chosen dance partners with Providence.
As dance partners
we are called,
we are chosen
to make God‘s providence visible
by our providential presence,
by our providential advocacy.

This is what we celebrate on Providence, Sunday,

Now is the time to join the dance.