2009 Year B: Trinity Sunday God and Community
Amongst preachers, this Sunday has a reputation for being very difficult to preach on. “God as One” is easy. We can relate to the divine awe, grandeur and majesty. We can bow down to such a God. But God as Three, as a community, is a bit difficult. Perhaps because, much as we love and need community, we find making community so difficult and so messy. It is hard to relate our mess and our sense of failure to God. But perhaps if we started the other way round, we might find inspiration in our efforts to relate and bond with other people. Maybe if we recognise ‘the God’ in whose image we have been made, we may be inspired to work through the hard and tough times that make community. Being a community is not something extra that the Father, Son and Spirit do to being God. No, it is actually their very nature to relate to each other, so relationship is the ground of our being. If we are tempted to turn off from people, to do mindless things rather than relate, we need to know that we are then betraying our deepest identity. There are many ways of looking at how the Trinity ‘works’. The one I prefer is that the Father gives of Himself totally to the Son, and the Son, in turn, totally gives back, and that the Spirit is this total self giving Love. If we find that giving ourself deeply to another in relationship is risky, then we are touching a truth that is very real. Giving like that is giving like God, and we don’t know whether we will have a true response back. No human person that we relate to is perfect, we will sometimes experience betrayal and failure, but when we do experience love and trust is return for our love and trust, we need to treasure and nurture such bonds. They are the signs of the divinity in whose image we are made. Also giving like that is fearful because it is such an awesome thing, it is acting like God. It is being prodigal, reckless, dare we say foolishly in love. But for such glory we have been made. So in the midst of the problems and difficulties you have making community in marriage, in family, in parish and local area, in your workplace and with your friends, know that God is with you, delighting in and loving all you efforts to manifest the divine community in our world. There is no better way to preach the Gospel.
Sr Kym Harris OSB |