"Is God Married?" given May 27

Quite a few years ago now, I found myself engaged in a bit of Platonic dialogue--question and answer with a seven-year old Theologians. Seven-year old Theologians are the best kind, because the always approach the ultimate questions of life with such open honesty and unswerving logic. Her mom and future step-dad were in my office for a pre-nuptial conference, and they hadn’t been able to get a sitter. In the middle of what must have been to her, a rather boring adult conversation, she suddenly asked me:

"Was Jesus married?" A reasonable question in the circumstances, if you think about it, So I explained to her that there is nothing in the Bible about Jesus having a wife, but on the other hand, there is also nothing in the Bible about Jesus' life before he began his ministry.

So, it's possible that Jesus might have been married at one time. Maybe his wife died before he started his career as a traveling preacher. It doesn't really affect our faith one way or the other, as far as I'm concerned. But it is something that's kind of fun to wonder about. More than one author has made a fistful of money writing “what if” novels about that very topic.

Then, I returned to my conversation with her parents. But a couple of minutes later, she tossed me another one. "Is God married?" That one stopped me. It would have been easy to say, "No sweetheart, God isn't married."

After all, who would God marry? God is the Creator of the Universes, the Maker of humanity and the earth and all that is in it. Who is God going to marry?

But as it happened, that very day, I had been doing considerable reading and thinking about the nature of the Holy Trinity--as it happened it was the week before Trinity Sunday and I had been working on my sermon. Frankly, in the light of all that reflection, I just couldn't give her a simple, straightforward answer. So I got cute. I said,

"Tell your folks to come to church this Sunday and I'll answer that question in my sermon." That got me off the hook that evening. But her parents must have seen through my cunning plan, because they didn't show up that Trinity Sunday. (They did eventually join that church, however.)

Here it is Trinity Sunday, umpteen years later. And here I am, back on the spot once again. Trinity Sunday, you see, is the one Sunday in the church year when we preachers are not only allowed, but positively expected to wax theological, without having to even attempt to relate our message to the everyday concerns of you folks in the pews.

Today, you and I are invited to contemplate the Eternal and yet dynamic nature of our God. This is the one Sunday in which the church encourages us in song and liturgy and sermon to stretch our minds, and wrestle with the mystery beyond, the mystery within and the mystery around us.

That imperative raises a point for me. Is the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity then, no more than an intellectual exercise? Is it just a trick question that a bored child idly asks the preacher just to see what he'll say? Or is it one of those tests of orthodoxy that more and more believers are using to weed out those ministers and theologians that are suspected of having humanistic tendencies? Or worse--of being liberals? Is the Doctrine of the Trinity a meaningless intellectual exercise, or is it central to our faith?

As one preacher put it, is the Trinity an intellectual toy for Theologians, or a joy for believers. I want to suggest that the Trinity is important in your and my lives as people of faith. Not because we're going to have to pass a written essay exam on it in order to get through the Pearly Gates. But because, without the Trinity, the life of faith wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

I remember all the sound and fury a few decades and a half ago over an obscure theological conference in which some women theologians attempted to explore alternative non-patriarchal images of who and what God is-- especially through use of the Biblical metaphor of Sophia--God's Holy Wisdom. Then some other, more conservative folks heard about it and raised quite a ruckus. Ultimately the argument got so heated it was featured on Nightline. (Pushing aside the Iranian Hostage Crisis for one night, at least.) As a result, for one half hour we heard the Doctrine of the Trinity being debated on ABC Network News—with Ted Koppel refereeing. That must have been a first.

The church of Jesus Christ has historically affirmed the Trinity. From our Jewish roots, we know there is but one God. The greatest gift to humanity from the Jewish faith and people—monotheism.

"Hear O Israel, the Lord is One." Is one of the most ancient and profound affirmations of that tradition. But what distinguishes us as Christians is the additional affirmation found in this morning's Gospel Reading. "God so loved the world, that God gave the only begotten Son, that whoever believed in the Son, should not perish, but should have everlasting life." That was the first Bible verse i ever had to memorize. Probably it was the first one many of you had to memorize as well.

And after Jesus, the Son returned to the God who sent Him, Jesus' love remained with his friends and disciples and empowered them to continue His ministry--through the presence in their hearts of God's own Holy Spirit. That's the Christian faith. That's the Doctrine of the Trinity in a nutshell.

Unless you and I can to some degree accept and affirm—or at least continue to wrestle with that, we're worshipping in the wrong place. If we can only affirm that Jesus was another prophet, solidly grounded in the faith of Israel. who lent some light on the traditions, we need to be in attendance at the nearest synagogue. I can't exactly direct you to one, but. I’m sure there must be some around.

On the other hand, if we can only affirm that Jesus, if he really existed was probably a nice man and wise teacher who taught folks some neat ideas and ended up executed for preaching without a permit by the Romans, then we ought to worshipping in a Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I know some very nice people who attend the one located in Racine.

But, if you and I can affirm that Jesus Christ is the Lord of our lives, if we have chosen to follow the sense of His teachings in our relationships with one another, if we seek and/or have experienced an encouraging, empowering presence that we can only call God's Holy Spirit in our prayers and meditations, then we are Trinitarians. Then we are worshipping in the right place.

In the First Letter of John we're reminded that "God is Love". But, on the human level alone, how does one love without a beloved? On any level, love makes a double demand. Lover and beloved must remain two, even as they seek to become one. Love on the Divine level or on the human, demands different persons. Love is we--you and me--I and Thou.

Whether I am loving God, or my friend, or my spouse, or my child, I never cease to be me. No saint, no mystic, no hermit in the desert, no prophet or dreamer caught up in a vision ever ceased to be his or her own self. When Romeo offered to forsake his name for Juliet, he didn't become Juliet. Love demands identity within the context of union. Martin Buber called it “I and Thou”.

But love on the highest plane will forbid "mine" and "yours". The two, remaining two, still seek to be one. Our one-ness with our beloved is bought by sacrificing our own selfishness.

To love is to need to give. To love is to place the ultimate happiness of the other above your own. To love is to share. To love perfectly then, would be to give and to give until there's nothing left--and to rejoice in the giving--because in that emptying, you would find yourself filled. Only in that way, only then, can two remain two and yet become one.

It is in the Trinity, the love that God has for God's own selves that you and I can see this absolute perfection of love. There are three persons-- God the Creator, God the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. But there is no ego, no separation, no jealousy. The Divine Nature, the perfect love that makes God, God--is present equally in Eternal Parent, Redeeming Son, and Divine Sanctifier. God is an equal exchange of perfect love, reflecting three faces to us.

And that is why the Holy Trinity is the model for all human love. In the Trinity, we can see something of what Jesus was driving at when He told us to "love one another, as I have loved you." Love one another sacrificially, love one another without jealousy or possessiveness, love one another, and in that loving, we will find ourselves coming to know His love.

So you see, when that little girl asked me "Is God married?" she tossed me a hot potato. No, there is no "Mrs. God", who functions as First Lady of Heaven and runs around picking up after all those messy angels. But on the other hand, God does not live or love in solitary splendor.

Our God is community. Our God, though one is also three (and possibly more). God is family, not isolated, nor aloof, haughty or unsociable. Who would want to worship an old grouch of a God like that? No, our God relates, our God loves, our God is One, but also expressed in many ways. Our God is ultimate Unity, in the midst of diversity.

We do not worship that Old Testament man-in-a-white-beard, sitting on a diamond hard throne, blinding as the sun yet cold as ice. Our God is life giving process--not a giant sized middle eastern king. God is Eternal Parent, Faithful Offspring, and their Love--for one another and for us.

If I've been hard on theologians in this sermon, let me give them a word of credit. To be a theologian literally means to be one "who loves knowledge about God." That's not all bad by any means. Theologians have given us a good word as well. They were not content to wrestle with the meaning of the Trinity, with that Divine inter- personal relationship of perfect love. They went a step further and asked the next question. They asked about this Divine life from which we all come, and whose seed and spirit we all carry. "What do these three persons, these three faces of God--what does this three- in-one do?"

And they came up with an answer. As theologians are wont to do, they used a Greek word. But for once it was appropriate. "Epichoresis" --it means "to dance". Isn't that a gorgeous image? The Maker and the Redeemer and the Spirit dancing eternally. Hand-in- hand, three in one, enjoying one another, enjoying their lives together, loving one another. If that image has any truth, any power for us, we their children ought to dance as well.

Not prance around a golden calf. Not boogie at a Rock and Roll concert, nor waltz in a ballroom, or line dance in a honky-tonk. No, the dance that the Trinity calls you and I to is the dance in which men and women, old and young, straight and gay, of all ages, races and cultures enjoy and celebrate their life together. It is a dance of joy and community, a dance without fear or loneliness.

To be able to live our lives in love and joy, to dance to the song of our God we will learn to be like and to be joyful in the Trinity. Though many, we will become one. Though diverse, we will be unified. Though individuals, we yearn for, strive for, pray for, dance for community, without fear or hesitation or judgment or pain of one another.

Only when you and I are engaged in learning to love and live in community does all this make sense. Only after we've begun to love, do we learn how to deepen the love that we have. Only after we see the Trinity as a model for our lives, our love, our growth in community does all this language about persons of the Godhead and faces of the Divine and Mother, Son and Spirit assume a reality in our hearts. Only once we have experience it, will it mean anything.

Once we begin to dance the dance of faith, the Doctrine of the Trinity will become more than an intellectual toy and grow into a well of deep and abiding insight and hope and joy. Then we can answer that little girl's idle question.

"Yes, God is married. God is married eternally to God's own self through the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. God is married to the world, because God loves it so much. God is married to us, because God loves us so much."

In the 1330s Catherine of Sienna, a lay mystic and reformer of the church prayed to the Trinity. Let us pray that prayer now.

"O Eternal Trinity, my sweet love!

You Light, give us light.

You Wisdom, give us wisdom.

You supreme Strength, give us strength.

Today, eternal God, let our cloud be dissipated

so that we may perfectly know and follow your Truth in truth,

with a free and simple heart.” Amen.