This weekend, we celebrate the Holy Trinity. We give thanks for the presence of a creating, redeeming, and sustaining God. We baptize in the name of this Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is how the early church sought to describe their experience of God. When we confess a Triune God, we are naming a mystery and celebrating a relational God. In the hymn, “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity,” Richard Leach tries to capture the energy of the Trinity in the first stanza of the hymn: “the universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.” Poets and hymn writers probably come closest to naming the relational mystery of the Trinity. As for theologians, Martin Buber, one of the authors we explored this week during the nine day retreat in The Great Search, comes the closest to naming what we are about on Holy Trinity weekend: “’The Thou-urge in us can never be erased,’ he (Buber) said, and no matter how far things have gone awry, ‘the buried relational power,’ in us can rise again. Redemption, or what he also called ‘the restoration of betweenness,’ is about returning to the relationship” (John Philip Newell, 65). As for us, as we return to the deeply relational mystery of our life with God and with one another, we join the ancient dance. It is a dance that has true power to restore the betweenness of life, in love and hope. Yours in Christ Jesus, Pastor Peter
