 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Monday, June 13, 2022 More about TrinityInternal Diversity within the one God   Trinity Sunday homily June 12, 2022 If you have external diversity in your life, you’re a step ahead of most Americans already. If you have close friends who are atheists, or who are Jewish or Muslim, friends with whom you can discuss your differences and your commonalities and appreciate both, you are richer than anyone who doesn’t. If you have in your circles of friends persons whose first language is not English, recent immigrants, people who are different from you ethnically or racially, whose experiences are not yours, with whom you can have honest conversations about race in America – you’re in a good place. You can see where I’m going here, I hope. Life is richer when you include in your circles friends who are different in levels of education, income, and abilities; when you have friends who live in wealth and those who experience poverty, those who love math and those who still can’t manage the multiplication tables as adults. Life is better when you hear the stories of people who are not like you, and when you can relax, set down your defenses or certainties, and not demand or expect anyone to be whatever you think you are. But that’s just the beginning. As those different lives and experiences take root in your consciousness, you will hopefully begin to discover something else. What you may find, if you haven’t already, is that your interior life is also becoming more diverse. You discover that embracing those external differences in your relationships have crept into your own mind and soul, shaken loose some assumptions, and that you are no longer consistently one thing – but many. This can be unsettling to you – and to others you love. But if you can hang in long enough without rejecting those apparent contradictions and realizations, you will also notice that you begin to see patterns of unexpected unity in the very midst of such extraordinary diversity. You notice that each difference is somehow dependent on the others, connected to all of them, and that somehow they are one.You are still yourself – but “yourself” is more diverse than you thought. I hope that this happens to you, or has, and that you love it. I hope that there is a kind of internal dance going on within you all the time – seeking and refocusing and learning and, surprisingly, expanding your joy.And this is true within God’s own self. John of Damascus in the 8th century added that this means that the three persons of the Trinity “are made one, not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other and that they have their being in each other without dissolving into a single identity.” In other words, there is within God, both mutual relationship and mutual shared being. God is one – and within God’s being there are relationships between persons who live in the deepest and dependent unity. Neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit can exist apart from the others. They are only themselves because they are One. And that is the best we can do. It is all metaphor. And all reality. And words aren’t adequate to do more than suggest what God is in God’s own self. God is God and we are not. But our own internal diversity, if we dare to live within it, can mirror that mystery in a small way and help to illuminate it for us. For example, I recognize that I am myself, simultaneously, more than one person. I am a mother. But I am also the daughter of my own mother. And I am also my sister’s sister. And believe me, those three persons co-exist within me; they are even dependent upon each other, but they are not identical. I am a Christian, sometimes mostly Catholic, sometimes more Protestant, a mixed bag; but on Friday night I am also Jewish. When I am in Haiti I am entirely and ordinarily Haitian; but when I am in Bolivar I am just plain white-bread American. It’s all true. I am a whole community within myself. And yet – I am still just Cathy. Sometimes Christians and other religious persons are uneasy with even the idea of internal diversity. They see it as dangerous to faith. We have sometimes been urged or required to think and believe in one way: the same way as everyone else in our “group.” Internal differences and apparent contradictions can be seen as heretical, dangerous, and even as evidence of sin. So for many, the faith journey is a long process of denying that deep internal diversity – a diversity they know in their bones. Sometimes when people experience those contradictions, they feel unable to remain believers, and simply walk away. Others remain, but live uneasily. They hide their internal contradictions and stay uncomfortable and awkward and feeling half guilty. And that Christian rejection of internal differences, conscious or unconscious, has made it harder to love the Trinity, except as a dry dogma. And dry dogma makes little sense, and worse, it makes no difference to anyone. Episcopalians are naturally equipped by our own history and even the words of our Prayer Book and our worship to do it if we choose. We know we are not one single thing. Our obvious external diversity is rich. But it is when we each dare to embrace our own internal diversity: to look at it, to accept it, to expand it, and to love it without fear, that we will also come to love the Trinity. Then we will see that dance within God’s own self as a model and mirror of our own internal diversity and rejoice in it. And that is when we can live and love as gladly and freely and as un-defensively as God does, because we will be able to see that our own internal diversity is a reflection of God’s – that we are truly made in God’s own image. |
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