Catherine
Mowry LaCugna explains in her book, God
For Us, that the Trinity is “ultimately a practical doctrine with
radical consequences for Christian life . . . [it] is the specifically
Christian way of speaking about God, [and] what it means to participate in the
life of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit.”
But, what does that
mean for you and me, today?
Well, let’s think about it like this:
FEAR What are the things that human
beings fear/what do you fear? Think to yourself, honestly about it. Look to our
tabloids to understand what most of us fear: Change, difference, otherness, suffering, lack, poverty, death?
I want you to imagine fear as a place.
DESIRE Then think about what you
seek/desire/long for? Deep down inside what are your hopes? Look to the Bible
for these: Peace, stability, love,
freedom, joy?
I want you to imagine desire as a place.
Fear and desire are two places, far away from one another:
How does Christianity tell us that that chasm
between fear and desire is crossed?
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Christianity tells us a participative story about how the
gap between our fear and our desire is bridged by the love of God. And that story is the story of God as Trinity. The Godhead prepares us (OT),
visits us – as the Son, loves us to the
end, and continually enables us, through the Spirit, to move from fear to love,
from chaos to peace, from imprisonment to freedom, from sadness to joy.
The gap between fear
and desire is a gap that is literally traversed and it is traversed by God. For Hetravels, metaphorically, really, particularly and hopefully to us in the Son
and continues to recall us to hope, love and belief through the Spirit.
The Trinity explains to us about a God who creates, communicates and travels to be
with His creation: our God who enters into places of fear, despair and loss to
invite us to return with him to a place of hope, love and joy. He gives us His
Spirit to keep reminding, encouraging and inviting us to return with him.
When we think about God we think about an active,
dynamic, interrelationship that invites, changes and traverses in order to
bring us to where He is.
The
lively Trinitarian God is, to quote philosopher Charles Hartshorne, the “most
moved mover,”. This is not a static, self-subsisting God. This is a God who
rolls up His sleeves and gets really dirty, working away to bring us back to a
place where our true desires are realised.
And how should the nature of our God be reflected
in us, His disciples? We should try and act like God does – joining with
others, working together to bring people into God’s kingdom of peace and joy.
God calls us into community and out of safety.
We enable one another, but do not restrict one another.
We support one another, but realise that the work of truth requires sacrifice and separation.
We realise that God’s love is not just good news for me but good news for others and so we turn outwards.
We take the risk that the Son took; we leave the beauty and security of truth and divinity and enter into places of doubt, fear, hopelessness, insecurity and poverty. There we keep shining the light of the love of God (however hard it may be to hang on to) as that which can liberate all people.
We practice the dynamic, moving, brave, hopeful,
risk-taking love which is revealed to us in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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