Everybody Needs A Place (and has one): Trinity Sunday, 2017

Trinity Sunday, 2017 

“Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

    In the Name of God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

     A few years ago, we went to New York City to take in some theatre and on Sunday, we went to St. Bart’s, in Midtown Manhattan, where I got this mug.  I loved St. Bart’s, and this mug is well-traveled.  I took it in the car with me one time too many as you can see.  On it is what we might call St. Bart’s mission statement: “Everybody needs a place.”

     It doesn’t seem like much of a statement until you think about it---and then it is actually kind of profound.  It might be that the thing that can hurt us most/ is the feeling of not being wanted, of being marginalized.  In a way, it seems sometimes that all of our polarized politics is like an ongoing bar-room brawl--a pushing and shoving match—over who gets to stay/ and who has to go/who makes the rules /and who has to keep them/who gets to have a place at the table? 

      Arthur Brooks, a conservative economist with the American Enterprise Institute, took up this idea a few months ago, in a convincing article titled, “The Dignity Deficit: Reclaiming Americans’ Sense of Purpose.”  In it he addresses the problem of unemployment and poverty in America and targets our/ human need to be needed/ as absolutely necessary to our well-being.  We need to know that we are needed. The folks at St. Bart-in-the-City are right, “Everybody needs a place.” 

     Which is a little like saying everything has a place, right?  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,” and, as a wind from God swept over the face of the waters---God created order from chaos, light from darkness, and everything else we know in Creation—including humanity—and declared it good, “indeed, very good.”  Everything--microbes, mountains, birds, bugs, animals, oceans, fish, plants and people-- came into being/ had a place and belonged. Or said in the present tense, everything has a place and belongs somewhere.

     This is true as far as it goes.  The concept of “place” as we generally think of it, means something more or less fixed.  If you ask me where the microphone is, I’d point to it and say, “Right here.”  If you can’t point to where a thing is, in common parlance, chances are that thing doesn’t exist.  If your teacher asks where your homework is and you say it isn’t anywhere, you have some explaining to do.  Established and embodied as we are in space and time, we have a rather concrete sense of place and of the relationships between places, people and other created things.  We feel the pain of separation from those we love.  We feel powerless when we are too far away from someone or a situation we would like to influence. 

      In a recent book titled, “Spooky Action at a Distance,” physicist George Musser suggests that, at a deeper level, there may be no such thing as place and no such thing as distance.  In quantum physics experiments it can be proven that if you put two particles together in relationship to one another, and then separate them—even a great distance from one another--then manipulate one particle—say turning it this way or that, then the other particle—no matter how far away, will turn the same way.  They behave like a pair of magic coins: if you flip one, each will land on heads or tails— but always on the same side as its partner. They act in a coordinated way even though no force passes through the space between them.  Once having been in relationship, they forever remain entangled and connected somehow.  These tiny quantum particles—transcend space and place to maintain their relationship to one another.   What quantum physics tells us is that relationship and connection is at the heart of reality. 

     Many years ago, as a rookie chaplain-intern, I found myself struggling to find the right words to use in certain situations.  The instructor suggested that I focus less on the right words to use, and more on the relationship itself.   She’d ask, ‘what does the relationship tell you?’  She had to say the same thing different ways a couple of times before I “got it.”  She wasn’t saying, ‘don’t worry about the words,’ she was saying that the relationship—any relationship between two people—was itself a unique, living entity that needs to be accounted for, cared for in itself.  In other words, every relationship is Trinitarian in form.  There is you, and me—and the third one is the relationship between us—which is in itself as alive and dynamic as either one of us.  At the same time, the relationship depends upon each of us for its development and well-being.  Another word for this used by theologians is coinherence or perichoresis, but you don’t need to remember those words. We just need to consent or better yet, embrace living in relationship and remain open and aware that it is happening and we are part of it.

     This is what Jesus is talking about with his friends when---knowing that he would soon be gone from their physical sight— he said, “If you love me, keep my commandment,” which was to love one another as he loved each of them.  Then he said, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”  Because I live, you also will live. //// Spooky action at a distance.

      In her book, “The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three: Discovering the Radical Truth at the Heart of Christianity,” Episcopal priest, writer and retreat leader Cynthia Bourgeault also finds in the Trinity a model and vision of the underlying nature of reality. 

     We are accustomed to thinking in terms of closed binary systems (e.g., light vs. dark, male vs. female, Democrats vs. Republicans, liberals vs conservatives.)  Between these two poles, Bourgeault writes, dominance oscillates, like a pendulum.  But the closed or binary aspect of reality is an illusion--an illusion which denies the underlying quantum and theological reality that we co-inhere with one another/ whether we are aware of it or not.  According to the Law of Three, every conflict contains three forces: affirming, denying, and reconciling.  Most conflicts remain unresolved, however, because that subtle third force, while present, is often unrealized. Why?  Because it is un-developed.  

     Because humans typically choose to take sides in a struggle for dominance again and again, seemingly ad infinitum.  But when we open to the possibility of reconciliation— is opened, something new happens—and it will be the renewing of our relationship with one another in a trinity composed of you and me and God, in a holy dance to which we are all invited over and over again.  

      On this day when we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity, we acknowledge God’s desire that we become one, as God is one.  The reality of our knowing God as Trinity means we can only know God dynamically, as relationship itself.  Relationship is the very heart of God’s Creation, of the sacred quantum reality into which Christ draws us, and promises to stay entangled with us to the end of the age and forever.

      The folks at St. Bart’s in NYC are right of course:  Everybody needs a place.  Everybody needs a place to be and belong.  As Christians, we find our place in the Body of Christ, the Church—whether in midtown Manhattan or Harbert or Benton Harbor, MI, we find our place in Christ, whose place is forever in God and God’s place is within us through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

    Michael Card is a singer and writer of contemporary Christian music from the 80’s, who captures this in the words of song:

We are flesh of his flesh
bone of his bone
his Spirit has brought us
together as one,
though we may be separate
we're one perfect whole
for we are his body
and he is our soul

We are the blessed receivers
of his inexhaustible love
and so it is out of believers
the body of Christ is made of.

Forever we'll have one another
Because we belong to the Lord
And so we belong to each other
And that is our greatest reward.

We are flesh of his flesh
bone of his bone
his Spirit has brought us
together as one.
Though we may be separate
we're one perfect whole
for we are his body
and he is our soul.