The Wisdom Dance: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday Year C

 

I had a Zoom call with a couple of my friends from seminary. All of us are preaching this weekend. (OK, I preach every weekend, but that's beside the point). It was Wednesday evening. The other two had put some thought into how to address the Trinity. They had some wonderful ideas based on the Gospel lesson from John. Finally, they turned to me to find out what I was thinking. 

"Well..." I smiled, "You two are way ahead of me!" I was embarrassed to admit it, but I got as far as reading the lessons assigned and getting a sense of which one was speaking to me. But outlines? Thoughts? Coherency? The Trinity? I just couldn't wrap my mind around any of it. The most I could say was I was thinking about the readings concerning Wisdom and where she fit into the scheme of the Trinity. 

I got off the call and thought, "I guess I better get to work on my sermon." 

And so Thursday I read through the lessons again. And then saw clients for massage, went to Faust rehearsal, and watched the opening of the January 6th Commission's bringing forth the truth about what happened when an angry MAGA mob attempted to overthrow the government because they couldn't accept the election results. 

Friday, I had every intention of putting my nose to the grindstone...or at least fingers to the keyboard. And I did. 

But I also needed to pick up my massage sheets at the laundromat, and then there was a frantic phone call for me to meet some workers at the Mickee Faust Clubhouse who were there to fix a broken window. Eventually, I did sit down and spent about four and half hours considering commentaries on Proverbs 8, weighing the cultural upheaval we're living in, thinking about January 6th and the green converse sneakers of a child victim in the Uvalde shooting...and... and...and then starting to write. 

By the time I got to the end of my initial draft, I hated it. 

I considered texting my friends to express my dismay at my sermon. Instead, I went to bed and figured I would let sleep do its work on me. 

When I woke up Saturday and got back in front of the computer... reading aloud what I had written ...I realized that my biggest problem was a misplaced and underdeveloped paragraph. Thank God for cut and paste.  

Below is the final product.

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Prayer: God of mercy, make us wise with your foolish love. God of salvation, open our eyes again to see your grace. God of all who seek to follow, guide us in your faithful way. Amen. (Daily Prayer for All Seasons, 88).

It’s typical that this Sunday…Trinity Sunday…is a time when the rector, or vicar, or priest-in-charge of a parish does a hand off on the sermon.

They have their deacon…or better yet…a seminarian…anxious to preach...and they let that person handle the doctrine of the Trinity.

But Karyl and Jim Miller have conveniently gone away for the summer.

And we don’t have a seminarian….so…. (fill in the name of the Eucharistic Minister)…

I won’t be going into a treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity.

To do that always leads the preacher into pitfalls and ditches that they can’t ever dig themselves out of.

I’ve heard probably about a dozen analogies for the Trinity and like with so many things that are matters of faith…the words, words, words, just don’t hold up.

In my experience, and maybe in yours, to “understand” the Trinity is not an intellectual exercise. It’s a lived feeling.

And so how do we come to then “comprehend” that experience…and take it in?

I think this is when it’s a good time to look back at our first reading from this morning and spend some time with Lady Wisdom.

If we think back to last week’s event of Pentecost…the disciples found themselves lit up inside with a fire that poured out of their mouths…praising God in every language imaginable at that time. The Spirit…the promised Advocate…blew into the room like a mighty wind to light the flames in these folks.

With this reading…we are getting something of a personification of that fire.

It’s a feminine energy…which existed from the beginning with God.  She’s a creative energy. She’s a master worker. And she’s crying out from the heights: live!  Her voice echoes from this corner and to the town gates all the way over to that crossroad…to listen. Listen to her voice so that all may live.

In Greek…they call her Sophia. 

In Hebrew…she is Shechinah.

In English…we call her the Holy Spirit.

I’m kind of sorry the reading cuts out a whole bunch of verses in chapter eight that have a lot to say to us in this fractured time we’re living in this country. I’ll give you just a few of the missing points:  

Wisdom utters truth.

Wisdom isn’t going to feed us with twisted or crooked things.

Wisdom calls on us to gain knowledge rather than jewels and choice gold.

Those are just some of the good parts that are left out of our reading. I imagine those who put together our lectionary texts probably were thinking strictly about the world’s creation and wanted us to get us to the poetry of verses 22 through 31.

But those other parts are worth us having in our heads, too, as we think about the role Wisdom plays into our way of knowing this Triune God.

It’s fascinating to me to consider Wisdom’s role in the Trinity.

We hear of her presence when there were no depths, no springs abounding with waters and mountains…and how she was “brought forth” before the beginning of the earth.

Was she born? Did she pre-exist?

She certainly seems to have an intimate relationship with God.

It all sounds very similar to the opening of John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2).

He was in the beginning with God. He…the Word.

But then we have Proverbs: She was created in the beginning of God’s work, the first of his acts long ago (Prov.8:22). So she was in on the beginning of creation as well.

The Word and Wisdom were both with and in God in the beginning.

As I’m thinking about this He and She which really becomes a They/Them/Theirs of the Trinity…I’m imagining a kind of dance…and an intimate relationship where the three are involved and intertwined and whirling and spinning with such fluidity and ease that we can hardly tell which one is leading and yet knowing that they’re all following each other in the same dance steps.

As one commentator noted, the Hebrew phrase that translates “brought forth” has a root which also means “whirl or dance.” And when you’re dancing with a partner… it’s a relationship. One person is moving forward…the other is mirroring those steps moving backward. One is leading…the other following. The fluidity of the movement…whether waltzing or two-stepping or free-forming it in some way…becomes an effortless flow around the dance floor.

I remember going out one night into DC early in my seminary career.

Some friends from Tallahassee had been hyping up this band to me called The Bumper Jacksons. They were playing a gig in the basement of one of the city’s barbecue restaurants.

Their music was mix of Mardi Gras jazz meets Appalachian banjo Americana. And before long, there were probably 40 or 50 people, swinging and twirling as the band played on.

It was amazing. And joyful in the way that dance ought to be.

That’s the sort of revolving and raucously joyous relationship I can imagine happening between the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit…as they go about creating, redeeming and sustaining us.

Their infectious and intermingled happiness spins its way into our hearts and minds when we think about those parts of creation that bring us delight.

The way a baby looks with wonder and curiosity at their parents. Or the satisfaction and anticipation that comes when picking that first ripe tomato off the plant you’ve been tending to so carefully.

These are the moments when we dare to bring ourselves out on the dance floor.

When we participate in the thrill of creation, we might find ourselves swept off our feet into the dance …being led by the Spirit…following Jesus…keeping up with this tango of God. The way we experience the Trinity can sometimes depend on which person of the Trinity we feel ourselves dancing with at the moment.

That’s what I mean by it being more about an experience than all the words of strained metaphors.

The key to it is that we must feel free enough and allow ourselves to dance…and not try to take over the lead.

That seems to be the Achilles’ heel…or that second left foot… that keeps tripping us up.

Even though Wisdom is calling from every direction and giving us the tune, sometimes we don’t want to listen to those wise words in her lyrical song. She’s playing a waltz and we want to do the punk rock pogo.

Even though Wisdom promises to lead us to truth…that truth requires us to dance a little differently, change our steps, listen to those notes.

We resist, preferring another dance partner, a different song.

Or maybe we don’t want to dance at all and remain a wallflower.

Maybe our ears have become so full of other voices that we can’t hear Wisdom’s refrain at all.

And while Wisdom values knowledge over choice gold and jewels…how many times will we allow bright shiny objects to blind us to what we’ve gained through our experience and knowing…shuffle ourselves into a corner?

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that he has many more things to tell them, but they cannot bear them now. But he urges them to wait on the Spirit who will speak all truth to them (John 16:12-13).

As we go forth from this place…we are being invited to listen for that same truth.

Pay attention to the voice of Wisdom…and enter the dance to the beat our Trinity desires for the world.

That Wisdom is not foreign to us.

It’s been with us, around us, and in us for a long time.

Listen.

In the Name of our Creative, Dancing, Triune God…F/S/HS.