Trinity

 

The God whom Jesus called our Father is the Creator of all things, speaking everything into being with an authoritative word. God spoke, releasing the energy of life: matter coalesced and expanded outward. In response to a series of equally joyful declarations, stars and planets, including our own, formed; simple plant life evolved on earth, and when, responding to radiation from beyond, photosynthesis had changed the planet’s atmosphere enough, the sun and other celestial bodies became visible from earth (not that there were any physical eyes to see them yet); animals evolved to spread through every habitat; responding with such vigour that even mass extensions could not prevail, life always triumphed over destruction. Last of all, God, having created hominids, chose one to share God’s own breath: the homo sapien, or wise human, endowed with the very wisdom of God.

Time, as we measure it, does not exist in nature. (Indeed, time as we measure it did not exist until the Industrial Revolution.) As Einstein pointed out, time is experienced relative to the position of the beholder. Or, to put it another way, time is the attention paid by love. From our perspective, looking behind us – as Einstein put it, trying to think God’s thoughts after him – the stages of creation each took unimaginable aeons, each successive period roughly half as long as the one before. But from God’s perspective — the flow state of hyperfocus – each was but a day. Time flies, when you are having fun.

That authoritative word by which creation was authored is so one with the character of God as to be indivisible; and yet possesses such life within it as to be considered to possess its own personhood: capital W word. And God so loved creation that in time – the attention paid by love – that Word was spoken into human form: spoken over the as-yet un-cohered potential of Mary’s womb, becoming human – the crown of all creation, the most-beloved of all that is loved – taking the name Jesus, ‘God saves.’

God becomes human not because only God could save us from some great catastrophe that had befallen creation – not necessitated – but because it is the very nature of the human to be one who saves – delivers, brings aid to – his or her fellow human, and, together, all life on earth, from the frequent assaults of envious angels. God becomes human so as to be Ezer, helper. God becomes human because God becomes what God loves. The friend of humans, long spoken of anthropomorphically – the arm of the Lord, etc. – becomes one of us, actually one of us.

The fully human god Jesus – the Word from the beginning, now called the Son: faithful to, and faithful image of, the Father – lived among us and showed us what it looks like to be fully human, animated by the breath – the Spirit – of God. He loved in tangible acts of affection, in kindness. A way of being so strange to those long traumatised and retraumatised by violence against God’s good creation that we sought to remove love, put love to death. Yet – not for the first time – death could not prevail against the Word that spoke life into being. This Jesus embraced death and at the right time – the attention paid by love – he rose again. Forty days later, he ascended, returning to the Father, a human in the spiritual realm, to be the channel for peace to flow, from God to humans and from humans to God.

Ten days later, this Jesus sent the Holy Spirit. The breath of God. In our creation, we have all been given one breath breathed out by God, one breath we will in turn breath out to return to him. Our own spirit. Again, what we call time is relative to the perspective of the beholder. From God’s perspective, one breath; from ours, this breath lasts a lifetime. Yet now the Holy Spirit is poured out, incessantly.

Like the Word, the Spirit is indivisible from God; yet, like the Word, possesses such vitality as to be considered its own personhood. God waiting; Love with intention, attending to the beloved; Life breaking out, animating life. Jesus returns to the Father that the Spirit might be poured out, to dwell with our spirit, that we might not hold our breath but learn to breath in time with – that is, learning to pay attention in love – God. To trust. To give. To empower others.

Life always finds a way, makes a Way. Love always prevails, though it must struggle, though it prevails by laying down its life, only to have it given back again.

We believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.