Andrei Rublev was a Russian Orthodox iconographer from the fifteenth century who wrote a remarkable icon that most scholars today believe is of the Trinity. Whereas we in the western church write extensive theological tomes trying to define and understand God, the Orthodox tradition writes icons which speak more profoundly to our whole being, as the arts often do. The icon above shows the three persons of the Trinity seated around a small table, in deep communion with each other reflecting their intimacy and unity. Many have come to believe that the space left at the table in the icon is an invitation for us to join the Trinity at the table in our contemplation and partake in their communion and intimacy. It does seem to be true that we in the western church prefer to use reason alone to understand the Trinity fully before we dine with them. To this I might suggest that understanding is overrated. The Trinity can only be grasped by coming to the table, so we experience their oneness of purpose and intimacy of love.
Bernard Word Anderson wrote a book some years ago entitled Understanding the Old Testament. He posited that the beginning of the Old Testament is not Genesis 1, but rather the Exodus event in which Sovereign God hears the cries of God’s enslaved people in Egypt and comes down to save them and enters into relationship with them. In delivering the people, God leads them through the Red Sea on dry land, baptizing them as God’s own people. Anderson suggests that once they know God, they can receive from God the revelation of their creation. God transforms their creation stories which have been passed along generation to generation around campfires to reflect the God who has called them. Thus, from a people’s crisis in real time comes the salvation of God in real time, opening new understandings of who God is and how God has been present from the onset.
In the creation stories Israel receives, there is a vision of a loving God who creates a people in order that They (God) may be in community with Their children. “Let us make mortals in our own image.” Why is the plural pronoun used here? Is there more happening here than a simple “royal us.” For several thousand years the people of God will assume that God is one.
Isaiah 6:1-6 begins with another national crisis. King Uzziah has died. He was king of Judah for 52 years and Isaiah served in his court. As Isaiah approaches the temple to offer the annual atonement for the sins of the people, he is in mourning. A faithful priest, as he enters the Holy of Holies, he sees a vision of God sitting on the mercy seat of God. He sees seraphim and cherubim (angels) who because of God’s holiness, cover their faces as they worship God singing. “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts …” Again, there may be an inkling about something we do not know about God, something that is yet to be revealed. What do the three “Holies” refer to? We don’t know yet.
Once Isaiah sees the vision, he realizes that in comparison to God’s holiness, he is unclean and unworthy to be there. Yet, an angel touches a coal from the brazier to Isaiah’s lips and he is cleansed of his unworthiness and sin. Next, God says to the company gathered in the temple “Whom shall I send and who will go for me?” Emboldened by his cleansing, Isaiah says, “Here am I. Send me.” The mission given to Isaiah will be an exceedingly difficult one. Nevertheless, in the prophecies of Isaiah, the understanding of God takes a quantum leap forward as Isaiah strives to explain the crisis that God’s people find themselves in over the next 80 years. The writer of Second Isaiah who also has a call story in a time of crisis (Chap. 42), will anticipate a “suffering servant” that we see as fulfilled in Christ.
In the Exodus stories and prophesies of the book of Isaiah these things are important.
- These stories are set in real time and space in historical moments of crisis. We learn more of God’s faithfulness when God breaks into our suffering to save and/or heal.
- The people of God enter a process of discerning and knowing their God after they have met and begun to follow God. One cannot know God without being invited into relationship with God (“being born from above” in Johannine language).
- Understanding God is not a destination, but a lifelong process of ever-deepening intimacy with God in which we become increasingly intimate with The Trinity as the mystics have shown.
- Understanding God takes place in communion and intimacy with Them in real time and space. But understanding is a lifelong process of ever deepening engagement with Their steadfast love and faithfulness in the daily incidents of life.
The next leap forward of understanding begins in John 3. Nicodemus, a Jewish leader comes to Jesus at night and says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” The relationship with Christ begins in another time of national crisis. Israel is under Roman rule and the Jewish leaders have made compromises to maintain a status quo that allows them to protect their traditions. Nicodemus may be concerned, as some are, that Jesus is a threat to this fragile stasis but, most likely, he has seen something in Jesus that attracts him.
Jesus responds to Nicodemus by inviting him to be born from above so that he may understand the things Jesus wants to say to him. Nicodemus misunderstands the question and, in this moment, probably gets no closer to understanding what he is seeing and hearing.
Jesus, nevertheless, explains to Nicodemus the life of the Spirit that can only be known when he has been born of the Spirit, who like the wind is unpredictable but worth following. Then Jesus tells Nicodemus who He is. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but that through him the entire world might be saved.”
A new vision of God is given which only those who say yes to Christ’s invitation to follow will grasp. The inklings we saw in Genesis 1 and Isaiah 6, are now revealed in Jesus the Son, and the Spirit.
None of these understandings of the Trinity are grasped immediately. For thousands of years, we mortals perceived one God but (though there were hints of a different reality). In an instant, Jesus suggests that God is a Trinity in three persons that we can only begin to discover if we have been born in water and the Spirit. Even if we begin a relationship with God, the mystery before us will take us decades to ascertain. In fact, we may not have fully arrived until we see Them face to face. The daily journey with Them is worth taking because the communion and growing intimacy with Them makes clear our reasons for being here. Their mission for us makes us instruments of healing, mercy, and grace in times of chaos.
Grace and Peace,
The Rev. Canon Dr. Peter Stube
Priest Associate
Image By Andrei Rublev – From: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
Published August 8, 2024