The Trinity: Trying to Parse Synchronicity in Time

Trinity Sunday A June 4, 2023

Gen. 1:1-2:3 Ps.33
2 Cor. 13:5-10,11-14 Matt. 28:16-20

Lectionary Link

I live on a big river and if I took collected samples of the water of this big river at three different locations, could I call all three samples the Mississippi River?

What does each sample become removed from continuous connection with all the other water in the River, or for that matter, all the water in the entire universe?

The water samples only exhibit full identity with the Mississippi River while still being located in its flow.  Once an amount of water becomes separated from the flow of the River, then that loss of connection with the River creates a separation which diminishes the fullness of identity with the River.  We may examine the sample of water for it's properties and call it the water of the Mississippi but only in a very limited way.  It would be an identity of distance; an identity of separation.

A similar identity issue arises as we attempt to understand the Trinity, on this Trinity Sunday.

It is an oxymoron to separate time and sequence from synchronicity, namely, everything, altogether, all at once.

Since we cannot help but use language, language is subject to the sequencing of time.  Whether vocal or written, words happen within sequences of before and after and exist in extended strings.  Even if one assumes a total reservoir of all of the words, all at once, one has used a string of words, in time to relay such information.

This seeming silly mind game highlights the mystery of life and also the mystery of the Trinity.

Synchronicity is the always, already relationship of everything, all at once.

The Christian Church has come to confess the Trinitarian belief, mainly because of St. Paul, and the words of Jesus found in the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John.

When one tries to separate a sample of the ever-creating God in time, that God-sample is Jesus of Nazareth.  He becomes the representative of the divine in human terms particularly in the insight of accepting human experience as a valid and representative way of knowing what is more than human or other than human, or the One who is always on the ultimate horizon of the human.  We, as human, live within the prison of human limitations, but with aspirations about what is beyond what we are.  Our human prison has the stained glass windows of language to form how we speak about what is beyond the windows of our human experiences.  Our confession as Jesus as the Son and Child of God is the confession of the validation of anthropomorphism as a valid way to know God.  In this way, one can say that the incarnation is unavoidable; since we can never avoid being merely human, even when we are speaking about the experience of the divine.

The way in which Jesus is presented in the Gospel, especially the Gospel of John was as a unique child who was never separated from God as his originating "Father," and he was never disconnected because there was a perpetual umbilical cord of what he called the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Comforter.  What is the Omnipresence which is the ground for everything being altogether, all at once, and able to have mutual and reciprocal relationships?  That omnipresence, within, without, is designated as Holy Spirit Being.

The Trinity arises for us in language because we cannot help but explicate relationship as unfolding in time; but just because things unfold in time, it does not deplete the ever integrating connection of all things, all at once, in an ever eternal now.

If the words of above make one's head spin to the point of mocking such as palaver, I would agree with you.

Yet, it is meaningfully true and a mystery that we live with the synchronicity of everything, already, all at once.

Jesus modeled the Trinitarian relationship and relationship bears the full synchronicity of everything all at once.

We too are to model the Trinitarian relationship as we unfold the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in time, even as they are always, already integrated always being together.

I would hope that the Holy Trinity today would inspire us to accept ultimate relationship with all as basic to life, and to know this ultimate relationship best as the experience of love and justice.  I believe that Jesus invites us to know the Trinity best through this experience of love and justice.  Amen.