God’s Language of Grace
Holy Trinity Sunday
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday on the church calendar and confession time, since becoming a pastor this has not been my favorite church holiday because today we are supposed to worship God together and celebrate, not an event that happened, but the belief that God is three persons in one. That’s great, but I often find myself without much else to say about it. God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one. The end. We cannot fully explain the divine trinity in our human metaphors and so we land back where we started, thankful for God’s 3 divine persons in one united being, but it is a mystery to us.
This year though, I went searching for reasons why this mattered and I found an article by theologian Debie Thomas who wrote beautifully about why we should care that we have a trinititarian God. She described 5 things about God that we know to be true – that God is dynamic, God is diverse, God is communal, God is hospitable and finally that God is love. In order for all of these truths to be possible God must be 3. Because you cannot have diversity with only one; and you cannot form community by yourself, and you cannot show hospitality alone and then there is love… she describes God’s sacrificial love which cannot happen without more than one. Without God being more than one, it wouldn’t be possible to have all of these beautiful gifts of grace from God to us, to show us what love looks like. These are all qualities we hope that people of faith, the church will live out in the world that we will be a changing, diverse community of hospitality and love. And so today, I offer no explanations for how it is possible that God is a trinity, instead let’s point to the hope that is found when we believe God is 3 in one and use the language God gives us to talk about it.
A New Language
My understanding of languages has been growing recently – not because I am learning any new ones, but because I just read a novel called “The Language of Flowers.” The main character believed deeply in the Victorian tradition of flowers having meaning. It made me think about different ways that we do speak to each other, not only with words. This practice of speaking with flowers is officially called floriography and it is the giving and receiving of different types of flowers and believing each one sends a message to the recipient. We still practice this in our own way today – it is commonly known that red roses are for that special someone, white lilies are a traditional choice for sympathy bouquets and pink carnations have long been given to moms with the connection to the meaning of motherly love. The Ancient Greeks and Ancient Egyptians were known to give flowers in celebration, in mourning or to express other feelings. And even in the Bible flowers were written about with a specific meaning in mind; God creates the flowers of the earth, makes them beautiful even though they won’t last forever. The Gospel story about the Lily of the fields, remind us that if God clothes the flowers in the most beautiful way, how much more will God provide for us?
The protests this week have brought up feelings for all of us. It would take an especially big bouquet to express all of them. Here in Madison and around our nation protests have been going on day after day in response to the killing of Black Americans by police. Emotions are running high as protesters keep showing up and police officers do too. A local new story I read described a different interaction between police and protesters though.Three Black protest leaders approached police officers on Monday evening while they stood in riot gear and in formation. The group told officers that they were going to end the protest and tell the crowd to disperse and head home, which they did. They then came back over to the officers and handed them flowers and wished them a safe night before heading home themselves. Officers on the scene gratefully tucked the flowers into their vests as they continued their work that evening. One officer who there reflected how brave it was and how it showed the intentions of most of the protesters is peaceful, lawful speaking out. I am not sure exactly what kind of flowers were involved, but in that moment they certainly represented peace.
God’s Own Self is Diverse
We know of course that what the Bible says is true, flowers will fade eventually and our feelings fade and change too. But what sticks around are our relationships with one another. God who created us made us to be in relationship, just as Godself is in relationship. No matter how much we might want to sometimes, we cannot live in isolation from one another. Human beings are meant to live in community just as God lives in community. And God makes it pretty clear that as one community of human beings, we are all going to be different in many ways- the way we look, think, act and believe, even in the ways we show love to one another. God’s own self is diverse in its divine expressions of being- from a Creator speaking life into being to a Palestinian Jewish Teacher to a dove-like mysterious spirit that blows like the rushing wind. And in this diverse community God showed us love in the loving sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Diversity and community and love are accepted aspects of our Trinitarian God in whose image we were created.
We are prone to forget this though when differences make us uncomfortable or sin makes us hurt and misunderstand one another. We wander off down a road of selfish, self-interest. And it is a lonely road, until we can find our way back to relate with others again. God never says this kind of relatedness is going to be easy – the sinner/saints that we are.
Speaking the Language of Grace
In the middle of our diversity and our tendency for misunderstandings in relationship, God gives us a language to speak when our relationships get tough. Not the language of flowers, but the language of grace. Grace for ourselves when we mess up and grace for other people when we hurt each other. Many things about grace challenge us, both in our unwillingness to give it and also because with grace comes a change of heart and empathy for others. Every time I use the theological term grace, I feel like I have to remind all of us of its meaning because our culture sometimes uses it differently.Grace doesn’t mean to let someone off the hook, it doesn’t mean forgive and forget. Grace is unconditional and undeserved love. To love someone even when they don’t do anything to earn it.
Our Triune God, the God of relationship, the God of diversity, calls us to speak and act with grace in our relationships, all of them.
When it comes to our closest relationships, the people we have been able to see face to face (or video chat with) during this pandemic, do you speak to them with the language of grace? For me, most of the time, but when my kids are sick of being at home and my husband and I are stressed out and I am about to lose it (and my language is about to be anything but grace-filled), my 6-year-old has a way of totally disarming me. When he sees me about to lose my temper, he walks over and says to me and says, “hug, Mom?” In his offer of grace, I can return to the language of grace.
When it comes to other relationships with coworkers, friends and neighbors and our community, do we speak the language of grace? We can’t offer hugs right now like my son, but we can listen, act with love, and stay home when possible. When we do this we return to the language of grace.
When it comes to what is happening in our world right now, how can we speak the language of grace to our Black siblings in Christ and our police officer neighbors? We can pray for them, to educate ourselves on anti-racism efforts and to create our own action plans and acknowledge it might look different than other people’s. And, we return to the language of grace.
When we mess up, when we feel guilty and ashamed, when we know we are part of the problem, can we speak the language of grace for ourselves? We can confess our wrongs and forgive ourselves, we can work for reconciliation with those we hurt and turn back to God again and again. We can be willing to learn a different way, and in doing so we return to the language of grace.
Our Trinitarian God gives us the language of grace. It is the language spoken to us in our creation in God’s image, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the continuing work of the Spirit. It is the language we are called to speak to one another in all of our relationships.
Dear friends in Christ, return to the language of grace and may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you today and always. Amen.
