Trinity Sunday, 7 June 2020
Eight minutes, 46 seconds. That will roughly be the length of this sermon. It’s also the length of time that George Floyd had a policeman’s knee on his neck, pushing his face into the ground. As many African Americans have noted this week, having a white man’s knee on their necks goes back generations. Another noted, racism hasn’t got worse, it’s just now it’s filmed.
As ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests take place around the world, how on earth might the doctrine of the Holy Trinity on this Trinity Sunday speak into this situation? Given the state our world is in right now, why should the Christian doctrine of the Trinity matter? It matters because it reveals profound truth about the nature of God.
God the Holy Trinity is, of course, beyond understanding, beyond definition, beyond explanation… ineffable is how theologians have put it. Yet, whilst language is profoundly limited, how might we falteringly reflect on the triune God? At the heart of the Trinitarian God whom we worship is an eternal flow or movement of giving and receiving love. Seen in this way, the Trinitarian God is far from a static deity. There’s a dynamism at the heart of the trinity, there’s movement. Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three—a circle dance of love.
The relationships between the three Persons of the Trinity— ‘dynamic, interactive, loving, serving’ — form the model for our human dance steps. As human beings, the common good is served when we relate to one another in this ‘dance of life’.
Returning to the death of George Floyd, it’s highlighted profound racial tensions that spans many generations. Bishop Graham wrote earlier this week of how the psalm in Morning Prayer on Thursday had a chilling resonance: "The enemy has pursued me, crushing my life to the ground, making me sit in darkness like those long dead. My soul gasps for you." As George Floyd gasped for breath, surely his cry was heard by the God who hears the prayers of the desperate and must be heard by us too.
But we mustn’t think that racism is over there in the United States, and it not here too, in the UK, in our society, in our churches, in our lives. In a previous sermon, I spoke about an ordinand who described how social distancing highlighted a race issue. The writer describes how we avoid each other on the street by a noble desire not to pass on the virus. But this can be painful. It makes you feel less human. His point was that for many people of colour, being distanced by others has been their lifelong experience. People of colour have been socialised to think that they are less than white people. They experience an old lady clutching her handbag a little tighter; a couple leaving their car and hurrying to lock it; or a group of people staring as they enter a shop.
We need to become aware of what ‘white privilege’ means, and that we are part of the problem. We need to take the time to understand what it is like for those who have lived with systemic racism and oppression here in our country.
At the end of this sermon, on the website, I shall include some books that Bishop Graham has sent through that we will help us engage and understand better the experience of people of colour in the UK.
There is no ground for neutrality here. Desmond Tutu put it like this: ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’
God the Holy Trinity shows us a different path. The dance of the Trinity affirms that diversity is to be celebrated, not stamped out. Diversity of gender, race, class, sexuality… difference is not to be feared but, rather, celebrated.
For anyone that’s danced with a partner, there needs to be an attentiveness to the other, an honouring of the movement of the other. This is the opposite of domination and control, which has been the long experience of African Americans. That’s not the grace-filled dynamic of that is at the heart of the trinity. The relationship between the persons of the Godhead is not a relationship of domination, power-mongering, manipulation, or jealousy. It is a relationship of unselfish, sacrificial love. If God’s very being is grounded in love, and we are created in God’s image, then who are we? What are we? Are we, like the Triune God whose imprint we bear, creatures motivated first and foremost by love? Is love what we are known for? If not, then what are we doing with our lives? What does our piety amount to?
As Dr Martin Luther King said, ‘In a real sense, we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Therefore, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’
There is no place for silence, no place for neutrality. Let us live this change, that by the power of the Spirit, we will come to forge a better, a more just and a more compassionate society.
Revd Dr James Heard