I’m a fan of the Trinitarian theme: disparate entities forming a whole; separate consciousnesses merging; individuals (gloriously individuated) voluntarily partnering toward Oneness. It puts me in mind of Saint Paul’s words in Ephesians 2 and Colossians 1: “You who were once far off have been brought near...” (Ephesians 2:13, INCL) and “[i]n Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth… and all things hold together in Christ” (Colossians 1:15,17).
I get the idea that Christ has the ability to hold all this together because he’s practiced the skill in the context of the Trinity.
But this idea isn’t necessarily coming from this week’s Lectionary texts. These particular passages are extolling a fearsom and glorious “LORD” in the Isaiah and Psalm, who “shakes the wilderness; and highlighting a separation between flesh and spirit in the epistle - “for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live..” Where is the Trinitarian Oneness here?
My guess is its up to us, up to the work we do here as reflections of Christ and the Godhead, gathering up disparate elements and melding them; taking the circuitry of body and spirit and re-connecting them. We form the connective tissue that binds heaven to earth. We do the work of wholeness-making because we are made in the image of the Christ - a universal gravity holding all things together. In Christ we make cohesive wholes out of fractious fractions.
The story of the Trinity is written inside every human body. Two disparate, separate cells find a place of quiet warmth; they relinquish their individuality to become a Third. Father, Mother, Child. Creator, Spirit, Body. Breath, Dust, and Embodiment. Heaven, Earth, and We-who-straddle-worlds.
This week’s litany draws from the Lectionary passages for Trinity Sunday, Year B; namely the Isaiah 6 and Psalm 29, plus a bit of extra lagniappe I threw in.
God, we turn our attention again to the imagery of the Trinity,
Of Three-in-One,
Of Divine wholeness, holiness, sacredness,
Oneness, togetherness.