Prov. 8:22-31,
The figure of the Trinity usually causes an eye roll or the closing of eyes for sleep. Lately, our readings from John clearly provide raw material for the Trinity as it circles around the rleations of the spirit and of Jesus as the ones sent by the Father, the Sending One.Let’s approach it in a different way today. Presbyterians have traditionally intoned that we worship a capacious God. The Trinity is a way of saying that; God is complex and full. God breaks and breaks through our best intentions of understanding. We may well understand what we can of god, but surely that does not exhaust the vastness of the being and reality of god.In its way, the Trinity is a reminder: it may be the way we can speak of the Christian God, but by no means t=doe sit encompass everything about God’s nature and dealings with this world.I think it wa sin the Hustler where the young one says that you taught me everything I know, and the reply goes: but I did not teach you everything I know.
We get to work with a figure not nearly examined fully enough this morning on Trinity Sunday, the figure of Lady Wisdom in the book of Proverbs. Few passages give us the angle of a figure within the life of God in the Old Testament as this personification of the divine attribute of wisdom.This passage allows me to not only look at the God of creation but a vital part of that creation, the sheer joy, delight, imagination involved in creation. Here, Wisdom is not tucked away in a garden or on a mountain peak, in the midst of creation. Wisdom permits god’s work to be comprehensible and intelligible, to be able to perceive its structure and order. Wisdom grows with the created world, its companion.Creation allows this attribute of God to find a place to be and to enjoy the work.Here God is architect, planner, and engineer.Wisdom is found in the midst of the creation of the created ones, a bustling city.Wisdom seeks to give us the tools and perspective to live well in the world.Remember the cosmic child at the end of 2001? Wisdom delights in the responsive, in the relations between and among creation. It thus mirrors the relationality at the heart of the Trinitarian conception of God.(See Brown book)
Later Christians will apply wisdom to both Christ and the Spirit. Before Jesus, Philo of Alexandria had linked the figure of wisdom to God’s plan and vision, the logos. Of course John has that very plan made flesh in Jesus Christ.Wisdom does seem to be a mediator between heaven and earth, or maybe better, a bridge, or even cosmic glue, knitter, connector. So Wisdom exists in the spirit, the Creating One, and the Redeemer, and we encounter it in all of the facets of god we call Trinity.
Wisdom may be found in thought, action, and word. Wisdom plans, implements and evaluates.(fool in love?) When is wisdom=love?
Our elder daughter is being examined for her doctoral comprehensives, and she is gracious enough to tell me some of what she is reading. she just read Richard of St. Victor on his mystical writings, but he did at least three volumes on the trinity as an inter-relationship of love. for him, God cannot be a monad, a solitary self, for the fullness of love needs relationship He asserts that perfect love requires sharing and mutuality., internal and external. In God there is neither”miserly withholding or inordinate squandering.” On Trinity Sunday, we perhaps do well to be humble, as we cannot fully fathom the fullness of God. That God encounters us this morning.
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