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Trinity Sunday completes drama of salvation
The placement of Trinity Sunday in the liturgical year is ideal for the formation of the congregation around the great truth of the Trinity. It comes as the first Sunday in Ordinary Time, following the great drama of salvation proclaimed in Advent, Lent, Easter and Pentecost.
In Advent we proclaim the truth: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
In Lent we discover: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
At Easter we celebrate Christ’s victory over sin: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
And in Pentecost we receive the promise of the gospel: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11).
On Trinity Sunday, looking back over the story
of salvation, we see that the doctrine of the Trinity “proclaims to us the very heart of God.” The temptation on Trinity Sunday is to describe the Trinity in conceptual terms instead of as the natural conclusion to this drama
of salvation.
Consider the following ways to live out this drama
of salvation on Trinity Sunday:
- In a Sunday school class or other setting use Andrei Rublev’s painting called Icon of Holy Trinity as a means of appreciating the Trinity. You can this image by searching “Rublev Icon” at Google Images or another Internet search engine. Print copies for participants. It is a “picture” of the three visitors who call on Abraham and Sarah in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis. Christians have sometimes thought of them as the Trinity, though the writer of Genesis had no such thought in mind. These three are seated at a table, one on each of three sides of the table. There is an empty place at the table on the side closest to the viewer. On the table is a chalice and in the chalice is a lamb, the Lamb of God. Oddest of all, however, is the perspective of the painting. In proper perspective, all the lines of the planes in a picture must meet at vanishing points in back or to the sides. In this picture, however, the vanishing point is where the viewer sits. Behind the picture is not a point, but infinite space. The world behind the painting is infinitely larger than the world in which we sit. It draws us in. An icon is a window into heaven, and through this window, we are invited into a heavenly place where a table is set. Around that table is the God-Who-Is-Love, a God whose being is no cold, granite mystery but a unity somehow in communion, a God whose very being is love. Not only is the viewer invited into the image by the backward perspective that pulls one’s gaze into eternity, but there is an empty place on the viewer’s side of the table, a place set for the viewer, a place set for all at love’s table.1
- Look at the liturgical examples in “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing,” Part II: Participating in God’s Overflowing Love, and consider how to express the work of the whole Trinity in every aspect of worship.2
- In children’s church school, invite parents and have them tell the stories of their children’s baptisms, focusing on why they chose to have them baptized (always with an eye out for those children who still look forward to baptism). Then reflect on some of the Scripture passages included at the beginning of this article on what it means to be baptized in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Notes
1. Adapted from Michael Lindvall, The Christian Life: A Geography of God (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2001), pp. 47–48.
2. Available on the Theology and Worship Web site, starting on page 11, line 529.  |
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