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June 3, 2007
Trinity Sunday
St. Edmund’s, San Marino
Trinity Sunday Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15The Rev. Rob Fisher
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer Amen.
I am not an artist. However, when I was in college I once took an intensive studio art course. It was an art course that was designed for non-artists.
The Art School at my university was an esteemed institution, rejecting nine out of every ten applicants. Our professor was a senior faculty member of the Art School, a short man, African American, and with a deep and resonant voice that matched the profound things he would say. He was a quiet and passionate man.
I think he taught the course out of a desire to evangelize among those who did not yet fully grasp the power that visuals can wield. But before he could teach us how to create, he had to teach us how to see.
***
One of our assignments was to create “color poems.”
We were given white, rectangular pieces of paper with a pattern of squares and rectangles on a grid that filled the page. These were very tame forms, defined by lines criss-crossing the page at about an inch in width.
We were asked to take tempera paint and mix three colors to make whatever colors we chose. (Remember that from mixing just three primary colors you can make any color in existence.) And we were to fill in the boxes until the entire page was full of color. It was like filling in a page of an abstract coloring book
Most of us naively thought that there wasn’t much to do with such restrictive parameters. We wanted to impress our esteemed professor, and so most of us went for gold, forsaking all subtlety. Some of us created extreme color contrasts for dramatic effect. Others colored over the lines, or brushed the paper with great globs of paint trying to be like Van Gogh. Like real artists, we could not be confined!
I believe that most of us were quite proud of ourselves that we had not done boring color poems, and we displayed them on the walls of the little studio classroom at our next meeting, and we awaited our professor’s praise.
He was furious. He saw that we completely missed the point.
The pattern we had been given offered infinite possibilities without any need to paint over the lines. Color alone is a powerful medium that can express things that words cannot.
For example, our professor showed us paintings by Josef Albers that were simply two or more squares of different colors set within each other. Just pure color interplay, and surprisingly interesting, beautiful and expressive!
In fact, you can take any great painting and squint your eye and see that the grid underneath is essentially a color poem. To see it more easily, look at any of Mark Rothko’s large canvasses. Why does he add a tiny bit of orange in an unexpected place? Why does that change everything else about the rest of the canvass?
We non-artist students had never thought of any of this before. Our eyes were being opened. We started to see our world, and not just art, in new ways.
In my office, I have two large paintings by Edward Hopper. I have them there because I love them, but also because they remind me of this lesson of remembering how to see. Hopper’s paintings are often of buildings and nature, but underneath they are inspired color poems. He disguises them as scenes of houses and train tracks and the coast, but what really makes them compelling to look at for hours and hours is their fantastic and powerful color composition.
To learn to see is a true gift. Jesus spoke: “Let those who have eyes to see, see; and let those who have ears to hear, hear!”
God gave us all eyes to see and ears to hear, and it is part of our plight as fallen children of God that we so rarely use these great gifts to their fullest.
***
Today is Trinity Sunday. The understanding of God as Trinity is a mystery that has been pondered since the very earliest days of Christianity.
God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Creator, Christ, Redeemer.
God is one, but not only one; God is three, but there is only one God.
As you can already see, many a confusing sermon has been preached on the Trinity!
But in a practical sense, what does the triune nature of God mean in our lives?
God is dynamic, more than just one thing at one time. God can create, God can bring forgiveness, and God can infuse all things with God’s own Spiritual Presence.
And we are now into the season of Pentecost, which is a good time to focus on God the Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus proclaims that the Spirit will come to teach us. It will come and open our eyes. All that Jesus has, which has been received completely from God the Father, will be fully revealed to us.
Jesus says: “[The Holy Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you”
***
How do we understand the nature of the Holy Spirit?
The spirit has many things to bring faith, truth, love, understanding, Wisdom.
The Spirit is the part of God that flows. It is like God’s blood—flowing, connecting and bringing life.
The Spirit is also that mysterious force that holds us together when we feel that things are coming apart. Paul Tillich spoke of this special force as being the “courage to be,” that keeps us going through life in a world that challenges us deeply on an existential level.
Another image I would offer is that of wires that carry current. You cannot see electricity, but it is powerful.
Perhaps the best image of all, which is also the most ancient image, is of the Spirit being very much like air.
The air around us gives us life in every breath, though we rarely stop and acknowledge this.
Air is almost completely invisible, yet it is through the air between you an me that waves of light are carried to my eyes, and I can see you. It is through the air that sound waves are carried to our ears.
And this same air which is often invisible to us can at times be stirred up into a forceful wind, which is exactly the way that the Spirit at Pentecost was described!
Like air, the Spirit is a quiet yet powerful force that literally surrounds us and brings us life.
Jesus invites us to open up our eyes and learn from the Spirit. It will open our eyes to see the glory of God at work in the world.
And like a color poem, God does not paint with merely one color. We do not have a monochrome, black and white God. Like a single painter using the three primary colors, God moves in three parts—in Technicolor.
As Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God surpasses our imagination by creating, living among us, and ultimately restoring our infinitely colorful world.
In the name of the true and living God—three in one and one in three—Amen.
© St. Edmund's Church