Clergy from left, Deacon Amy Schmuck, Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, retired, The Rev. Mary Ann Hill and The Rev. Lynn Finnegan. Photo by Nate Limback/ladailypost.com
By The Rev. Mary Ann Hill
Rector
Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church
The first time I saw that famous image from the Eagle Nebula – Pillars of Creation – I turned to the friend I was with and babbled something like “how do we even have a universe that contains something like this AND the duck-billed platypus?!? The friend who showed it to me shrugged and said, “Because God loves infinite variety?”
This is the time in the Christian year when we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and, with that revelation, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Now I realize that, for some people, when we start talking about the Trinity, we are venturing into the territory of trying to believe Lewis Carol’s “six impossible things before breakfast”. Trying to wrap one’s mind around “God in three persons” can be daunting.
John Pritchard, the retired Bishop of Oxford, described the Holy Trinity in this way:
“We know God in creation (the Father); God in history (the Son); and God in us (the Holy Spirit). God above, God beside, God within. The Trinity is a community of love, and this wonderfully rich and dynamic model means we have a God for whom relationships are crucial. Other faiths have great strengths from which we can learn, but Christianity has this to offer: an understanding of God the Father, known through the Son and experienced through the Holy Spirit – simple and complex, accessible and subtle, God beyond our imagination and yet God-with-us.”
I think sometimes Christians forget that God really does, indeed, love infinite variety. It’s woven into the very fabric of our universe. When we read the Gospels, paying particular attention to how Jesus sees people, it should be very clear that each person, each child of God, is wholly unique, gifted in their own way, and meant to be cherished and valued for who they are.
At the same time, we are called together, as the Body of Christ, into unity. The same Spirit that breathed all of this variety into our creation also binds everything together in God’s community of love. Even the individual and unique gifts that Christians are given, through the Holy Spirit, are intended for the good of the community.
There is a statement, sometimes erroneously attributed to St. Augustine, that first appeared in treatise on Christian unity during the 30 Years War: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” In what was an extremely brutal and bloody war, fraught with religious tension, someone had the brilliant idea that humankind could benefit from the Trinitarian model of diversity in unity made possible through love.
Can you imagine how different our world could be if more of us tried to live this way?
Editor’s note: ‘All Shall Be Well’ is a column written by local women clergy including The Rev. Mary Ann Hill, Rector, Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church (momaryannhill@gmail.com); The Rev. Lynn Finnegan, Associate Rector, The Episcopal Church of the Holy Faith, Santa Fe (rev.lynn@holyfaithchurchsf.org); Deacon Amy Schmuck, Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church (deaconamy@bethluth.com); and ELCA Deacon Cynthia Biddlecomb, M.Div., retired (czoebidd@gmail.com).
