The Collaboration of the Trinity

The New Revised Standard Version The Work of the Spirit

12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

At the outset of Holy Week, Jesus teaches some of his final lessons to the disciples and his followers, preparing them for his departure and a fresh incarnation of God’s spirit which is to come. Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, the week each year where we remember the outflowing of the Pentecost fire as it now lives in each of us in the presence of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit has been poured out upon God’s people. And this Spirit brings truth to us, truth in a way that we do not discern ourselves, truth which pulls back the veil between God and humanity, truly anointing God’s people to bear witness to the Spirit in all we do, in our selves.

One of the simplest, most beautiful ways I have come to understand this relationship within the Trinity and our participation in it is to think of a Dance. A Divine Dance. A Dance where God partners within Godself, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, to move and support and love its parts AND invite us into dance with God as well.

We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

But first, as we begin to think about the Trinity and God’s truth that the Holy Spirit brings us, I have to tell some truth of my own.

The truth is…I really don’t like group projects.

It feels safe to say that at this point in the academic year. Assignments are in. Professors are grading papers, students are graduating. So, don’t tell anyone, but I really have never liked group projects. I struggle with them. I’m pretty good at doing my own work, but having to schedule meetings and “share” the load…it always felt like a raw deal for some of us and a breeze for others.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, I think the disdain for group work is something much deeper than my procastinator’s mind is frustrated by.

Let’s look around our community, the nation, or the world. It seems pretty safe to say that a lot of other people out there don’t like group work as well. We seem to be aligned more to individualism, to going our own way.

Think about the gridlock we see in our government, for example. Those people clearly do not like group work. There is a clear message that politicians send to the people: we’ll work with who we want to and we’ll ignore the rest.

We find it amazing and heroic when a person simply “reaches across the aisle” to collaborate and compromise, right? Like that’s some incredible feat, looking for common ground and finding ways to work with others who see things differently.

We see this issue playing out in local politics and organizations, as well. I know we have a number of educators in our community here: think about the struggle we find to get teachers and administrators to make common cause and work together. Or local businesses choosing competitive stances rather than collaborating to solve the needs of our community.

This disinterest in group work even passes into the ways churches and faith communities collaborate. One of the most frustrating parts of ministry in Whatcom County is the constant attempts we see in churches or nonprofits trying to reinvent the wheel, thinking they’ve found the novel way to serve the community or be the church, thinking that a new expression or articulation will finally fit best for our community. In this, we neglect the truth that good things are already happening in existing organizations, we neglect the possibility that we could collaborate instead of being entrepreneurs.

But can we be faulted for living this way?

Isn’t this just how things are?

In some ways, I think the answer has to be, yes, it is how things are.

We have an innate fear in us that by collaborating, by working together, that there is a part of us that might have to be sacrificed. We might not always get it how we want it, might not always have our way. We might lose something in the group process.

The 4.0 student might be concerned about their grades if they have to do group work.

The politician might lose capital and trust from their narrow band of constiuents if they collaborate across the aisle.

Baseball pitchers and catchers don’t want their signs to be shared with the other team — it will make the next pitch predictable and weaken their chances of winning.

And so we have this sense that we shouldn’t want to collaborate, we shouldn’t want to join in. We will stay put, thank you very much. We get isolated, we get bitter or give up on others (and ourselves).

Today, this Trinity Sunday, we need to reclaim the goodness of collaboration, as it is at the heart of how God is working in and through us in the world.

The Divine Dance (and the Electric Slide)

Probably no other time in my life, I felt the most “on my own” and isolated during my freshmen year of high school. It was one of the most difficult years for me — I didn’t have many friends at my new school, I was trying to connect and fit in to groups that had formed in middle school or communities within the school system that had no need for another awkward teen.

I longed for collaboration at this point in my life, I would have done anything for a group project where I had to connect with an rely on others — at least I would have met someone!

So, what I did do is I got involved with Homecoming decorations that first Fall. I had nothing to do after school, no sports, not a ton of homework yet, so I joined the decorations team for the freshmen spirit competition.

Homecoming at my high school, like many, led up to a full week of spirit activities, a football game, and a dance to follow. So, I dove in. I dressed up in my school colors (I believe we were orange that year, of the Edmonds-Woodway colors of Green, Purple, Yellow, and Orange). I helped design posters of the Muppet Babies doing all kinds of school and sports related things (our Spirit competitions were based on TV shows from our childhood — the freshmen, of course, were given Muppet Babies). And I made a few friends. It was awesome.

But the highlight of it all was the dance. Now, I’m not about to tell some romantic story about how I worked up the nerve to ask my crush to dance and we lived happily ever after. I didn’t and thankfully, we didn’t.

But at the dance, awkward freshmen gravitating in and out off the dance floor, I found a moment of deep connection and belonging that all the group work, all the attempts at joining in, could never have provided in the way it did.

Is anyone out there familiar with the 1980s hit dance song, The Electric Slide?

If you’re drawing a blank, the lyrics are pretty simple: “You’ve gotta feel it, it’s electric, boogie woogie woogie woogie.”

Now, the great thing about this song is that it isn’t a free for all, dance how you want to, make it up as you go kind of thing. No, it is a correographed line dance. There are specific moves to it. And…(I’m happy to show you them later)…I knew them!

I don’t know how or where I learned the steps or if it just came together in that first experience, but I knew how to dance the Electric Slide! I heard the familiar first notes come on the speakers and lit up! I can participate in this!

I jumped out onto the dance floor, found some of my new friends, and began to move in unison with others in quarter turn movements for a beautiful 4 minutes that seemed like eternity. I boogied. I woogied. And I joined in.

Have you experienced something like this before? Perhaps you’re at a wedding and that perfect love song comes on and all the long-time married couples glance at each other and get up to dance.

Or maybe you’ve felt it at a sporting event: the Mariners get a home run, the Sounders score a clutch goal, the Seahawks return a kickoff for a touchdown…and the crowd becomes one as they go wild.

What does this all have to do with the Trinity and group projects and our disfunctional worldly systems?

Well, this spark of energy, this shared movement, this moment of euphoric connection — I think this is a taste of what it means to be a part of the Divine Dance.

Remember, the Trinity works within itself as dance partners, mutually loving and giving to one another, supporting each other. As Jesus says to his listeners, the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will speak to them now, as he had, directing their ways, helping them discern the truth, carrying on the beautiful liberating work that Jesus has begun among them. Jesus is passing the movement on to his dance partner, the Spirit. The Creator, the Father, has given this same blessing of authority to Jesus — as Jesus says, the father and I are one, I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

The divine dance is constantly taking place, with God moving within Godself out of infinite abundance of love. The divine dance is what we long to take part in, this collaboration and common cause that is the Trinity.

And it is, like the Electric Slide, the Divine Dance that we find ourselves invited into.

Other lyrics from the Electric Slide:

you can’t see it, it’s electric, boogie woogie woogie woogie.

you’ve gotta feel it, it’s electric, boogie woogie woogie woogie.

ooh it’s shakin, it’s electric

I’ve got to move, I’m going on a party ride. I’ve got to groove, groove, groove, and from this music I just can’t hide.

I know it can sometimes be a challenge for us to conceptualize what it means for God to be Three-in-One, Three Persons, Triune.

And especially for our minds that are oriented toward individualism, it’s harder to conceptualize why we or any one would ever work in such concerted, collaborative ways.

But when we begin to get an imagination for how God works, how God, within Godself, loves and supports and mutually cares for the members of God’s triune community, we begin to see that there is another way, a way we are meant to work and collaborate together, with ourselves and with God.

Hear this Good News today — God wants us to be a part of this divine dance. God is inviting us into the Electric Slide — the dance where all have a part and all are one.

Let’s go back to Jesus’ words from John. He says that the Spirit will glorify him, because the Spirit will pass on what was Jesus’ and share it once more with them.

When we enter into the divine dance, we enter in with all of our uniqueness, particularities, idiosyncrasies, and are accepted as a participant. We are a part of it, however well we dance, how ever awkward we may look. God’s dance can be our dance.

Will we dance with God?

Will we let God’s collaboration move into us and move through us?

Or will we stay on the side line, resisting the pull to connection?

I pray that we might dance with God as God invites us to. Here, now, today.

Blessings and peace to you all, amen.