Community of Love
“Community of Love” Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17
Paul writes: When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
When we call upon God the Father, God the Spirit prays within us and bears witness that we are children of God and therefore joint heirs with God the Son. This, Paul tells us, is how we are caught up in the life and the love that is God.
I’ve heard it said – although I have not been able to confirm this – that Martin Luther once said: To try to deny the Trinity will threaten your salvation, to try to understand the Trinity will threaten your sanity. Trying to understand how God is three and one at the same time is indeed difficult, and if we think we understand it we probably don’t.
I remember as a young person thinking that the Trinity was easy to understand – that there is one God, but that we just perceive this one God in three different ways – as the Father in heaven, as Jesus 2000 years ago, as the Spirit in our hearts. I was impressed with myself that I had figured this out … until I started studying church history. Turns out my idea was not original; it is called Sabellianism or Modalism. And not only did Sabellius think of this idea long before I did, but in the year 220 A.D. Sabellius was excommunicated as a heretic. So it was back to the drawing board for me as a theologian of the Trinity.
But if it’s so hard to figure out how the Trinity works – if all of our ideas about the Trinity fall short of the mystery of the true nature of God and if it’s so easy to get it wrong – why would Luther say (if he did say it) that denying the Trinity would actually threaten our salvation? If the Trinity is so abstract and difficult to comprehend, how could it matter so much that our salvation somehow depends on it? Why do we have a whole Sunday every year devoted to a topic that none of us understands? Why does it even matter?
Well, one thing that is important is that we believe that God is love. Jesus came to show us the true nature of God, and we have come to trust what Jesus shows us, that God is love. Salvation means to trust that God is love, and therefore we are safe, whatever may happen to us, because we are confident in God’s love. Our faith is that God is love and that God cannot be anything other than love for us.
But if God is love, then God somehow has to be more than one. Love means there is one who loves, and another who is loved – unless you’re a pathological narcissist, and I’m pretty sure God is not, love means at least 2. If God were only one, God would need something outside of God to love … and then love would not be God’s nature, but just something God happens to do. And our faith is in a God whose very nature is love, who cannot not be love.
For humans, we have experience about love between two people – but if it gets to be more than that, things get complicated. I think of the famous interview of Princess Diana, which was in the news lately for other reasons, when she said that “there were 3 of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Human communities of three or more have the potential for division, for it to become 2 against 1, and that rarely works out well for us. But with God, 3 can be joined together in love without rivalry, without coercion, without jealousy, without holding back. And so in the love that is God there is plenty of room for 3 – and indeed, plenty of room for more, which is why God creates the universe, and you and me, so that the love that is God can become ever more inclusive.
Now how God can be 3 and yet 1, don’t ask – God exists on a different level of being from created beings like us, and we couldn’t imagine how God exists even if we tried. But what we do know, and can trust – indeed, everything depends on our trusting this good news – that God is love and can never be anything but love. And, as Jesus tells Nicodemus in the gospel, God so loved the world that the Father sent the Son so that all who are born of water and the Spirit might not be condemned but saved, might not be separated from love but caught up in love.
Understanding how this community works is neither possible nor necessary; but participating in the community of love that is God, that is everything.
So if we think of God as a far-off creator, who made the universe and now steps back to see what we make of it – we have misunderstood the God whose nature is community and relationship and we will miss out on the invitation God gives us to participate in that community.
If we imagine God as a stern judge, watching for us to make mistakes and to punish us when we get things wrong – we have misunderstood the God whose nature is love and we will miss out on the invitation God gives us to rest secure in the love that fills all things.
If we imagine God as a doting grandfather, who pats us on the head no matter what we do – we have misunderstood the God who is fully alive in mutual, two-way relationships, and we will miss out on the invitation God gives us to share as full participants in the mission of God to save and redeem the world.
The good news is that God is a community of love. That we, you and I, were made in the image and likeness of God who is a community of love. So you, and I, were made to belong to this community of love that is God. There is room for you in this community of love that is God, and for that reason there is room for you in this community that God has gathered here. And even if we don’t always embody the love of God as well as we could, the love of God is never in doubt because a community of love is who God is.