The Dance of Love

The Dance of Love

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

June 15, 2014; Trinity Sunday, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(2 Corinthians 11-13)  Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.

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From St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 8 in Sermons on the Song of Songs:

If, as is properly understood, the Father is he who kisses, the Son is he who is kissed, then it cannot be wrong to see in the kiss the Holy Spirit, for he is the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity.”

Christians make a daring and profound claim. We say that relationship is everything and everything is in relationship. Everything counts. Everything is included. All that is, exists in God, therefore everything that is, dwells in the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, “their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity.”

Each of us is a manifestation of the outflowing, creative love of God. At the core of your being, dwells the eternal peace, love and unity of God expressed uniquely in you. Every person is a Word of God to the world. We all live in intimate relationship with God, with each other, and with all creation. That is the nature of Reality.

Our Christian perspective accords with the insights of modern physics. Reality is not so much a bunch of separate “things” as it is relationships. All the matter in the universe could be condensed to a size no wider than the space between my hands. Everything that we see in this beautiful world and throughout the universe is actually fields of relationships dancing in and out of various states of energy.

In our Christian Doctrine of the Trinity, we declare that God is relationship. A traditional, classical image of God the Holy Trinity is the image of a dance – a dance of love – love given and receive and returned. Lover, beloved and love united and energized into a relationship of union. An eternal process of Interbeing.

The early church used the Greek word “perichoresis” to try to describe the intimate relationship of the Trinity. It is derived from the Greek peri, meaning “around,” and chorein, which has multiple meanings: “to make room for,” “to go forward,” and “to contain.” “God is a circle dance (perichoresis) of total outpouring and perfect receiving among three intimate partners, who receive their Total Self from another and then hand it on to another, who repeats the self-emptying act of love to a third.”[i]

The intimate dance of openness, making room for infinite love, fully given and fully received, goes on and on with an energy which creates and contains all that is. Joy. Wonder. Union. Fourteenth century mystic Meister Eckhart says, “Do you want to know what the Trinity is: God laughs and creates the Son. The Son laughs and creates the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit laughs and creates us.”

Can you feel this energy of infinite joyful creativity and love? At the center of your being dwells this same intimate presence, energizing and loving you into being. Inviting you into the divine dance.

I can’t understand people who think of God as an angry judge, determined to punish or eternally annihilate everything that God has created except those few who believe some narrow, particular theology or repeat some transactional agreement about their belief. Rubbish.

God can’t do what they think God does. The movement of God is in only one direction, the direction of self-emptying love. Therefore it is impossible for God not to be totally giving, outpouring, loving. Like an eternal stream flowing downhill, God only loves and gives, going “in only one, constant, and eternal direction – toward ever more creative life, and a love that is stronger than death.”[ii]

All humanity receives that divine love. We Christians know that truth through the incarnation of Jesus, for Jesus takes all humanity into his flesh and returns it to the Father wholly reconciled.

Jesus draws all humanity into the very life and dance of God. “That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us.”

The Father and the Son not only embrace each other, but they also enter into each other, permeate each other, and dwell in each other. Therefore, God the Holy Trinity enters into us, permeates us, and dwells in us. Do not look for God “out there.” God is “in here,” intimately breathing us into being, loving and energizing us completely.

We don’t have to do anything to become one with God. We are one with God. So relax. Simply live in the energy field of divine love as surely as a fish lives in water.

And remember, your condition as a human being is the same as every other human being. You are a manifestation of the outpouring of God’s infinite love squeezed into time and space, and into the container of human consciousness. Created by love, in love, for love.

Therefore, be love, be in love, and, Jesus tells us, love one another.

In Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, the dying monk Father Zossima offers his beautiful final exhortations to his monastic community. He tells them:

Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.[iii]

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[i]  Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, SPCK, London, 2013, p. 157

[ii] Ibid, p. 158

[iii]  Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book 6, Chapter 3, (g) http://www.ccel.org/d/dostoevsky/karamozov/htm/book06/chapter03.html

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