May 30 Trinity Sunday
There are several experiences in life that you just don’t fully understand unless you’ve actually done it yourself. Take, for example, underwater cave diving. I’ve heard about it, read about it, even watched a documentary about cave diving in the famous blue sinkholes of the Bahamas… but I am sure that I don’t have the full picture of what it’s like to actually do it.
Much has been made of those blue holes in the Bahamas in recent years. Apparently the last ice age and receding ocean waters created a labyrinth of deep underwater caves. Brilliantly blue, they start out as fresh water near the surface and turn into salt water the deeper you go. Divers have recently discovered an amazing and perfectly preserved fossil record as their dives went deeper. They have encountered the bones of creatures long since gone from the surface of the islands. The quest for this growing scientific knowledge, however, is not for the faint of heart.
For one thing, exploring the sinkholes is risky. Depth, tight spaces, vision-clouding particles, and toxic layers of hydrogen sulfide can make blue holes dark and dangerous places to dive.
And divers have to wear massive amounts of very technical gear. Not only do you need an oxygen tank and all the accessories, you need gear for a plan B or even plan C should those systems fail.
And perhaps the most important part of a safe dive is keeping track of the line that divers lay as they go. A simple string gets tied around rocks and edges of cave walls as they swim deeper into the cave. Since the caves can be quite disorienting, divers rely on this line to get where they need to go. It’s like an underwater trail of breadcrumbs.
Well, I’ve told you what I know about underwater cave diving. But despite learning about these technical details, I don’t know what it feels like to take that first jump into the blue hole and begin to swim down into the darkness. The descriptions from actual divers give us a glimpse of that underwater adventure, but those words can’t tell us the whole picture. We’d have to take the plunge ourselves.
This is a bit like how religious faith works, too. Jesus was aware that a lecture about the nature of God wouldn’t do the disciples much good. Telling them a bunch of words about God would only bring them so far in their understanding. “I still have many things to say to you,” Jesus said, “but you cannot bear them now.” He knew they wouldn’t be able to take in the whole picture at once. And so he made them a promise. That the Spirit of truth would come and lead them, gradually, into all truth.
I picture that promised Spirit as the line in the underwater cave, guiding divers ever deeper into the waters, into mystery. The disciples, following the Holy Spirit as their guide, would learn much more about God than what words could convey. They would have to take the plunge themselves and learn about God gradually through the experiences of their own lives.
This idea of the Holy Spirit as a line going deeper in an underwater cave seems like a fitting image for Trinity Sunday. This is the one Sunday of the year that we devote specifically to a doctrine, or teaching of the church. It’s a big picture kind of day, when we are supposed to dwell on the mystery of God as one in three persons who share the same substance. Father, Son and Holy Spirit we say. Or creator, redeemer, sustainer. Or, in my favorite image, God as two men and a bird.
And this is precisely where we get into sticky territory. The Trinitarian language of our tradition is our best shot at approximating who God is and what that has to do with us. But our language and imagery will always fall short of naming the divine essence. Words will only take us so far into the heart of God. Jesus knew that, and the advice he gave to his disciples was to take the plunge and be open to where the spirit would guide them, for the experiences of God ahead would help them to go deeper into mystery.
Now, I have not gone cave diving myself, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. And personally, I would not want to be the first diver to go into an underwater cave. I wouldn’t want to be the one whose job it is to lay down that guiding line. It would be far too easy to get lost in the murky water. But if we continue with the idea of cave diving as a metaphor for our religious journey, here is where the Holy Trinity is a step of ahead of us yet again. The second person of the Trinity has already gone before us. Like a diver laying the line, Christ entered into the depths of human experience and lived a life that we might have our own lives redeemed. He is the one who has gone before us on this journey, to lead the way to our final destination in God. There is no depth of human life that Christ did not touch, no cave left unexplored.
Which means that all of our own experiences, from the greatest of joys, to our biggest mistakes and deepest sorrows, all are touched by God. God is with us through the depths of human life. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, the experiences of our own lives guide us ever deeper into understanding God, bringing us farther than words ever could. As we go along, our understanding deepens.
Being a Christian is a lot like being an underwater cave diver. We follow the one who has gone before us. We are guided by the Holy Spirit as our life line. And finally, we will reach the end of our exploration and know God beyond words. But in the meantime, we give thanks for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the chance to take the plunge ourselves, into the mystery of God. Amen.