(The Nationalist, 20 May 2005)
If someone asked you to draw a picture of God, how would you do it? An old man with a beard up in the sky? That’s an image of children and cartoonists. It lends itself to the idea of God living in isolation. Maybe we should throw it out, along with the image of the other old man with a beard up in the sky, the one who comes down the chimney at Christmas with a sack of presents over his shoulder. God is not Santa Claus on a cosmic scale. Throw out also the fable about Saint Patrick explaining the Trinity by the shamrock. That’s a invention from the seventeenth century. The Trinity is not a whole made up of three parts like three leaves making up a flower.
God lives in a community of persons who are distinct but equal. They are not the same, like peas in a pod, they are distinct. But they are equal; there is no senior or junior among them. And God is not personal just as we are, not a bigger and better version of us, but greater than anything we can imagine.
God tells us in the bible that we human beings are made in his image. We are social creatures, called to community. A life lived solely for oneself is a life wasted. The only kind of life worth living is one lived for others. That is where we discover our true selves and develop our humanity.
We are called to community. That call needs to be lived out locally, starting with the family and the neighbourhood. That is where it becomes real for us. Otherwise, it’s just a nice idea that makes no difference.
The feast of the Trinity is a celebration of the community life of God. We are called to live as God lived. He didn’t separate himself from the world and its problems. He got involved in the most basic and human way possible by coming into the world himself, by becoming a human being like us, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Reach out to your neighbours, get to know them, start by saying hello – but don’t stop there. The more we build community locally, the better life will be for all of us. We won’t have to wait till heaven to experience its reward. The time to start is now, the place to start is here. Our human and Christian vocation is to live in community. Then we will begin to mirror the community life of God which we call the Trinity.
For those in a hurry: Do what you can, and don’t worry about what you can’t. (Anon.)