Living in Approachable Light

The Trinity might seem a world away from trenches of human suffering and yet if it is to mean anything the two must be connected. Usually, the subject of the Trinity is guaranteed to excite nothing more than a shrug or a weary smile. As working examples, the triangle is tired and the shamrock is long wilted: besides, both treat the Trinity as a problem to be reckoned with rather than a mystery to be entered. However, when it comes to talking about the Trinity, we must face what Thomas Aquinas called ‘’the misery of language.’’ The appeal of silence becomes attractive, but it is the silence of God which is the problem for so many.

All religions recognize that God is beyond every name, that he is the Absolute One Who lives in unapproachable light, who is beyond all reach and all description. In the Christian tradition the Absolute One is called the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that the Absolute One has chosen to reveal himself in his son.

Everything the father is he gives the son. Everything the son receives he gives to the father in return. This gift between the Father and the Son is called the Spirit of God. The Father does not keep anything from the son; the son does not withhold anything from the Father. This bond of unity between them, the vibrancy of this love, this is called the Spirit of God. 

The Son is the Word of the silent God; he is the visibility of the invisible God. The Son is the father made visible. ‘’He who has seen me has seen the Father.’’ Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father because the Son is everything there is to see about the Father. Jesus is the one who lived in approachable light, he is the one whose name we can get right. He is the one who calls us friends.

In the life, Passion and death of Jesus we have the icon of the Absolute God, we have the image of the invisible one. Jesus is the one who walked among us, who was truly human, who suffered the loss of his own friends and who suffered the absence of God. The cry ‘’My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’’ echoes loudly in the silence of the Gospels. It is the same cry as the German soldier’s; it comes from the same place within, which longs for the comfort of God’s presence in the midst of horror and desolation.

It is the scream of God. And in God’s scream we can hear our own. It is ‘’deep calling on deep.’’ Jesus is the cry of God to us and our cry to the Absolute one. In him God and humanity meet. Through Jesus we can touch God; we can look on the face of God and live. 

At some time in our lives we can all make the prayer of the German soldier who pleads with God: ‘’Live with us, at night, when it’s cold and lonely, and the stomach hungers in the silence - live with us then, God.’’ What we hunger for is not a new argument about the Trinity but the experience of a God who loves us. And the promise of Jesus in today’s Gospel is that he will share the love between himself and the Father with all his followers. That God will live with us in the power of the Spirit.

We believe that the Spirit of God is alive in us. The Spirit of God lives in us and experiences our hunger and loneliness and helps us voice our prayers. We can rejoice that God still chooses to dwell with us and groans within us as we struggle towards the peace of God’s kingdom.