Sacramental Living

Trinitarian theology is just about as interesting to me as sacramental theology. And I’ve been noticing of late how the Trinitarian lens through which I see the world has shaped me for missional life.

For example, God’s inner life, God’s relationship with the world, and God’s role as the source of all our understanding of who God is are threads woven together by God’s own producing of God’s self.  God is eternal and thus time is always present-tense from God’s perspective.  There can be no ordering of events in specified orders–”whether temporal, logical, or otherwise.”[1] To maintain a trinitarian grammar, there can be no producing without a producer and a product.  As David Cunningham states God’s activity of producing: “God produces God . . . God produces the world . . . God produces our knowledge of God.”[2]

In God’s producing of God, there is not mere self-duplication.  God gives over God’s self to an Other, so that there might be an Other.  Cunningham uses the example–a vestigium, perhaps–of pregnancy to illustrate this internal self-differentiation.  The Father, as Source, produces the Son, as Wellspring, and the Spirit, as Living Water.  Yet, verbal forms of these processions would be even more accurate, though more abstract.  Because, the differentiation within the Godhead is relational; the processions consist of relations constantly relating within each other.

God produces the world as gift.  And God awaits the return of this gift with our ‘Yes.’  God enables us to sustain this ‘Yes,’ as God continues to create, redeem, and sanctify the world.

God produces our knowledge of God.  No authentic understanding of God is possible outside of the “communally-normed reading of the biblical narratives that is made possible by the Spirit-filled Church.”[3] The vestigia trinitatis are supplementary to intimate corporate knowing of God.  God has already revealed all of God’s self.  God now continues to illuminate our hearts and minds to his truth and revelation.

It’s this understanding of God’s producing of reality that paves the way for incarnational living.

[2] Ibid., 58.

[3] Ibid., 83.

Life has been a whirlwind of late. Financial strains, life circumstance, not feeling in control of it all (that last one is hard for me to deal with).Last week, the Nieces were in Nashville, TN visiting family and friends. I was looking forward to a fun time of catching up with folks from my old hometown. Yet it seemed that sadness pervaded.

We stayed with some very good friends who just a few months ago lost their baby an hour after he was born. Several late-night talks with them were difficult and sad and heart-wrenching.

We had some extended family news come our way that shook life circumstances for Heather’s side of the family.

A good family friend, mentor, and church leader at my old stomping grounds unexpectedly took his own life.

All of this during our “vacation.”

I have been experiencing a lot of sadness, brokenness, doubting, and feelings of helplessness of late.

Yet here’s what I’m learning … God has a way of weaving beauty out of brokenness and despair.

I’m not one of those who blames God for everything. I mean, if God really controlled everything with the way the word is today, that’s not a God I could worship, much less serve. No, it seems that scripture and experience tells us that evil just happens. Yet in the midst of evil, God longs to be in relationship with his creation. And if we let him, God will create something surprising and wonderful out of the shards of sadness, grief, despair, and hopelessness that invade our lives from time to time.

For instance, with the happenings I mentioned above … We got to spend quality time with some best friends during their dark days of anger and despair. We got to hug and be present and just listen. All in all experiencing a deeper level of friendship … and they did too.

We see my wife’s family pulling together with others in their faith community to truly seek God’s leading in their situation.

We were able to be with and comfort the family of our friend. We remembered his actions of love and compassion throughout his life. We saw his young grandson turn to God’s story in the days that followed in order to make sense of the situation.

God is weaving something beautiful, even when all seems lost. God is faithful to love us and care for us, even when we feel abandoned. God is relentless in his activity to create wonder and hope, even when we feel like he has nothing to work with.

This is the God I worship. This is the God I serve. This is the God I’m anticipating will surprise me again soon in wonderful ways.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How is God taking your brokenness and making something surprising and wonderful out of it?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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Many would argue there is a dichotomy of coercion and persuasion as means of authority. See here … and here … and here. The former would involve violence enacted upon one in relationship, the latter would involve non-violent enticing or invitation into relationship.

But this seems to be a false–or at the least, superficial–dichotomy. If we are examining life within the Triune God, displayed as God with us in the life of Christ, and continuing in the Church, then a fully trinitarian account of power and authority must not ignore the role of the Spirit as a relationship of perpetual disturber and innovator.

God the Holy Spirit is always opening up new possibilities. This even takes place through the power of suffering; a power that is able to change events. Non-violent actions are not synonymous with non-forceful actions. The Spirit is always disturbing our status quo. For newness to come, we must be stripped–sometimes forcefully (violently?)–of the old.

When the Triune God acts, when God directly participates with his creation to create and re-create newness, it is a violent act from the perspective of the created. God’s triunity is maintained when God’s authorship is displayed in opening up spaces within the divine dance for new participants. This is how God swallowed death into himself.

This does not give the Christian license to act violently. But it does mean that all Christ-followers must not squelch their roles as prophets in the biblical idiom. Prophets speak newness into existence, sometimes tearing down and destroying the old. Also, the church must continue to defend the defenseless, most often from the ‘nation-states.’

How can this be done without appearing forceful to the nation-state? Violence must be carefully defined. When God acts to create newness, God does not act violently from God’s perspective. It is God’s love that is in action, to create, redeem, sanctify: to reconcile.

This same love must be in us as we participate in the community of divine love that brings newness.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you see the Triune God informing coercion and persuasion?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.