Published With Thanksgiving

We find ourselves, after a week of protests that led the President who, in a grab for power, chased away protestors to pose with a Bible, at Trinity Sunday. Here, early in this new season, we think again about the mystery, the icon of our God, the One in three.

I am not denying the reality of the Trinity when I call it an icon. What I mean is that, as a concept the Trinity is an icon for us. It does not so much define the ineffable reality of God as give us a means to try to understand that reality. That’s what icons are, a way to understand someone.

Icons refuse the imposition of our opinions, prejudices, and agendas. They are windows, ever pointing beyond themselves to the Divine, calling us beyond our understanding. Idols do much the opposite. Idols are merely repositories for our fears, our egos. They are less a window than a mirror.

The problem we as Christians have is that we make idols out of our icons. Icons are relational, calling us to allow the icon to be as it was created to be so it can teach us about itself and, in turn, about ourselves. Idols are formed when we abandon the relationship.

Jesus, told a story about icons. At the end of all things, people ask him when they saw him naked, hungry, and thirsty. Jesus tells them that when we saw others, truly saw them so as to arouse our love and compassion, we’d seen him. Every person we encounter, seen and accepted for who they are, reveals to us the One. We are icons, pointing to Christ.

But when our fears, our brokenness comes between us and another, we turn each other to idols, made in the image we give them. If people fail to be that idol, to refuse our petitions that they act as we desire, we lash out. We reach out to destroy them so we can make new idols.

In Lafayette park in D.C. on Monday, we saw an attempt to smash idols. There were people that no longer reflected the image the President wanted to see. So, he committed an act of violence to stand on holy ground and create his own idol.

But unlike symbols made of wood and metal, humans do not go silent when you attempt to destroy them. They cry out. They ask to be seen for who they are, to be seen as the reflection of the One who conquered death with love. And they continue crying until we turn, look, and see.

In the icon of the Trinity, we see a relationship. In our limited, human minds we are given a means to see three persons who are equal and distinct. Like the visitors to Abraham’s tent, they each take a place at the table, none taking the head nor the foot but sitting together. And each is accepted and valued for themselves.

Before his death, Jesus prayed that we would all be one as the Trinity is one. It was a prayer that we see one another as holy icons, which point to Christ. It was a petition that we would form relationships with one another where we come and sit together at the table as friends and equals.

And where no one is treated as another’s idol.