Holy Trinity: One God, Three Persons. Easy to say; hard to comprehend; still harder to embrace.
 
            Do you like to dance? Do you dance well? One of my favorite memories of growing up in the 1950s is that of me and two of my friends, on the cusp of being teenagers, gathered at someone’s house, trying to teach one another how to lindy. Two years after the “birth” of rock ’n roll, OUR music was everywhere. And meant a lot to us. Someone had “borrowed” his older sister’s records and we played them over and over for over. I couldn’t lead; I couldn’t follow. I never got it.
 
             But dancing is magical. In 1952, my aunts took me to see “Singin’ in the Rain.” I was mesmerized by the famous dance scene. To this day, whenever I watch the movie again, I’m still enthralled. Gene Kelly, even drenched with rain, makes it seem so effortless, so enjoyable. I get the same reaction from those old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals - corny plots, great music, wonderful dance routines.
 
            However, when some friends invited me to see the Broadway show “42nd Street,” I never told them, but I did NOT enjoy it. There was no relief from the constant clacking of feet. I was exhausted by the time it was over. Yet, not so when I watched Michael Fautley’s “Riverdance.” My Irish genes were enthralled!!
 
            What’s this got to do with the Blessed Trinity? I’ll explain in just a bit. But, first, we need to clear up a misconception about God attached to this Sunday’s first scripture reading. It suffers a bit from being lifted out of context. There is a prelude without which today’s episode loses much of its point.
 
            We are told that Moses took the stone tablets and went up Mount Sinai. But these are the SECOND set of tablets and the second climb. We are supposed to remember that, sometime earlier, Moses had come DOWN the mountain with the first set. Seeing his people in frenzied dance around a golden calf, he flew into a rage and smashed the tiles on which God had just inscribed the Commandments. Having witnessed a terrible sin, Moses then became himself a terrible sinner. So the current trip up the mountain is made in fear and trembling. Who knows what will await him? Will God even deign to speak with him ever again?        
 
            This background provides the key to understanding what happens next. As He had done before, God envelops Moses in a cloud - the “connection” is beginning again!!
 
            Then God calls out God’s name, “Lord.” This seems redundant to us because we know He is Lord. For the ancients, however, the possession of someone’s name implied having power over them; it made the name-holder vulnerable. Moreover, the names of deities were used for incantation and cursing. In the face of shameful idolatry and prideful rage, Israel’s God offers access, vulnerability and openness.
 
            Then God amplifies His name with a description: “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, rich in kindness and fidelity.” The key Hebrew words in this passage are “hesed” and “emeh.”  Moving through Greek, into Latin, and then to English, they come out as “love” and “fidelity.” God has taken the sins of Moses and the people and turned them into righteous acts on God’s own part. 
 
            Ancient peoples expected their gods to be wrathful, unforgiving, imperious and capricious. It was unheard of that a god would be “slow to anger.” “Kindness” would have been, at best, a whim; “fidelity” in relationships with mere mortals, absurd. Yahweh-God has rewritten the script. As the saying goes, “Game changer!!”
 
            God patiently inscribes His Covenant Law again. This code will create a people and bind them together.  His “anger” is subsumed in nurture; His “kindness” is shown in foresight; His “fidelity” is invested in relationship and commitment.
 
            This is the God who reveals Himself in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the God who works in the world as an ever-present in-SPIR-ation.
 
            One of the boiler-plate “explanations” of the Blessed Trinity assigns each Person a job. The Father is in charge of creation; the Son, redemption; the Holy Spirit, lifelong bestowal of grace. It’s neat; but it doesn’t quite work. When God the Father was busy with His “Let it be!” did the Son and the Holy Spirit have the day off? When Jesus offered His life for us on Calvary, were the Father and the Spirit out to lunch? When the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles at Pentecost, were the Father and the Son busy elsewhere? The action of One is the action of All.
 
            But that only makes it harder to understand. That’s where dancing comes in.
 
            Before the Western Church began to dominate the Church’s doctrinal formation, great and holy minds in the Middle East had been pondering the Mystery of the Trinity. Four of them - not together, but in concert - came up with a fascinating term for the relationship of the Trinity, both within Itself and with the world. The theologians’ names are Maximus the Confessor, St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. John of Damascus. Their metaphor was favored by several Vatican II advisors, such as Henri deLubac and Hans Von Balthasar, by the popular Catholic author, Father Richard Rohr, and even by Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI. So, we’re in good company. The word they coined was “Perichoresis.”
 
             " Perichoresis" is derived from the Greek peri, "around," and chorein, which has multiple meanings, among them "to make room for," "go forward" and "contain.” The root Greek word is “ choris.” It means means dance. It comes into English as “chorus,” or “chorale,” both a singing group and the music they are singing. But it also lurks behind the word “choreography,” which is a pattern of dance steps. Hello, Gene and Fred!
 
            The image proposed is a “round”-type dance, where people hold hands or lock arms, circling and stepping simultaneously. The Three Persons merrily and lovingly dance together in Their work of creating, redeeming, gracing and loving the world.  We do not know what dance looked like in the time of Christ or in the various eras when these writers lived. But the legacy likely endures in the “round” dances still performed today throughout the Middle East and across the map of Europe. Think Jewish “horah” danced to “Hava Nagila”; Italian “tarantella;” and, famously, Zorba the Greek’s “sirtaki.”
 
            In all those dances, the circle closes, then opens to welcome new dancers, then closes again, then reopens. The same Three Persons in the Closed Circle of Their Divinity twirl in loving embrace until they collide with time. The circling motion becomes an ever-advancing spiral. The Three Dancers fling open the circle to invite us in. When God the Son becomes a human being, He secures us a permanent place in the Circle. All the while, the inner dynamism of the dance, the tempo, is kept by the Holy Spirit.
 
            Today’s Gospel is one of the most famous and beloved passages in all of Sacred Scripture: “God so loved the world ....” It is so inviting, so appealing, so comforting - except for the chilling final phrase: “... but whoever does not believe is already condemned for not believing ...” Ouch. That seems so unfair; and even illogical. How can a person be condemned for not believing? We can’t force our minds to embrace something we cannot accept.
 
            The passage has become “bumper sticker” theology. “JOHN 3:16!!” We have all witnessed its being used by televangelists. The preacher whips the crowd into an emotional fervor with the warmth and power of Christ’s words; then goads those on the fence to “accept Jesus as their ‘Personal Savior.’” We DO need a Savior. And He IS personal. We do NOT need force-fed faith. The centuries are mute witness to the destruction it has caused.
 
            Saint John is concerned with the meaning of the salvation offered by the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He has begun to work out the “logistics” of a God Who is One yet Three, Three yet One. This task will consume the Church for four centuries. However, at John’s “moment” in the on-going dance, his Church is confronted with the first glimmerings of heresy - a rejection of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A “real” god would never lower himself to become a man. It had torn his church apart. Hence the phrase, “condemned for not believing in the 'only SON of God.’” Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians also was written to heal church divisions, those caused by jealousy, pride and conflicting loyalties. Moses was dealing with people whose faith was broken by fear, doubt and sheer physical exhaustion.
 
            We too are a people divided by race; wounded by illness; crippled by fear; frustrated by economic inequity; torn asunder by conflicting political loyalties. I suggest there is another way to read the two-edged sword of John 3: 16 to 18.
 
             As it spirals onward in intimate embrace, the Divine Circle opens, the “Lord of the Dance” extends His hand to the next “partner.” In the words of Lee Ann Womack, He calls out, “I hope you dance!” The believer responds with Ann Murray’s fervor, “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?”  But some - channeling their inner Fred Astaire as he spars with Ginger Rogers - respond, “I won’t dance! Don’t ask me!”
 
            Conflict! Rejection! But, in the movie, Astaire eventually always does dance with Rogers. There is always hope that those who begin by refusing eventually will enter the dance.