“Delight in the Human Race”

A Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

“Hail space for the Uncontained God!”

That line, coming from the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy for the Annunciation, has become a long time favorite of mine. In it the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to Mary is reframed and Mary redefined as the seemingly limited space for the uncontainable God.

Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity which defines the identity and nature of our God as not static, but rather as an ever-flowing, overflowing abundance.

God’s movement is always from above to below to within. And God moves within each of us not in order to confine himself to our limited reality, vision, and perspective but rather to expand us, even explode us, if you will, into a capacity beyond our capacity; a capacity able to contain the uncontainable God. Expanding our all too well-cherished and often rigid boundaries that create false divisions and seek to impose our limitations on a God who is limitless and thereby foreclose the possibility of the Divine expansion in our brothers and sisters as well.

God is not fitted to our narrowness, but rather God invades us to ever-expand us. And that expanding force is not violence, at least not violence as we human beings practice it, but rather it is a force of play, delight, and love. A force that flows wildly, that boils over generously, from within the Trinity itself: The Father who is Lover, the Son who is Beloved, and the Spirit who is the Love interpenetrating them and overflowing into us, into our hearts and through us into our brothers and sisters.

And what might be the sign of this ever-expanding, exploding Love invading our own lives? Delight! Delight is the primary sign of God’s overflowing love in our hearts. A God who delights in us and delights through us in our brothers and sisters.

Let’s listen again to the words of Wisdom from our first reading today from the Book of Proverbs: “Then was I beside him as his craftsman, and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race.”

In light of this passage, I would like to be so bold as to “redefine” or, maybe more humbly stated, “refine” the identity and relationality of the Trinity as: The One who Delights; the One Delighted in, and the Delight that interpenetrates them and wildly flows overabundantly from them into our hearts and through our hearts in the delight we take in one another.

I don’t know if we fully realize, or take seriously enough, how a simple look from us toward another can either limit them or liberate them.

Too often we look at others, especially others who appear so wildly different from us, and we look with fear which translates into contempt, cynicism, and judgment. We “contain” others in categories that limit their God-given uncontainable reality, just by a simple look. So, I wonder, is that what Jesus means by the “unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit?” If the Spirit is the overflowing love, the overflowing delight, God takes in us and through us takes in others, does our too often unchecked looking-in-order-to-limit, impede the Spirit’s flow?

The One who delights, in Christ, delights in me, delights in you and wants to delight in the human race through me and through you.

What would it mean if we learned to more deeply trust in and believe in, the truth that when God looks at us he looks with delight and delight, by its nature, expands, explodes our limited reality, our limited vision, and our limited perspective and frees us to look at our brothers and sisters with that same delight, honoring their fundamental existence as a “space for the uncontainable God.”

A simple look from me or from you at any of our brothers and sisters, and maybe especially at those who are most unlike us, can either limit them or liberate them. But if we don’t believe God delights in us, we cannot delight in the human race and the human race will continue to constrict itself into a self-destructive violence that wrecks our world.

All it takes is a look. One look from you; one look from me could be the difference. It can either release the power of the Spirit into our reality or forcibly constrain it. It can either honor the truth of who we are and who our brothers and sisters are: “Spaces for the Uncontainable God” or it can limit them into an all too familiar lie that they are fundamentally unloved, unlovable, and unworthy of love; Undelighted in, Un-delightable, and unworthy of Delight. You can imagine the possible end results of the latter way of looking. Unfortunately we see it around us everyday!

So, how might the world change if we simply dared to believe that God looks at us with delight, so we can dare to look with delight at our brothers and sisters allowing God to continue to take delight in the human race through us?