God is a Donut

Last Sunday I said that asking the question ‘what does the Bible say?’ about something often doesn’t have a simple, quick answer because the Bible speaks in many voices which do not necessarily agree. It is particularly difficult this morning, Trinity Sunday, since the Bible says nothing explicit about the Trinity, and yet it is a central part of our understanding of the nature of God.

The Bible does not say anything directly about the Trinity because it is a way of thinking about God that gelled in the years after the New Testament books and letters were compiled.

Jesus talked about the Father, and himself as the Son and he promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. In his prayer for his disciples in John 17 he said, ‘I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’

Early Christian philosophers and theologians wrestled with how this unity could exist, how three divine persons could be one God. They did not agree and at times the debate was as acrimonious as today’s partisan political divide.

The debate went on for over fifty years before the church in the Roman Empire was declared Trinitarian. Of course there were Christians outside the Roman Empire, and they did not necessarily believe that the Christ was of the same substance as the Father. We use the Nicene Creed to remind ourselves that our ancestors were Trinitarian and that is how we have come to understand God.

By now you’re probably wondering why we care about this ancient history.  When I googled “Christian Heresies” to remind myself of the details of the debate, the listing at the top was for Amazon and its heading was “Early Christian Heresies – Keep Yourself Entertained.”

So we could keep ourselves entertained by talking about early Christian arguments about the nature of God, but what is really important is who is God for us today?

This is a vital question because the way we understand God is reflected in the way we live and love and pray.

If we think of God as hierarchical – as a solid triangle of authority - we will tend to have a rule-based approach to our spiritual lives. If we think of the Trinity as a dancing circle of light then we will be more organic and perhaps more playful in our approach to living with God.

It will come as no surprise to you that the dancing Trinity is the way I like to imagine God. This is no more Biblical than a triangle but I think it reflects the way our understanding of the cosmos increases our understanding of God.

As I understand it, at the atomic level there are tiny things that are in constant motion and their motion looks rather like a dancing sphere. At the other end of the scale, there are planets and galaxies who are also moving in relation to one another. The ancient people imagined that there were celestial spheres in which the stars and planets were embedded. Today we think of orbits through which the heavenly bodies move in space. So there’s been a shift from thinking of solidity to understanding movement as the fundamental nature of matter.

It makes sense then that our understanding of God becomes more fluid. Yes we still want and need God to be the bedrock on which we stand but now we know that that very bedrock is made of particles in motion and so we can think of God as more like water, constantly flowing in and through and around everything.

So I just threw in another metaphor – a few minutes ago I was thinking about God as a dancing sphere of light and now I’m talking about God as water. Which is it? Yes both, and neither because God is God but we can only grasp ideas of God through our own experience, by saying God is like…

There is a story of an old Rabbi who was dying. He was surrounded by a large crowd of family and followers all eager to hear his last words. The old man suddenly spoke and whispered, “God is a donut.” The people behind asked “what did he say?” “God is a donut” Finally the whisper reached the edge of the crowd, “God is a donut”. Then someone asked, “What does that mean, God is a donut?” the question was passed to the front of the crowd, “What does that mean?” “What does that mean?” “What does that mean?” The rabbi’s son bent over and said into the old man’s ear, “What does it mean – God is a donut?” There was a long silence and they all waited. Finally the old rabbi sighed and said “Maybe God is not a donut.”

So how can we know that our ideas of God are true, or at least as true as we can get?

As followers of Jesus, whenever we think about God we do so through the lens of Jesus’ teaching, life, death and resurrection. Jesus Christ is the revelation of God in human terms – in 1st century male human terms. And what we see and hear from Jesus is love. Jesus healed on the sabbath, Jesus ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes. Jesus was not caught up in the rules of society, who was in and who was out, Jesus demonstrated love for all beings.

So that is fundamental. God is love. If it is not deeply loving, it is not God.

Regardless of whether God is like a triangle, a dancing sphere, running water or even a donut, God is love. And God is peace.

This has been a new understanding for me this month. God is peace. God is not worried about the things that worry me. God is not worried about the Middle East or the climate crisis or the coming El Nino. God is not worried about suffering and despair. It is not that God does not care about these things, I think God cares very deeply. But God’s peace is before and under and beyond it all.

Today we heard the first story of creation. God created it all and God saw that it was good. And God is working towards the redemption of creation when we will all be reconciled with God and all things brought into balance. And God is perfectly peaceful and relaxed about that process. It is all OK.  God is love and God Is peace.

That doesn’t let us off the hook. As the people of God, our calling is to be clear channels for the blessing of God to bless Creation. We are called to love, to pray, to act as if the Reign of God is here right now. We are called to be God with flesh on. We are called to speak and to act and to vote as we believe God would have us do.

We have a human tendency to make God in our own image. We imagine that God is like us and so we think of an angry vengeful God. We think that God is on our side when we attack other countries, especially if their people are predominately Muslim or Hindu or anything other than ‘Christian.’ We imagine that God wants us to have guns so we can defend ourselves and we can fight the enemy, whoever they may be.

This is not the God we see in Jesus. Jesus was ready to call out hypocrisy and corruption, but he did not fight even when wrongfully arrested; he reminded us that even the despised non-Jewish Samaritan was our neighbor; his compassion extended to lepers and social outcasts.

This is the God we worship. At this time in history our images of God will be more organic, more tied into the web of life than they were in the 4th Century. But whatever images we may use; Mother, Father, dancing Spirit, energy of the Universe – however we imagine God – what is important is that we allow ourselves to be transformed by God rather than transforming God into us.

If your imaginings of God do not pull you closer to the Abba God of Jesus then it is time to change your thinking. Because God is always challenging us to let go of our little ego ways and to be transformed into the Christ-like beings we were made to be. God holds out her arms to us and gathers us to her bosom.

And there we find love, peace and the courage to be more than we ever thought we could be.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall