The Cross – Perichoresis Broken and Restored on Our Behalf
Introduction
Last week we focused on the Holy Spirit’s powerful work in us to enable us to witness to our Christian faith. Today we will be reflecting on what that Christian faith is all about, and specifically on how important the cross was as God’s means of reconciliation. It is the way that He re-creates the possibility of a perfect set of relationships, such as were there at creation. I want to focus entirely on the cross in the context of relationships. I want to reflect on the fact that the trinity shows us a God who is relational at the very core of His essence and on what that means for us as human beings created in His image.
Some of you know that I used to teach Spanish at St Dominic’s 6th Form College in Harrow. One of the areas we studied was the arts in Hispanic culture. And one of my favourite dances is the one you’ll see on the OHP. It’s the Catalan national dance, the Sardana. It’s rather special in a number of ways.
- Identity: The Catalan people draw great strength from identifying themselves with this dance. It is most often danced outside, and anyone can join in whenever they want to.
- Inclusive: The circle just continues growing as people join in and are welcomed. There is no sense that any particular clothing need be worn, although there is a national dress as well.
- Solidarity: The dance is an expression of corporate identity. The people’s awareness of this grew especially during the time of Franco, when they were not allowed to dance the Sardana or speak their own language. The Sardana became a symbol of resistance against repression.
Perichoresis
Now I want us to think about another dance. That dance is called perichoresis. It’s a Greek word that describes the dance of the trinity and was first used by the church fathers in the 2nd century AD. In Revelation Jesus is described as the lamb who is able to open the scroll where God’s will is recorded. Our reading from Isaiah reminds us of God as creator of all, so we’ll also start at the beginning, with creation, to reflect on what it is that God desires for us.
Perichoresis is a bit like the sardana. ‘In the beginning’, as we know from both Genesis 1 and John 1, the three persons of the trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – were together. They had what we might call a ‘corporate identity’, only much friendlier! There was a wonderful reciprocity and interrelatedness of persons in the one identity of God. Love flowed freely from one to the other. And not just any love – the deepest, most intimate knowing of each other. But love is not exclusive. And when God created man and woman in His image, they were included in the dance. (Aside: I John says that ‘God is love’. If you read it, you’ll find a great description of the interplay of God’s love – there is no love without relationship!)
Psalm 139 expresses just how intimate the relationship with God is. He knows everything about us! And we are intended for the creative interplay that occurs in the dance called perichoresis. I don’t want to stretch the analogy too much, but in that dance there was true freedom, too. It wasn’t just a symbol of freedom such as the Sardana was for the Catalán people, it was for real!
But right at the beginning something went wrong. In Genesis 3 we read that the serpent tempted God’s creatures with being like God in the knowledge of good and evil. And instead of being grateful for what they had, as described in Psalm 8, our Psalm for today: ‘You made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet!’ - they wanted what they didn’t have! Have you ever wanted to be like someone else? Instead of being grateful for what you are, and for the fact that you can have a relationship with that other person, you want to be that person. There is no relationship without the concept of someone being ‘other’ than us, and that is precious to God. By imaging the likeness of God in ourselves, we celebrate unity in diversity, just like the trinity does. That desire to be like God destroyed every possibility of interrelationship, of intimacy, and in the end broke into the dance of the trinity when God chose to restore us to relationship with Him and with others via the cross.
When we consider the cross we often think of what Jesus gave up. We read the passage in Philippians 2:5-11, and we pray that we will be willing to empty ourselves like Jesus did. But can we really be like Him? What we are to emulate (and this is stated specifically) is his not grasping at equality with God (think back to Genesis 3 and The Fall). Our attitude is what should be like His i.e. an acceptance of who we are and not wanting to be someone else. So we ask for the wisdom to think of ourselves the way we ought to, being humbly aware of our limitations and asking God for strength. But we cannot do what he did because we don’t have that glory that was His in the first place. We remain ‘in our places’, that is, the place God meant us to inhabit as human beings. And that means as close to complete acceptance of ourselves as we can get!
There is another wonderful Greek word for what Jesus did as described in this passage – kenosis. It means His self-emptying. When Jesus is said to be giving anything up, it is in terms of the glory that he has experienced in relation to the Father and the Spirit in the eternal perichoresis. We know that that giving up was temporary, but…
Just imagine the person that you have been closest to and loved the most in your life. Imagine that nothing ever went wrong – the relationship was perfection. Then something happened that meant that you would have to be cut off completely from that person by a barrier that you never imagined would ever be possible. That is what happened on the cross to Jesus. Only we are human beings, and Jesus was at the throbbing heart of the whole universe that He had created in communion with God the Father and Spirit.
Some time ago I went to see the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery. I was struck by the tallest painting that was there – of Christ on the cross. The reason it was so tall was because the cross was so long. Jesus was way, way up on top, and at the bottom, so far away that they couldn’t reach Him at all were His mother Mary, St. Dominic and St John. This was the moment when He died, the sky was very, very dark, and there was the strongest sensation of distance between Jesus and those that loved Him. In fact, he was so far away that He hardly seemed to be there at all. He had, in fact, descended into hell. For three days in our time, Jesus was completely cut off from the love that He had always experienced in the Trinity. No wonder he sweated blood in Gethsemane! For me, this is the most wrenching thing that Jesus did on the cross – greater pain than the physical pain He was subjected to. He accepted rejection by the most intimate persons to Him (an intimacy which we can never begin to understand), so that we would have a way in to that eternal dance of the trinity called perichoresis, which is anything but exclusive. The dance was broken so that we could dance again!
All three persons of the Trinity felt the break in their relationship when Christ died on the cross. We have a God who is acquainted with grief…He understands the pain of broken relationship.
God the Father and the Spirit loved Jesus very much. So as a human being, they made certain that there were some things that Jesus would not be giving up. Mary His mother was carefully chosen. Joseph was also carefully chosen. They were loving, God-fearing parents who listened to God and obeyed Him. Jesus grew up in a loving home. He had a godly extended family, too. These were priorities. When all the babies two and under were killed to satisfy Herod’s lust for power and fear of losing his throne to another king, Jesus was kept safe. This was a priority. Luke tells us that Jesus ‘grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and people’. This was also important. But He was not wealthy. This was not a priority. He did not live a very long life. Again – not a priority. He did have a good number of very close friends – albeit all too human ones! These friends were extremely important, because through these frail human vessels, the good news of what Jesus would accomplish on the cross was to be made known. As a human being, Jesus had about as much going for Him as anyone!
You may be thinking that God made sure of certain circumstances with Jesus as a child, but you, for one, have been deprived. That is certainly true for many people. But I think that would be the wrong focus. Jesus willingly accepted separation from the God that, even as a human being, He felt very close to. In exchange we can have all that comes from that.
In ourselves: Where we feel that the bits of our own personal identity are falling apart, we can trust Him to heal and to make us whole again. This may come through self-forgiveness or forgiveness of others, or even forgiveness of God! (quite often people are angry with God – this does not mean that He has done anything ‘wrong’!) We can learn to be patient and to accept ourselves just as we are.
In relationship with others: When we feel lonely, we can begin to be vulnerable to others and allow self-revelation to begin to peek through, as we journey together with others in the Church, because we become strong as we trust God in our weakness.
In relationship with God: We are forgiven because of Jesus’ death on the cross, and that means that we can be restored into that relationship with God that Adam and Eve forfeited when they wanted to be like God. We can dance with Him, full of joy and gratefulness.
Yes, Jesus had everything going for Him. He was integrated in every way. And that is exactly what God wants for us! The church should be the place for healing for any that have not experienced this integration or wholeness in their lives. NOT because the church is perfect, but rather because the church knows the way to the Father in Christ – and that is through the cross.
(Sardana picture again)
We are the church. In a society where more and more houses are being built because there are increasingly numbers of single people needing homes, we proclaim a God who from the very beginning was relational. We proclaim a God who made us in His own image to be relational. We proclaim a God who Himself suffered when the Trinity was disrupted so that we could return to relationship with God and man. Do we believe this? If so, what are we going to do about it?
I’ve put together a ‘checklist’ to reflect on and to challenge us to aspire to better relationships on the basis of the cross.
- Accept myself as God made me
- Free to not envy others
- Inclusive of all others
- Ask for and receive forgiveness
- Forgive those who wrong me
- Know God’s unconditional love for me
- Glorify God in the dance of the Trinity
Now, if you feel able to, commit to telling someone you trust how you have responded. Expect God to continue transforming you by his Spirit, to have that attitude which was Jesus’!
God bless you richly as you reach in to yourself and out to others and to God through the CROSS. Jesus said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!’ AMEN.