Have you ever not been welcomed?
Have you ever not welcomed someone else?
Have you ever been a good host? A bad host?
Have you ever been a bad guest? A rude visitor?
Hospitality.
Hospitality can be complicated. Very few of us are natural hosts. Very few of us are natural guests. It takes practice and grace.
Hospitality isn’t just about giving generously and gladly it is also about receiving thankfully. It is about reaching out and inviting in to be closer and it is also about honoring distance, distinction and personal space, the room it takes for us to be who we are
Hospitality it is at the heart of what life is all about, it is at the heart of who we are as human beings, and it is at the heart of who God is.
Trinity Sunday.
The Sunday where we celebrate and emphasize the early Church teaching that God is triune, a trinity of persons with unity of being, three yet one, one yet three, our arithmetic fails, the calculus of God just doesn’t add up to our limited perspective. How can one and three be the same? A mysterious algebra.
Hospitality is who God is at heart, three persons that are distinct yet one, an intimate community and communion that gives the freedom to be individual and distinct.
The mystery of God is also the mystery of hospitality. The mystery divine hospitality is that true intimacy and closeness is the source of the true freedom to be distinct and unique and separate. The flip side of the mystery is also true: the freedom to be distinct and unique is also the source of intimacy and closeness. The holiness and the wholeness of God live out this life giving, begetting and creating dynamic. The dynamo of overflowing hospitality: the triune God.
One of the ancient symbols of the trinity is the icon on your bulletin and behind the altar, it is sometimes called the Trinity and sometimes it is called the Hospitality of Abraham, depicting the story from Genesis where Abraham entertains the three angels who were also God. God as the guest. God at table with each other and with us.
It is a powerful symbol this icon of hospitality, the source of freedom and the source of communion, the triune God.
The doctrine of the trinity is many things, but at its heart is the teaching that we are invited to share with God in this radical freedom to be unique and the radical hospitality to give and surrender all to the beloved visitors that fill our lives.
Radical freedom. Radical generosity. That is who the triune God is.
The doctrine of the trinity invites us to learn this math of God where one adds up to three, and three adds up to one, where the more we give, the more we have to give, and the more we receive, the more room we have for others.
Perhaps the most important part of the doctrine of the trinity is this question that is really an announcement: Are you ready? Here it is:
“Guess who’s coming to dinner?”