June 15, 2025 – Trinity Sunday
Jack Belsom
“E Ho’olohe,” the preschool teacher cries out to the children. It is a strong call to listen—to listen intentionally. Who’s listening? The other teachers and aides are listening. Some of the children are listening, but there are always some so focused on what they are doing or saying that they never hear the call to listen.
If the voice that is calling is feminine, it is often ignored or silenced. That is true in our society, and it is true in the Bible.
It is no accident that Proverbs 8 pictures Wisdom as a woman. In Greek the word is “sophia,” and in Hebrew it is hochma. Both are feminine words. Push it even further, and explore why wisdom is often related to the Holy Spirit. Again, the word for “spirit” in Hebrew is feminine. That feminine wisdom is persistent:
8:1 Does not wisdom call
and understanding raise her voice?
2 On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4 “To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all who live.” (NRSVUE)
Not only is she persistent, but she takes every opportunity to cry out in any location and any situation. She is not exclusive in choosing her audience. Race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, even religion doesn’t matter. She cries out. Did you notice that no temple or place of worship is mentioned? Richard Boyce [Feasting on the Word Commentary, Year C, vol. 4] emphasizes the public spaces that are available and accessible to all. She is not crying out from the heart of a particular world religion. So much for our insistence on having a monopoly on wisdom or truth!
If you look closely at Michelangelo’s famous painting in the Sistine Chapel, you may see Wisdom. In the scene where God reaches out to give life to the first human, you can find a woman in the crook of God’s left elbow. Clearly the artist wanted to make sure that, like Proverbs 8, Wisdom is accompanying God in the creative process. [Ralph W. Klein, Feasting on the Word Commentary, Year C, Vol. 4]. Maybe it’s that I was profoundly influenced by Elizabeth Achtemeier, who taught me Old Testament theology, or that the ones who have challenged the dominant, masculine, euro dominated theology and biblical interpretation have been outstanding. Some have even been euro men!
The dominant voices in the media and public spaces don’t value women.
That’s an understatement. Some would say they are misogynistic—they hate women. Why have women been removed from command positions in the U.S. Armed forces? Why have men with names that some in the current administration claim are “feminine” been removed from serving in themilitary? Must we hate and denigrate anything that would ally the feminine with power? Is the only acceptable role that white women should have more babies so that racial mix of the United States becomes predominantly “white?”
I used to joke with some of my colleagues who struggled with using Hawaiian culture to express our worship: “God did not arrive in these islands with the New England missionaries. God was already here and at work.” We could say Wisdom was calling out from every village, every heiau, every rock and tree. Who was listening? Surely some were. When we carefully imprison God’s voice in any particular expression of faith, the next step is to demand that no other voice should be heard. The step after that is to silence those who hear wisdom speaking: indigenous people, mystics, women (often branded as “witches”), scientists exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy or the inmost secrets of the atom.
Without Wisdom…without Spirit…as part of our experience of God, we are limiting our understanding. I love the idea that the Trinity is an attempt to explain how people have discovered God. Those who find God in creation point to the Father or the Creator. Those, who find God most clearly in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, point to the Son or Christ. Those who hear the voice of Wisdom or the whisperings of the Spirit cling to that third person.
I believe that whole doctrine of the Trinity is saying that God’s essence is community. The heart of the mystery of God is that community of the three persons who join together in a dance that makes it difficult to hang on to only one of them and to push the others to the side. The Greeks use the word perichoresis to describe what is happening. It is a fast-moving dance in which first one, then another, then another of the persons are perceived. For me, the Trinity is the community of God’s self…dancing joyously through all creation.
In 1961, Sydney Carter published a group of contemporary songs and carols to express his faith. He used the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts” as a springboard for his creativity and came up with “Lord of the Dance.” The song retells the whole story starting with creation and ending with God’s continuing to lead us in the dance. The first verse is:
I danced in the morning when the world was begun, and I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
and I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth. At Bethlehem I had my birth.
The chorus urges us on:
Dance then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord ofthe Dance said he, and I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he. [Text: Sydney Carter © Stainer & Bell Ltd, (admin. Hope Publishing Company)]
I remember one Ohio Conference UCC Annual Meeting where 300 delegates and visitors bunny hopped to “Lord of the Dance” around the Heidelberg College gym. It was a joyful celebration of a God—of the Spirit—who leads us in the dance of life.
So back to my original question: Who’s listening? Those acting with fierce faces and loud voices are too busy demanding something other than joyfully listening to Wisdom and joining in the dance. Those denying the wisdom of other societies and cultures and demanding that only one way of living is acceptable aren’t listening? Most days I wonder how many in the church are listening.
Let’s just say most of our gatherings are characterized by serious faces that too often become stern. In my eighty years, I have witnessed women leading the dance of wisdom and joining in the joy of the community of the trinity. I have once danced with indigenous people in their “spirit” dances.
Listen to the wisdom contained in Proverbs 8:
22 “The Lord created me at the beginning[a] of [Creator’s] work,[b] the first of [Creator’s] acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth,
26 when [Creator] had not yet made earth and fields[c] or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When [Creator] established the heavens, I was there; when [Creator] made firm the skies above,
when [Creator] established the fountains of the deep,
29 when [Creator] assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress [God’s] command, when [Creator] marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside [Creator], like a master worker,[d] and I was daily [Creator’s][e] delight,
playing before [Creator] always,
31 playing in [Creator’s] inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
It’s time…it’s long past time to listen to wisdom and join in the Trinity’s joyful dance of life…most often led by Sophia or Wisdom or Spirit. Amen.