Trinitarian Diversity

This table is another place where God pictures what He is like for us. Here He shares His life with us by breaking it, by pouring it out. In a purely Unitarian view of God, if God is a pure solitary being, there is nothing innately “shared” in God. A Unitarian being might decide to share, but then it only rests on his decision, his will. And since it is based on his will, he could have just as easily decided not to share. Regardless, diversity, in a Unitarian vision of the world is always an inherent threat to unity. But because God is Trinity, He is already fellowship, He is already community, already sharing. God is One, He has no competing wills, there is no conflict in God. But God is three persons in One God. In the One true God, there is diversity, distinctions, and these differences do not obliterate the unity, they establish it. While our current culture pushes us in the name of diversity to adopt insanity, calling good evil and evil good, confusing male and female and so forth, we should not in the name of being conservative and biblical forget that we in the Christian Church are those with the good news of a true God-given diversity. Here we give thanks for male and female, Jew and Greek, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, and the myriad of different gifts and personalities and interests and opinions that God gives. And God shows us here at this table that when He gives differences, when He pulls us apart into new families, into new church plants, into new life situations, into new challenges, if we can give thanks for them, if we can appreciate how God has given them, and we give thanks for them, as Jesus gave thanks for His own death for our sins, God promises to be there with us just as He is also here with us. When God pulls apart it is always a kind of death and sin always makes death a little harder, but God’s promise here at this table is that even as the bread is broken and the wine is poured out, as surely as Jesus was broken for us, God’s presence will not run out. He is big enough to hold all of us together with all our differences because He is Trinity, and His love is stronger than death.