Look in the files under the category “Things People Should Have Said,” and you will find the concept of the “God-shaped hole” that is said to be found in every human soul. The idea is usually attributed to St. Augustine, who wrote that “our hearts are restless until they find rest in [God].”* Others will tell you that the God-shaped-hole is a misquote of the 17th century French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, who wrote this:
What else does this craving, this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.**
For short-hand, I’d say the idea of a God-shaped hole in the human soul that yearns to be filled will do.
One flip side of this idea is the question of what shape God might be, if God can be said to have a figure or form. This question is close, I guess, to asking what God looks like, but I think it’s a subtler question in seek of a subtler answer. If we wonder what shape God might be, our questioning might come from the desire to fill the God-shaped hole in each of us, so it doesn’t sound like a useless question.
A great preoccupation of the Hebrew Scriptures is the matter of idolatry: idols being man-made, hand-made objects toward which we might direct our worship and devotion, and in which we might misguidedly place some hope for wish-fulfillment or more. The scriptures tell us over and over again that the one, true, living God is offended by the tendency of his people to be drawn away from him by idols of our own making, telling Moses that “I the Lord am a jealous God.” (Ex 20:5). While it might be true that no one could see God and live, which God also told Moses, God does not want people placing their hope, their faith, or directing their worship toward objects shaped by our own hands and hearts, and therefore within our own control.
At first glance, you might not look to the story of the baptism of Jesus to tell us what shape God is. But we should also ask ourselves what else we think this story is for. It’s customary, for instance, to baptize people on this first Sunday after the Epiphany, when we always remember the baptism of Jesus. But Jesus was baptized by John for reasons that are not entirely clear to us. And this narrative does not supply the prototype of Christian baptism. The passage we heard from the Book of Acts makes it clear that the baptism of John has been superseded by baptism in the Spirit, as John himself said it would be. So, in my opinion, the church is often very misleading on this day.
More than once I have heard a preacher suggest that the words that come from the voice from heaven are directed toward everyone baptized Christian: “You are my Son [my child], the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” But this idea is staggeringly wrong to me - that the words that God the Father spake to the Incarnate Word, simultaneous with the anointing of the Spirit, identifying that Word as his only Son, who is and was and will be the Redeemer of all things; that these words are somehow also meant for you and me… I don’t think so.
I think that mostly it is hard for us to say why Jesus was baptized by John, who proclaimed, after all, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, since we believe that Jesus did not sin. So, mostly, on this day, we fudge it, and say something nice about baptism, and hope that nobody much notices. But there is a lot to take notice of in the events that St. Mark reports, and which are accounted for in all the other Gospels, too. For these narratives provide a profound revelation of something about the truth of God. And I think we can speak about that truth in terms of the shape of God. Which is to say, that in the details of the accounts of the baptism of Jesus, God reveals God’s shape to us, and we should pay attention to that, especially if we think there is a God-shaped hole in the human soul.
Each of the accounts of the baptism of Jesus (in Matthew, Mark, and Luke) includes three specific and distinct features: the presence of Jesus himself, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven identifying Jesus as “my Son.” The Gospel of St. John does not provide all these details but does allude to the event and its significance. And Christian theology has come up with a word to describe the shape that we get a glimpse of, there, at the edge of the Jordan River; that word is: Trinity.
No, God is not a point or a dot. God is not a line. God is not flat or round or even a tetrahedron. God is not bound or contained in three dimensions, to be sure, although God can certainly reveal God’s self in three dimensions, as he did at the Jordan River that day: in two figures of three dimensions, and one voice, all in relationship with one another.
The central purpose of the narrative of the baptism of Jesus, it seems to me, is to provide a lasting testimony of this remarkable revelation of the shape of God as Trinity: a relationship of three persons who are not, in fact bound by space or time, each of whose being is intertwined with the being of the others; whose dwelling in the heavens does not prevent them from coming to earth; who speak and swim, and fly, and walk, and sleep, and dream, and dance with each other; whose relationship to the other is that of beloved to beloved; who are engaged in ministry with each other, and who are engaged in conversation with each other; and who are apparently also engaged in ministry and conversation with the world. This is the Holy Trinity. To reduce the witness of this moment by the Jordan River to an account of man, a voice, and a dove, would be to miss the point. This is God disclosing God’s self, having already made the astonishing self disclosure of himself in Bethlehem. God is Trinity-shaped. Which means that God is one, but God is in community with God’s self; that God is always giving God’s self to God’s self; God is always loving: offering and accepting love: God is love speaking love to love for love, and then doing it all again and again.
I know that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity can seem like a persnickety administrative detail,, something, perhaps important at a theoretical level, but more dubious in practice. But the witness provided at the Jordan River when Jesus was baptized by John reminds us that the Trinity is more than a persnickety administrative detail about God for theologians to muse upon; it’s also an important description of the shape of God; and it’s nice to know that it’s true, if this consistent witness at the baptism of Jesus is to relied upon! It also seems important to those of us who have noticed something of a God-shaped hole in our lives, in our hearts, in our souls: something yearning to be filled with a true happiness that we can’t believe should be this elusive, that we can’t believe wasn’t what we were made for.
It’s a little embarrassing to be called out with such clear and exact specificity by a 17th century French mathematician. How can he see us so clearly and know us so well? We do, don’t we, try in vain to fill ourselves with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself? That’s a mouthful, but if you spend a little time with it, you might be convinced by it. You might recognize the tendency to seek in things that are not there the help we cannot find in things that are. You might be convinced that sometimes when you spend time alone you are frightened to discover that you face what appears to be an infinite abyss.
There is an infinite and immutable object that can fill to overflowing that infinite abyss. It is Trinity-shaped. We call it Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because God’s true name is unpronounceable, and we have neither the time nor the space to even listen to it, let alone try to speak it. And the reason we return again and again to the banks of the Jordan River is to remember when the revelation was given for all to see that this is the shape of God: the presence of Jesus himself, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven identifying Jesus as “my Son.”
What a marvelous shape the Trinity is! Adjusting to every one of us, no matter how close to the edge of the abyss we are, able to fill us to overflowing, and assuring us that yes, our hearts are restless, but that we can and will find our rest in God, who fills all in all.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
7 January 2024
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
* Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (1,1,1)
** Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII (425)
