Squaring the Circle
First Sunday after Pentecost/Trinity Sunday
Earlier this summer, I had an experience that will stick with me—I hope—for the rest of my life. Like a lot of the most formative experiences we have, this one wasn’t about encountering something new, or seeing something for the first time, but about a re-encounter, about learning to see something in a completely different way. I had the opportunity in late May to lead a group of students on a trip to Europe, to engage with the history and the culture of London, Paris, Florence, and Rome, up close and personal. Throughout our travels together, I saw a lot of cool things, and got to share in a lot of cool moments with my students. From Westminster Abbey to the Latin Quarter to the Catacombs of Rome, from Fish and Chips to Spaghetti Carbonara, I got to see and hear and taste and feel so much that was exciting and invigorating.
But of all the experiences I had over the course of the sixteen days I spent in all of those unfamiliar places, nothing quite compared to what it was like to stand in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence and see Michelangelo’s David for the first time. Or, more accurately, to see it again for the first time. Like most everyone with even a passing knowledge of the Western artistic tradition, I’ve seen Michelangelo’s David before. I’ve seen it on T-shirts and posters, in Sponge Bob cartoons and in Italian restaurants. When I lived in Irvington, Kentucky, one of my neighbors had a model of David in their front yard. Just two hours before entering the Accademia, I had stood in the town square of Florence and looked at the replica placed there so that the original could be moved inside. As a teacher, I have stood in front of a classroom on numerous occasions, in front of a projector screen where an image of the David is displayed. I’ve talked students through Michelangelo’s techniques and approaches, trying to express what it is that makes this work so special, what made this artist so special.
And yet, when I stood in the presence of the original, looking up at the solemn expression on David’s face, taking note especially of the tension in his hands as he clutched a stone and stared down the giant on the other side of the valley, I realized that every other encounter I previously had with this work was meaningless. The life in that marble, the mysterious way that this work of incredible genius, this undeniable masterpiece, exuded an energy, made me realize what humanity is capable of creating, and at the same time rendered virtually every other sculpture I’d ever seen inferior. I told my wife Lisa that it was like seeing the Grand Canyon. I knew it was going to be special. I knew it was going to be great. But even with a lifetime of anticipation, I wasn’t prepared for the impression it would make on me. Even now, as I try to articulate that moment, I realize that I don’t really have words for it, and I’m kind of thankful for that.
What I experienced in that art gallery was powerful. I was moved to wonder by something that a man had made a little over 500 years ago, using a chisel and his imagination. The familiar became awe-inspiring. A block of marble, fashioned after the human form, left me speechless. When it comes to the things of God, of course, there are so many realities that, when we truly confront them, have the power to bring us to our knees. No matter how many times we talk about them or think about them or apply the highest faculties of our intellect to these concepts, we never quite get a handle on what they’re all about. Even in a long list of the mysteries of faith, the Trinity might be the most inscrutable of all. As pastors, teachers, and students of the scriptures, sitting for hours in Sunday school classes and theology seminars and poring over texts ancient and modern, we have all likely thought about the Trinity, and preached about the Trinity, and attempted to devise word pictures and thought exercises to express how the God of the universe might somehow be three persons in one.
When all of our examinations and speculations cease, when we come to the end of our formulas and definitions, what we are left with is wonder. Wonder at the work of this Triune God, who—as Proverbs attests—has been working and creating in communion since before the foundations of the earth were laid. Wonder at the economy of salvation as articulated by Paul, where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all participate in the process of redeeming us and then continuing to reveal the enduring hope and the overwhelming love we receive by God’s grace. Wonder at the continued fulfillment of the Son’s promise to his disciples, that the Father would send the Spirit, and that Spirit would guide them into all truth. At every stage—creation, redemption, the sustaining of the church in the world—God continues to work as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the face of such a reality, all we are left with is the language of the Psalmist who can only utter a song of praise, a confession of our own smallness and of God’s grandeur, an awareness that when words fail us, our awe will have to suffice.
Two centuries before Michelangelo toiled in his Florence workshop to bring out of that block of marble a sculpture that would solidify his reputation as a true master, another Florentine artist, the poet Dante, attempted to use his prodigious gifts to express some of the most formidable realities of the Christian life: sin and suffering, repentance and redemption, and finally the consummation of all things in God’s eternal kingdom. After his allegorical journey through the circles of Hell and up the mountain of Purgatory, Dante travels to the very heart of Paradise where he confronts the majesty and beauty of God. And here, words fail him. Upon seeing, in Longfellow’s translation, “three circles, of one dimension and three different colors,” he writes:
As the geometer who sets himself
To square the circle and who cannot find,
For all his thought, the principle he needs,
Just so was I on seeing this new vision
I wanted to see how our image fuses
Into the circle and finds its place in it,
Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —
Except that then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.
Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,
By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
When powers fail our imagination, when we realize that our understanding fails us and our wings of intellect were not meant for such a flight, may we, too, allow our desire and will to be turned by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
