Trinity Sunday Yr. C

My favorite Far Side comic depicts a figure looking an awful lot like Albert Einstein standing in front of a blackboard. Three headings sit atop three columns on the board, marked Step One, Step Two and Step Three. Under Steps 1 and 3 are numbers and mathematical symbols, suggesting some type of formula. Step 2 has no such numbers, no symbols, no formula. Instead it just says, “And then a miracle happens.” Sometimes, even in science, we just don’t know how we get from Step One to Step Three, we just know that we do. Such are the attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity: Father Son and Holy Spirit….one is tempted to give all the theological explanations and then just say, well then a miracle happens: Step 1 We Believe in God. Step Three we believe in a Holy and Undivided Trinity. Step 2, a miracle happens which makes three into one, and one into three.

Some things can’t be explained as much as they can be experienced.

The bottom line is, none of us fully understand the Trinity. We may well have some comprehension of it---we believe in One God who is present to us in three distinct, yet linked ways: God as Father/Mother/Creator, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit---but we can’t really understand it because to understand it means that we fully grasp it in all of it’s nuance. We can’t do that. Our comprehension of the Trinity requires a leap of faith, a miracle, and an acceptance that we won’t know what this really means until the last day. Until then, we’re grasping at straws whenever we try to come up with a hard and fast definition.

So in no way am I going to try and make the Holy and Undivided Trinity understandable to you, Understanding is a personal thing which comes to each of us in different ways and at different times. It’s a dynamic process, constantly changing, evolving, moving. As a matter of fact that---the dynamic nature of learning, of understanding,--is also an excellent way to describe the Trinity. For activity, dynamism is a key piece of the interrelatedness between our Creator Father/Mother, God our Redeeming Son God and our Sustaining Advocate Holy Spirit God---they’re in constant movement toward one another and towards us.

Now let’s get one thing clear, we have one God. Period. When we say, there are three persons in One God, what we mean is that there are three aspects, three distinct ways the Almighty is in relationship with us—the more authoritative, parental God who was and is the Creator of all things, the accessible fully human and fully divine God—the Son who felt all the same things we feel and was capable of all the same things--except sin-- and finally, the advocate, the Holy Spirit given to us on Pentecost; that unseen God who acts in and through other people in our lives and is that still small voice deep within us. But these three distinct characteristics of God are just that--- characteristics of a whole—they are not separate. They are “part of. “

Throughout the generations, people have fought over the Doctrine of the Trinity---St Nicholas was expelled from the Council of Nicea because he became so irate over the efforts to explain, in words, just what we mean by the Holy and Undivided Trinity, one God, that he actually punched another attendee. As Liza Spangler, the Dean of our Cathedral puts it; Nicholas was placed in an ecclesiastical time out! Others have made valiant efforts to explain the Trinity using visual aids:

St. Patrick used the three leaves of a Shamrock—each leaf is distinct but is not separate from the whole of the clover.

Icons show the Trinity as a swirling dance of interconnected parts—always attached, but each moving in it’s own way. Almost all expository attempts at describing the Trinity fall short because at its heart, the essence of the Trinity is relationship. And describing the essence of a relationship is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree…it just doesn’t work.

Think of your own relationships---the most precious ones you have—how would you describe them? Can you find the words? Could you diagram it? You could get close, but it would still be lacking. That’s my point---to describe the Holy and Undivided Trinity just doesn’t do it justice, because it’s a relationship and relationships are hard to explain.

God is relationship.

Retired Lutheran Pastor Richard Lischer shared this interpretation of the Trinity he discovered while contemplating a stained glass window depiction of the Trinity: “The fairly typical Trinitarian design of three interconnecting triangles reminded me of an aerial photograph taken of our small farming community. Besides the straight and orderly rows of crops in the fields, another distinct pattern emerged: well-worn paths criss-crossing from one farmhouse to another. These paths, worn into the ground by generations of neighbors visiting and helping out in times of need, linked the town, they knit the community together.” Lischer’s description of the interconnectedness represented in those paths explains my experience of the Trinity.

God grooves paths in our lives, coming to us at different times and in different forms to address a variety of needs.

God, in three persons, Blessed Trinity, reaches out to us as a strong parental type when we feel small and childlike. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a forgiving friend in times of loneliness and confusion. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a sustaining force of inexplicable peace when we are bereft and lost, angry and bitter, hopeless and helpless. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, longs to be a palpable presence in our lives, so God in God’s infinite wisdom, walks a number of paths to reach us.

Step One: God Loves Us.

Step Three: God Wants to be With Us

Step Two: Through the miracle and mystery of God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity, God’s Love is always with us.

Amen.

Pentecost Sunday 2010

+Pentecost is a big deal. It’s one of those feast days clergy have a tendency to get excited about. Congregations patiently listen as we pontificate on the glories of the Holy Spirit arriving in a rush of wind and flame, encouraging the apostles to stay in community, spreading the Good News to the ends of the earth, through thought, word and deed.

Clergy LOVE this day.

But when it gets down to it, I’m not sure we’ve done such a great sales job. After all, the props aren’t as good as Christmas and Easter: no little baby, no empty tomb. We have tongues of fire and a rush of violent wind. Really? Tongues of fire? Hard to have a Pentecost pageant with a bunch of children dressed up as tongues, isn’t it? Tongues of fire and wind aren’t cute and they aren’t celebratory. Wind and fire can be very dangerous forces of nature, wreaking destruction when they aren’t harnessed appropriately. On this day, in that room with Mary and the other apostles, the wind and fire was unbridled. It was wild.

There was nothing soothing about it. When the great wind blew, the apostles, and all within earshot, were scared out of their wits…but before their fear could really take hold, they began to see and hear the world in a new way.

Literally.

Suddenly they comprehended what was going on. Suddenly, this advocate Jesus had been speaking about, the one promised in today’s Gospel, had arrived. Suddenly they all could hear what others said in their native tongue.

Everyone could understand everyone else. A Greek speaker heard Greek, a Hebrew speaker, Hebrew.

Suddenly the curse of the Babel—when God divided the people of the earth through language---was over.

This was another instance of the old covenant, the old rules, the old way, being replaced by the altogether new. No longer was salvation only for a select few, it was available to all, accessible to all, understandable to all.

The gift of this day was not that people spoke in “tongues” in unintelligible speech, understood by a select few, but that everyone could hear the Good News. This is the day God gives humanity a second chance at unity, another chance to be in community. Today the promised end to separations because of race, religion, culture, gender, age, socio economic standing etc. has arrived. For the Risen and Ascended Son of God has sent us the promised Advocate, keeping God an active and dynamic presence here on earth accessible to all who care to listen.

As many of you know, last week I attended CREDO, a wellness conference provided through the Church Pension Group. It’s a marvelous program and the experience I had there was tremendous.

Instead of regaling you with all things I learned, let me share one particular event which has personified--really incarnated—the Pentecost message for me.

Our team leader provided us with a scripture passage that, after we broke into groups of two and three, we were to read out loud and then discuss. So there we were, 40 of us, reading, out loud and simultaneously, a scripture passage. The cacophony, which ensued, was amazing and one of my colleagues remarked, “This sounds like Pentecost!” It was next to impossible to distinguish one voice from another. It was difficult to hear the actual passages being read, but we didn’t need to: the point was loud and clear. Together, as a group, we were experiencing the word of God. The Holy Spirit was moving through us and by being open to it we, individually and collectively, were moved to a different level of faith.

Reading the passages silently, to ourselves, may have given us the content of the reading, but the cacophonous jumble of voices gave us the meaning.

That’s what this day is all about: welcoming the Holy Spirit into our lives—both as individuals and as a community. To let the disparate voices of many have their say, transporting us to a different level of understanding.

Pentecost isn’t the birthday of the brick and mortar, constitution and canon church; Pentecost is the birthday of community. A community of people who love their God and are willing to work together to achieve a common goal. 2000 years ago, the Holy Spirit enflamed the apostles with courage to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. What’s the Holy Spirit calling us to do as a community, us as individuals? Are we taking the time to listen? What do we hear?

It’s hard to do—to really listen to one another. Often we don’t listen because we just don’t like what we hear, so instead of trying to understand, we just stop listening.

I saw a few of my colleagues get irritated with the cacophony in that conference room…they weren’t listening, so they couldn’t hear. You know, the spirit moves in mysterious ways---what may move me, won’t move you, what gets through to you may be mumbo jumbo to me. That’s the wondrous thing about the Holy Spirit; she comes to us in a variety of ways.

There are different gifts but one spirit Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians—one spirit that manifests itself differently in each of us.

Our Good Shepherd congregation is full of gifts—the gift of hospitality, as was on display last week during the tour of homes and will be again for the strawberry festival next month, the gift of compassion as is displayed each week at the food pantry, the gift of generosity as shown through your pledges of time talent and treasure, the gift of music as our choir leads us in worship each week, the gift of an intentional life of prayer through the Benedict group, morning prayer and Bible study, gifts of carpentry, painting, plumbing and wallpaper removal as shown through the rectory renovations.

Gifts, when brought together in a community such as ours, can be transformative. Inviting the Holy Spirit into our daily lives, allowing the Holy Spirit to have a seat at the table with us-- not only in worship but also in committee meetings, coffee hour, and throughout the week ---will, as proclaimed in scripture, make the whole creation new.

Pentecost is the penultimate event of the church year: from birth to death and life again, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from mangers to mountaintops The Son of God walked among us, readying us for this gift of the spirit. Today, the Ascended Jesus has sent us an advocate who empowers us to live our lives as witnesses to the Good News, listening, hearing and doing what we, individually and in community, have been called to do.

Pentecost isn’t cute, we don’t have Hallmark cards or Charlie Brown specials about it, but it sure is a big deal. +

Mothers of the Church Easter VI Yr C

+I’m sure the designers of our Lectionary didn’t consider Mother’s Day when choosing the readings for this sixth Sunday of Easter. But I find it very fitting that on this day we honor mothers and mother figures in our lives, we hear, in the Acts of the Apostles, about Lydia, who through her support of Paul and Silas helped establish the institutional church in Macedonia. Additionally, on this day when we honor the courage and tenacity of all those mothers who have stood up for peace, challenged the status quo and risked everything to give their children a better and safer life, it’s also fitting that we hear Jesus’ promise of peace and his assurance that he, through the Holy Spirit, will be with us always. For whether our own mothers and mother figures are with us in body, their spirits live on in our hearts and minds.

You may wonder why I equate Mother’s Day with peace, but, the original intent of Mother’s Day wasn’t to take mom to brunch, send her flowers and give her a Hallmark card---although all of that is very nice and if you haven’t done any of that yet you best get busy---but about women uniting across racial, political and cultural boundaries, seeking equality, justice and peace for all.

Julia Ward Howe who is credited with the initial concept of Mother’s Day, is best known as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic-- the union army’s anthem of the Civil War. Indeed, it was the consequences of that war: the death, the injury, the widows and the orphans, which made Julia an ardent worker for peace. And it was out of that peace work that the initial concept of Mother’s Day was born. In 1870 she called for women to rise up and oppose war in all its forms. From all walks of life, nationalities, cultures and creeds Julia Ward Howe implored mothers to recognize that what held them in common was much greater than any difference. Her call to women, mothers in particular read in part:


Let us meet first, as women…
[to] take counsel with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace...

Mother’s Day was originally designed to unite women through their innate desire to create life rather than destroy it; to say no to war , no to violence and no to hatred. The original intent of Mother’s Day was a saying yes to Christ’s message of peace and love to all.

Jesus spent a lot of time with women—and this usually got him into a lot of trouble—but scripture, as a whole, doesn’t have a lot to say about women.

The Bible is replete with extensive stories about men. But women, while mentioned, are usually only depicted in relationship to men….as mothers or widows or wives or concubines. A woman being shown as independent, as an individual, was uncommon. Even Mary Magdalene, clearly an independent, wealthy and influential woman has been, for years, wrongly depicted as a prostitute. It’s as if the editors of Holy Scripture couldn’t fathom a self-reliant female, unattached to any specific man, as one of Jesus’ most loyal disciples. Indeed, the very fact that scripture doesn’t name a woman among Jesus’ apostles fueled the argument against women priests in our own tradition for years.

Regardless of what scripture says, women have been stalwart supporters of Christianity from its inception. The world’s first Christian, the Virgin Mary, believed before Jesus was even born. She was confused, she was frightened but when Gabriel announced God’s plan for her, Mary said yes. Her faith was steadfast; from his birth, to his first miracle at Cana, to his death on the cross, Mary was there. She never fled, she never doubted, she simply supported her son and trusted in her God.

Now we don’t know if Lydia was a mother, we don’t know if she was married. Our reading from Acts only tells us that she was so moved by Paul’s teaching; she had her entire household baptized. So whether she was a wife, or whether she was a mother, Lydia was an independent and influential woman powerful enough to convince Paul that her home would make a perfect base of operations for his missionary work. So regardless of whether or not she was a birth mother, Lydia certainly mothered the young church, as it struggled to gain a foothold in the Philippi region of Macedonia.

The role of women in the church has been hidden for centuries. The women we hear about in scripture were on the fringes and behind the scenes, quiet supporters of Christ’s work. The women who stayed with Jesus at Calvary were off to the side unnoticed, watching the horror of the crucifixion in quiet agony. Women supported the establishment of the early church by secretly opening the doors of their homes to the travelling disciples, hiding them from view, protecting them from harm. But, even from the sidelines and behind the scenes, women heard the clarion call of the Gospel and spread its message far and wide.

Our readings throughout this Easter season have focused on two things: the unending Peace of God as proclaimed by Jesus Christ and the establishment of the institutional church. Across the centuries women have been instrumental in both these endeavors-- the nitty-gritty work of the church and the spread of Peace. Today, in a confluence of the secular and the religious, we give honor and praise to women like Lydia, whose hard work and faithful contributions have kept our churches running and we give praise and honor to the long line of mothers from the Virgin Mary to Julia Ward Howe and beyond who, from the unique perspective of motherhood, understood that the love and peace of Jesus cannot be preached in conjunction with war and destruction and that the growth of the church cannot be achieved through intimidation and power run amok. These women, our mothers and mothers of the church deserve our thanks, our praise and our love, for without them where would we be?

Imagining Love...With God's Help. Easter V Yr C

+I wonder if John Lennon, when he wrote his song Imagine, had just heard today’s readings. Taken as a whole, the readings from Acts, Revelation and John’s Gospel appear to mirror what the ex Beatle was saying with the lyrics. Imagine…a world without violence, a world without discrimination, a world without hatred. A world of unity and peace.

Our reading from Acts talks about acceptance and inclusion, with Peter having a vision in which the voice of God tells him, in no uncertain terms, that the dietary restrictions of the old covenant are now obsolete-- that all of God’s creation, including the foods we eat, are good. God tells Peter that even the Gentiles, heretofore thought to be an unclean people, were part of the church of God. In this one vision, God breaks down all the divisions of the past and frees Peter and us to spread the Good News to all.

The love and peace of God available to all who desire it--now that sounds like the world John Lennon imagined.

Our reading from Revelation tells of a world where all things are created new, where the dismay of the old world, the tears and the sadness, the hurt and the pain are washed away. A new World, freed from hatred, released from despair and full of hope and joy and love. A world, which John Lennon dreamed of, an existence that he imagined.

And then our Gospel reading where Jesus provides us with a new commandment; a few simple words summing up the work he would complete with his crucifixion, a few words which tell of God’s desire for us: that we, strengthened by the love of God as given to us in Jesus Christ would, in turn, love one another. That we, simply put, would love one another as Jesus loved us.

This world of Lennon’s imagination, this world of God’s desire, is difficult to achieve. For millennia, humanity has been intolerant, abusive and discriminatory. Throughout human history one group of people have always scapegoated another group of people.

It’s a horrible truth: when faced with people who are different from us, we can become uncomfortable and uneasy. And when uncomfortable and uneasy, we tend to hunker down in what we know--in what is familiar to us--lashing out at those who are different. There’s something in our human nature that makes us flock to those who are like us—the familiar --and to avoid the different. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, to be comfortable with what we know and to be a little uncomfortable with that which we don’t know. We get into trouble, as individuals and as a society when we let our fear of the unknown control us, when we let our discomfort with difference fester into bigotry and discrimination, when we let that which we don’t know become, by virtue of this unfamiliarity, the enemy. When the new becomes bad, when the unknown becomes evil, that’s when we run into trouble.

This misguided distrust, this intolerance, was evident in the young church described in Acts and fear of the other, uneasiness with those we don’t know feeds the ongoing immigration controversy in our country today.

And so it was timely, then and is timely now that we’re given this new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.

There’s no addendum to this there’s no interpretation needed. We are to love one another. Period. We don’t have to like each other; we don’t have to enjoy each other we don’t have to agree with each other. But we do have to love one another. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love love for one another” (John 13:35)

Our identity as faithful Christians is dependent upon having love for one another.

This is so fundamental to our faith that our baptismal covenant; the outline of our belief system makes it very clear. In it we’re asked “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” And if that wasn’t enough, we’re then asked, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?” (BCP, p 305)

Basically we’re being asked to live as John Lennon Imagined in his song.

It’s a tall order, this loving one another as Christ loved us. It can seem daunting, overwhelming,--impossible even. It can seem like the idealized world of a singer songwriter. Because no matter how hard we try we just don’t seem to be able to accomplish it. Our greed, our pride, our fears and our doubts get in the way and we stop loving, we stop respecting. We stop trying.

And that’s where it can end. We can say, it’s just a Pollyanna view of a world that only exists in the imaginings of poets, impossible to achieve. And it is impossible, if we insist on trying to accomplish it on our own. God has given us a tall order indeed, but God never expects us to do this alone. For the response to each of those Baptismal promises is, “I will, with God’s help.” Nowhere in this new commandment, nowhere in our baptismal covenant nowhere in the Judea Christian faith of the past several millennia have we been asked to do anything by ourselves. For all that we do, all that Christ did, was and always will be done--- with God’s help.

The differences between us, black and white, gay and straight, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, Democrat, Republican, can create chasms which seem too wide and vast to bridge, but, with God’s help, all differences can be conquered, all fears squelched.

John Lennon imagined a world without difference, without conflict without heartache and without hate. Through the new commandment Jesus gave us in today’s Gospel and with God’s Help, that world needn’t be just a wish in a song, but a reality in our lives. +