Holy Trinity: A Miraculous Relationship Trinity Sunday May 26, 2013 Yr C

With Memorial Day weekend we officially enter into the summer season—cook-outs, vacations and reruns on TV. Today I offer you a rerun. I wrote this sermon on the Trinity three years ago and it remains, what I want to tell you about the doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. I could have written something else, but it wouldn’t have been what I wanted say. Besides, I challenge anyone of you to tell me that you remember my sermons, verbatim, week to week. ;-)
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/Mother/ Creator, 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. Sure we have a sense 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 don’t really understand it, to understand it would suggest that we grasp it in all of its nuance. We can’t do that. Our belief in 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-- dynamic process 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. 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 almost always fails.  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 can’t be explained as much as they are experienced.
God, in God’s three fold nature, 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,” wrote Lischer.  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.

Deacon Pete's Pentecost Sermon

Pentecost is frequently described as the “birthday of the church”, and isn’t that a nice, comforting, pretty image to have.  Birthdays after all are filled with family and friends, rmaybe some party games, good food, lots of balloons and of course, presents.  It’s a pretty image, but I think it’s a wrong and woefully misleading image.  Pentecost isn’t sweet, it isn’t safe, it isn’t warm and fuzzy and familial. No, Pentecost is dangerous.
The story begins with a group of believers, isolating themselves.  Likely they were afraid of outsiders, so they all stayed together.  If they had known what was going to happen, they would have been afraid of NOT splitting up and heading for the hills,  because what was about to happen would have tweaked even the bravest of us.  They are in danger, but not from those they are hiding from.  God is about to come crashing in, and not only is God entering with a violent wind, but God is bringing in everyone they are trying to avoid.
Once upon a time there was a child who woke after a frightening nightmare.  She was convinced there were all kinds of monsters and goblins lurking under her bed and in the corners of her room.  She ran to her parents’ bedroom and after her mother had calmed her down, she took the child back to her own room and said, “You don’t need to be afraid, you aren’t alone here.  God is right here with you in your room.”  The little girl said, “I know that God is here, but I need someone in my room that has some skin on!”
For the first few months of every church year we journey with Jesus, God in the flesh.  Thanks to the incarnation, we spend time with a God with skin on.  We remember his birth, his baptism, his teaching, his death, his resurrection and his ascension.  It’s a story we have celebrated over and over again, it’s a story we will continue to celebrate.
Last week we heard of Jesus’ final leaving.  For 33 years Jesus was here on earth; healing, teaching, reconciling.  But now he’s gone, ascended into heaven.  The time when God was physically present, physically touchable, physically knowable is over.  And here we are, left behind, totally bereft.  And our consolation?  Our comforter?  It’s a violent, mighty wind.  A wind that leaves tongues of fire on the apostles’ heads, a wind that causes a cacophony of languages to be spoken.  Where oh where is our God in the Flesh?  A God we can see and hear and touch and smell.  A God who is with us at work, in difficult meetings, and in scary illnesses and accidents.  We need a God who is with us when we’re alone, when we’re hungry, when we’re cold, when we’re falsely accused.  We need a God who will share our laughter when we’re happy, who will dry our tears when we’re sad; a God who will challenge us, poke us, prod us and most of all a God who makes us believe we are loved and lovable.
  What kind of God would be here for 33 years and then just take off on us, leaving nothing tangible behind? What kind of God would enter human history and then just disappear into the ether?
Reggie McNeal says that there's a Pentecost happening everyday in the world.  All day long, every day of our lives, we have the chance and the choice to breath in the wind and the flames of the Holy Spirit, to put some skin on God, to put some God in our skin.  God uses us as we are, all of our flaws, all of our faults, all of our passions and all of our gifts.  I mean, just look at the apostles:  one was impatient, one was cranky, one was uncertain, one was unfocused, one was self-centered, one was thoughtless, and on  and on.  (Preaching tip.com/archives-yearbook-c/pentecost-day-year-c).  Pentecost isn't about being perfect, it isn't even about being good enough. It's about hearing what sounds foreign to us and making sense of it, about hearing what strangers have to say and understanding what they want and need. And by the way, when I say strangers I don't necessarily mean people we don't know, people we have never met.  We can be here week after week, at work week after week, and sadly enough, at home day after day and still not really know each other,  we can still seem as if we come from different countries and speak different languages.  The gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us is that we can hear and understand what each other is saying. By the gift of the Holy Spirit we can be Christ to one another.
Through  the Holy Spirit God takes on flesh again.  When we receive the Holy Spirit, when we accept the Holy Spirit, when we claim the Holy Spirit,  God awakens in us the gifts that God needs  so that God can continue to be  present in the world.
From Advent until now we've been watching and listening to Jesus.  He has been teaching us how to bring God's kingdom here on earth.  He has been modeling for us how to be God with skin on for one another.  And now it's up to us.
We are the the church, we are the body of Christ. Good Shepherd is a spirit filled place, we are a spirit filled people.  Today we celebrate. Tomorrow we get busy being God with skin on for the world.  What is the spirit calling you to do?  Food pantry?  Sunday school? Vestry?  Singing in the choir?  Altar Guild? Visiting the sick?  Those are a few of our existing ministries.  Perhaps the Spirit is calling you to something new, a ministry not yet present here.  Pray, discern, explore your passion, talk to Mother Cathy, ask your neighbor in the pews or a trusted friend what they could envision you doing. And then, do it.  Claim your gift from the Holy Spirit and Be God with Skin on.
Amen.

A Pastoral Prayer for Mother's Day (adapted from the blog of St Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cherokee, Iowa)

Loving God and Parent of All,
We thank you for :

All mothers, everywhere - Strengthen them in their child-rearing ,grant them wisdom and discernment.

We thank you also for grandmothers, sisters, aunts, teachers, Sunday school teachers, adult mentors, big sisters, and anyone, everywhere, who plays a motherly role in the life of another.

We pause to remember those for whom Mother’s Day is a source of discomfort, even perhaps anxiety and pain:
For those who have lost their mothers, especially those for whom this loss is recent, grant them your peace and comfort.

There are those for whom Mother’s Day is a painful reminder of their own singleness, or their own inability to have biological children. Such women have always had a special place in your concern, especially throughout the history of the Bible. Give them your special care and love, and grant them your assurance that they are not alone; neither are they without ability to make a lasting impact on the world.

Finally, we pray for those whose experience with and memory of their own mothers has brought pain. Grant them the power of healing and forgiveness.
For all these things, we give you thanks, O God who is a loving father and mother to us all. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity: One God.
Amen.

A Second Holy Week Ascension Sunday May 12, 2013

***THIS SERMON WAS PREACHED AT CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION TODAY. GOOD SHEPHERD HAD A BISHOP'S VISITATION TODAY.***
Within the 50 days of Easter there are three days of special significance: Easter Sunday itself, Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost. For forty days we adjust ourselves to Resurrection living—for forty days we try to wrap our brains around Jesus being dead then not being dead: it’s quite the adjustment, kind of like walking out of the movie theater in the middle of the day...the brightness of the sun takes some getting used too. Likewise, it takes 40 days to realize that death has been once and for all defeated. Death is dead.
Jesus needed forty days too. It took 40 days for him to reach those doubting believers, it took 40 days to teach those ignorant believers, it took 40 days to make one last pitch for His message of uncompromising Love and never-ending Peace.
So, after 40 days, just as our adjustment to Resurrection Life seems almost complete there is another Divine surprise: Jesus leaves. He physically and boldly rises to heaven perched atop a cloud. Now we can debate whether Jesus’ leaving happened exactly like this, but doing that just distracts us from the effect Jesus’ ascension has on us.
In his remarks immediately before the ascension Jesus promises that if we’re patient, if we wait, the advocate will come and we’ll be “furnished with heavenly power.” The arrival of the advocate, the instrument through which we are all divinely empowered, will come next Sunday—the day of Pentecost.
This begs the question---what purpose is served making us wait another week (technically it’s ten days because Ascension Day was this past Thursday, on the 40th day of Easter season…but we commemorate  today, on the 43rd of Easter). Why do we have to wait in this period of limbo? Why doesn’t Jesus leave on one train and the Holy Spirit arrive on the next?
Because there is something very holy in the waiting. There is something very spiritual in the waiting.
There is something important—very very important in the waiting.
Brother Curtis Almquist is a monk with the Society of St John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge MA. Last Thursday he wrote a poignant, moving mediation on this period of waiting, this period between Jesus departure and the Holy Spirit’s arrival.
Br Curtis wrote:
“Ascension Day follows the high drama of Holy Week: the palm-waving crowds, the betrayals, the scourging, the crucifixion and resurrection.  All of those days are full of interpretation and meaning.  But Ascension Day is rather vacuous of meaning.  Jesus says to his followers, “Stay here.  Wait.  Wait until you have been clothed with power.”  Why the wait? “ Well, Br. cUrtis continues,” I think God is waiting for us, for me and for you, to say “yes” with our own lives: our read­iness or at least our willingness to co-operate with God for what God has in mind for our own lives…
God is waiting for us to say Yes to our lives, which will [then allow] God’s power [to] work within us and through us. ”
  Ok, now I understand why we spent all that time this Easter reading Gospel accounts from the first Holy Week….because the utter and complete absence we experienced then we experience again now. Because this week is another week of emptiness.
An emptiness that is felt deep within us as we read the  account of Mary and the other women taking that long sorrowful walk back to the tomb on Easter morning—they were completely and utterly spent, completely and utterly void, completely and utterly EMPTY, when they reach the tomb, only to find that it too is empty, it too is vacant. There’s great poignancy in the abundance of emptiness on Easter morning. It’s into that space, that empty broken, bereft and spent space that the Love, the Peace and the Joy of the Resurrection takes hold.
This waiting period between Ascension and Pentecost isn’t because God needs time to get God’s ducks in a row, the waiting period isn’t because the Holy Spirit has a time management problem. The waiting period isn’t for God in any of God’s forms. The waiting period is for us.
It’s for us to become receptive. It’s for us to become open. It is for us to become instruments of this Holy Power. The waiting period of this next week is for us.  For us to accept, to say yes to the forgiveness Jesus offers us for our mistakes, our blunders, our less than stellar moments.
The waiting period is for us. For us to accept that God’s Love, that inexplicable, overpowering and never ending Love is ours for the taking, it is ours to receive, it is ours to accept, it is ours to make room for.
The waiting period is for us. For us to accept the Peace that surpasses all understanding, the peace that Jesus showed on the cross, the peace that Jesus showed in the upper room, the Peace that Jesus showed in all he did and said.
The waiting period is for us to realize that Jesus has left this world and taken the fullness of the human experience into the realm of the Divine. The waiting period is for us to begin to understand that the human condition is no longer a concept to God, it is part of God.
The waiting period isn’t about us waiting on God, it’s about God waiting on us—not waiting on our ability to accept the Spirit, but on our availability to receive the power of the spirit, our availability to say yes to being Christ’s Body in this world.
And so we have another Holy week. Another span of time where we need to adjust and readjust to the new ways God moves in and through our lives.
May we spend this week adjusting our eyes to the brightness of God’s glory given to us in the Risen and Ascended One, Jesus Christ. May we spend this week preparing to receive the power promised to us and  may we spend this week shouting Alleluia Alleluia, Death is Dead, Love is in charge and joy is ours now and forever. Amen.

Peace, Shalom and Salaam Lighten our Load and Illumine our Path. Easter 6 2013

It was Christmas 1939, England was mired in the uncertainty of war, her citizenry was terrified and her monarch, King George VI, father to the current Queen, needed to find words of solace, words of hope for his faithful subjects in England and across the Empire.
The steadfastness of George and his wife the irascible Queen Mother was legendary. Against the pleas of all their advisors, the royal family stayed in London throughout the blitz, enduring the hardships and horror of war alongside their people. Their courage remains an example to other leaders: in times of trial, lead by example, rule with dignity and courage and never ever abandon those over whom you’ve been given charge.
And so, on that Christmas night, the King offered this simple message in his annual radio broadcast:
“A new year is at hand. We cannot tell what it will bring. If it brings peace, how thankful we shall all be. If it brings us continued struggle we shall remain undaunted.”
He went on to quote from Minnie Haskins’ poem “The Gate of the Year” (1908):
"I said to the man who stands at the Gate of the Year, 'Give
me light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And he replied, 'Step into the darkness, put
your hand into the hand of God, and that will be to you better than a light, and safer than a known
way.'" King George VI during World War II
Step into the darkness put your hand into the hand of God and that will be better than any light, safer than anything you’ve ever known.
It was the Thursday of that first Holy Week. Supper was ending and the disciples were scared, the temple authorities were plotting and Jesus was resolute.
2000 years before George VI needed to offer his people encouragement, Jesus needed to find his own words of comfort, solace, hope and promise. And so we have one of the most famous sections of John’s Gospel: Jesus’ Farewell Discourse.
We’ve read from Jesus’ final sermon for the past couple of weeks. It’s a bit jarring to go from Alleluia Christ is Risen back in to the dark days of Holy Week!
Although on the surface this may seem dissonant, I think hearing Jesus’ farewell remarks in these, the last few weeks before Pentecost, makes sense. After all, Pentecost celebrates the birth of the Church, a church over which we have by virtue of our baptism, been given charge.
Being the Church in the world today isn’t easy, the path can be dark and the way forward unknown, so Jesus as he says good-bye, offers us encouragement:  Be courageous, be steadfast. The darkness will swirl about, but don’t be daunted. Step into the unknown with hand outstretched and God will grab your hand—I will grab your hand—and together we’ll tread safely and confidently into the unknown.
 Jesus says, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Take this peace, let it fill you and then pass it on. Allow the peace I have shown you, the peace I have given you, to surround, envelope and infuse you. And then go forward…
be the Peace of the Lord in this world. Don’t just share it, don’t just offer it….BE IT.
Jesus was no fool. He knew that once he was gone people were going to forget.
He knew once he was gone people would get scared.
people would get lost.
people would, as Minnie Haskins put in the poem George VI quoted, be afraid to step into the unknown and into the dark.
And so he leaves us with his Peace.
As I asked in my email blast on Thursday morning, Just what is Peace…is it simply the absence of war, or the absence of conflict, the absence of discord? Or is it more than that (or different than that)?
Is Peace a destination or a state of mind?
 a goal or a means to an end?
 Is it a constant or is it dynamic?
Yes.
Peace, like Shalom and Salaam, the Hebrew and Arabic synonyms for Peace is all these things.
Shalom and Salaam, like the Peace of which Jesus speaks, is a whole lot more---
Both words can mean
• To make amends
• To make good
• To restore
• To be or to lead the way toward Peace
More than a word, Shalom/Salaam—the Peace of today’s Gospel-- is a state of mind, a posture, an attitude. More than a word shalom and salaam is the way and the truth and the life. In other words, Shalom Salaam is the sum total of all that Jesus taught us, it is the sum total of all that Jesus calls us to be and it is the sum total of what the Kingdom of God on earth shall be. Shalom I leave with you, Salaam I give to you, says Jesus—go and be good. Go and do good. Be the light and shine the light. As Jesus bids farewell he leaves us with shalom, he leaves us with salaam he leaves us with peace flowing like a river, he leaves us with joy flowing like a river, he leaves us with hope flowing like a river, he leaves us with Love flowing like a river.
As Jesus prepares to leave the scene, we are called to embrace his mantel of Shalom; to be Salaam in this world. As Jesus departs and we become his body in the world, the words of King George spoken to a terrified nation on the brink of war,  take on a new resonance:
The new way is at hand; we cannot tell what it will bring. When it brings peace, how thankful we all shall be. When it brings struggle we shall remain undaunted because as we step into the darkness of the unknown the hand of God, full of love and joy and peace will be better than any light, and safer than any known way. Shalom, Salaam.
Amen.