Mary and Martha: Two Halves of One

+My parents were great entertainers. Together they had terrific parties, elegant dinners and all in all, they opened our house to any number of social gatherings. Many people attended and more often than not they stayed into the wee hours of the morning. Hospitality was and is very important in the Dempesy family.

But, there was a downside to all that entertaining. As the day of the party got closer, my mom would become increasingly stressed—the house had to be spotless, the food perfect, the table settings, exquisite. I liked the actual parties, but the prep? The prep was stressful, and Mom would become anxious and distracted. A lot like Martha in today’s gospel.

This is a familiar story and one that seems to hold special resonance for women. Because of the way it has been interpreted over the years, many women detest this Gospel. For the more traditional women, their role behind the scenes, in Altar Guilds, St Monica Guilds and the ECW appears to be disregarded and belittled by Jesus. For the more liberal non-traditional women, this Gospel has been irritating because it seems to pit two women against each other.

But, before you say, “I know this story, I have heard it all, can we please move on,” I encourage you to contemplate it for a few moments. To look at it through fresh eyes.

This Gospel, brief as it is, incendiary as the prose may, at first , sound is actually very complex in its presentation. For with these four verses, Luke shows us that there are a number of ways to serve God, and that how we serve God doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that we do, indeed, serve God--- in all we do, at all times and in all places.

Many people interpret this gospel passage to mean that Martha was doing a disservice to Jesus because she failed to drop everything and sit at his feet. That somehow Martha was insutling Jesus while Mary was honoring him.

I don’t think Jesus meant to suggest that Mary’s way was the only way, nor was he suggesting that Martha’s way was the wrong way….I think Jesus was using that moment, when Martha’s anxiety had taken firm hold, to teach us something.

Jesus used this situation to continue his illustration of how we are to live out the two great commandments: Love your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul and Love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus used Martha’s irritation as a teachable moment.

This summer we ‘ve been reading this part of Luke’s gospel—the travel narrative-- sequentially, so this week’s gospel immediately follows last week’s Gospel—the parable of the Good Samaritan---a story in which Jesus implores his followers to be do-ers of the Word not just hear-ers. In that parable the inaction of the priest and the Levite—both considered pious and honorable Jews are criticized while the hospitality—the tangible action of the Samaritan is honored. At the end of that story Jesus simply says, “Go and do like wise.” Go and be do-ers of the Word.

But then this week Jesus, at first blush, appears to be contradicting himself, praising the inaction of Mary who passively sits at his feet to be taught while condemning the action of Martha who’s offering hospitality—Jesus praises the hearer of the word, Mary, while condemning the do-er of the word, Martha. What’s up with that?

But neither Jesus nor Luke is being contradictory. Instead they’re using these two different stories to illuminate how a community of Christians need both do-ers and hear-ers.

We, over the years, have applied our own bias to the story. Somehow we’ve decided that doing all the behind the scenes work—the altar guild, the ECW, the hospitality committees, the coffee hour, is somehow “Less Than.” Less than studying the Bible, learning about liturgy, debating the polity of the church. Somehow we’ve made the hearers of the Word more glamorous than the do ers of the word. What a mistake. How could we forget that all the people who do the little things that make a church run, are vital.

The church is a community of people who with various gifts and focus work—together—to provide a visible and tangible vision of a Kingdom world—a world where love of God and love of neighbor is key.

Both Mary and Martha are acting as disciples in this story. Both Mary and Martha are loving and serving the Lord. Both Mary and Martha are loving thir God with all their heart, all their soul and all their mind, and BOTH of them are loving their neighbor. Mary and Martha are two halves of what is needed to make a household work: their household in Bethany and the household of God. They are two halves of what makes God’s Kingdom work.

There is no problem with Mary hearing the Word and Martha doing the Word. But there is a problem afflicting Martha, a problem familiar to my Mom, a problem familiar to many of us as we navigate our modern world: anxiety, worry and distraction. Through Martha’s effort to love her neighbor as herself, she has become anxious and distracted. While focusing on her tasks, she has lost sight of the goal.

The tasks of hospitality have gotten in the way of being hospitable. When the details of hospitality, the serving of food, the setting of the table [the liturgies, music and preaching] become more important than the welcome and love of neighbor, then we’ve all missed the mark.

In today’s Gospel Jesus was saying to Martha,” what you’ve done is enough, thank you. Now stop and let us be in fellowship.”

It isn’t whether we are a Martha or a Mary----the point is that we are BOTH. To Love and Serve the Lord requires giving and receiving. To love and serve the Lord requires both speaking and listening. To love and serve the Lord requires Marys, Marthas, you and me.

Some of us are do-ers, some of us are hear-ers. Most of us are both. Our task is to take our gifts---and we all gifts—and TOGETHER create a loving and serving community committed to offering a dwelling place to all, a dwelling place where love of God and love of neighbor are embraced and lived. +

Pentecost 5 Yr C

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks harshly, acting cold and indifferent to the responsibilities of family and work. But more than being cranky, I think Jesus is giving us a primer on the cost of discipleship.

As we meet up with Jesus today, he James and John are traveling through a Samaritan area, a region considered unsafe, inhospitable and unclean to any self respecting Judean Jew. The Samaritans had no use for the Jews and the Jews, for the most part, had no use for the Samaritans…. So… of course… Jesus seeks shelter and hospitality there. And, of course, he doesn’t get it. Appalled at the rude treatment, John and James offer to take a page out of the Old Covenant prophet book and rain hellfire down upon them—kind of an “if they don’t love you and treat you with the respect we feel is due you, then we will obliterate them from the face of the earth. An eye for an eye. This must have exasperated Jesus….the old way was the exact thing he was trying to change. The old way of rules and regulations, had, instead of bringing people closer to God, taken God’s beloved even farther away. Jesus was sent to turn the whole thing upside down. And yet, still, they don’t get it?

Perhaps seeing this time of frustration with his ardent supporters as an opportunity, a couple of people make their pitch to Jesus about how they would be great disciples.

But, Jesus tells them, being my followers is not that easy, for to be a true disciple means carrying a heavy load, it means giving up some things which you hold dear, it means, risking an awful lot.

While the words Jesus uses are harsh-- the message is clear: if you follow me, you will lose much of what you hold dear. Following me is going to hurt.

Being a disciple, following the way of Jesus is not easy, it can be confusing and often it is very unsettling.

It can be scary.

This difficult stage is set at the outset of our Gospel when we hear: “when the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to Jerusalem.”

That sentence, no matter how many times I read it, sends shivers down my spine. Whether it is close to Holy Week or on a lazy summer morning in late June, Jesus setting his face for Jerusalem is unnerving and I want to shout “NO, don’t do it. “

Don’t do it.

For we know what this means---he is heading to his death. That this God in the Flesh sent to us by an adoring God will be rejected, betrayed, tortured and killed.

You know, some days its all too much-----days like today when we’ve had a successful Strawberry Festival, we’re out of school and we’re packing for vacation--and we want to skip the betrayal .the trial, the agony and the death and just get right to the empty tomb, to the glories of Easter.

The disciples, on some level, must have felt the same way.

John and James knew that once he set his face for Jerusalem all the talk about loving your neighbor as yourself and blessing the peacemakers would be put to the test…

They figured, once Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, the only thing that was going to get them through was a miracle.

But Jesus knew differently, he knew that the only thing which would save anyone---himself or his followers -----wasn’t a miracle, but faith.

And it was his efforts to get his followers to deepen their faith which made him sound so harsh. But he knew the only way to get through the worst of times was to have a sturdy and abiding faith. [PAUSE]

Faith. That’s the key. Faith.

Faith is not about sitting in this beautiful setting among wonderful people praising a gracious and loving God.

That’s worship.

Worship is what fuels us as we go out to do the work God has given us to do.

And that work?

That work is faith.

Faith is what makes people volunteer at the Food Pantry. Faith is what makes people say yes when asked to serve on Vestry or coordinate the Strawberry Festival or attend Episcopal Peace Fellowship Meetings.

Faith is what all of you do every single day.

Faith is what makes us greet “the other “in our midst even when it may be uncomfortable or unsettling.

Faith is when we stand up and say no to injustice, intolerance and inhumanity.

Faith is when we tell others the things they don’t want to hear.

[Faith is when we take the strength garnered through worship, the nourishment taken from this altar and go out into the world living life as a follower of Jesus.

Living a life that may not win us friends, but will garner us brothers and sisters. ]

Living a life of faith is being scared, unsure and confused yet doing it anyway.

Faith is believing that God so loves us that God will never leave us. Faith is saying, God loves me so much that I am going to step out into the world determined to leave this earth a better place than how I found it.

Faith doesn’t make the journey any less painful.

The faith of James and John couldn’t stop the events of Jerusalem—the crucifixion---just as our own faith can’t stop the cruelty and injustice which surrounds us every day.

What faith does do, though, is make those injustices intolerable to us.

What faith does do is give us the courage to stand up to those injustices—wherever we see them and say, this is not ok.

James and John didn’t want to go to Jerusalem, they knew what awaited Jesus there. But their faith in Jesus propelled them to follow him. All the way to the cross.

Their faith couldn’t stop him, neither can ours. Jesus will go to

Jerusalem-- but faith, when we really trust it and when we really let it have its way within us--- gives us the courage and the stamina to make it to the empty tomb.

Jesus knew that following him was costly.

But he also knew that it was worth it. +

Dignity's Showdown with Demonization Pentecost 4 Yr C

+Earlier this week our Presiding Bishop was preparing to celebrate and preach at Southwark Cathedral in London when she received a communiqué from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office asking her to not wear her mitre while at Southwark. Her mitre, the Bishop’s hat, is nothing special just a symbol of her office. No words she preached, or sacrament she celebrated would be less effective without her wearing it, but the principal of the request—that if she didn’t look like a Bishop then somehow the Church of England could pretend she wasn’t a Bishop---is ludicrous. Bishop Katharine is a duly elected, consented and consecrated Bishop in the Episcopal Church—she is our chief pastor and primate---she is the face of our church to the world.

And Rowan Williams, this week, asked that face to hide.

Because the Church of England is embroiled in great debate over the election of women to be Bishops in their own church and because the Anglican Communion as a whole is embroiled in debate and dissension over the Episcopal Church’s election and consecration of openly gay Bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury afraid of our disagreements, afraid of our differences, afraid of change, attempted to relegate our Presiding Bishop to some second class of Bishops, he tried to diminish her.

But he failed. You see Bp Katharine knows that a mitre has NOTHING to do with her being a Bishop. She knows that by removing it he was the one who was looking intolerant and absurd, not she. And so with grace and dignity, she fulfilled her promised appearance at Southwark celebrating and preaching at their Sunday Eucharist last week, while carrying the mitre and never mentioning the controversy, never casting a stone.

It’s difficult to hear today’s reading from Galatians and not wonder if Bp Rowan has forgotten some fundamental tenets of our faith.

Paul writes, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ^... ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

But I don’t think the Archbishop is all that different from the rest of us: he’s fearing change and appears wary of those people who are different than he. We all do this from time to time.

This is such a core human trait that all of the major world religions preach welcoming the stranger, healing the sick and caring for the poor, treating all of God’s children as the beloved they are.

Because we all need reminding. Because in theory it all sounds great----sure I respect the dignity of everyone, I understand that there are no differences under God, that we’re all equally cherished children of God…..

But then we’re walking down the street and a street person, someone who is afflicted by the internal demon of mental illness or addiction heads towards us, or sits among us in our pews and suddenly that welcome doesn’t feel so warm, that stranger seems a little off putting, we wish, in our hearts of hearts, that they would just…..be less different.

Adhering to Paul’s admonition that there shall be no difference between slave or free, male or female sounds really good in theory but, when put into the practice of our daily life, it becomes more difficult.

The different, the new, can be very stressful. Especially in the church. It was difficult when women were first invited to participate in the life of the church by serving on vestries (which women couldn’t do until 1970), by being ordained priests (1976) by being consecrated Bishop (1989) and finally by being chosen Presiding Bishop, 2006. It’s stressful when new members join us…we’re thrilled they’re here but until we all get to know each other it can be awkward. Especially when they sit in our pew, or suggest we do something differently…...

Change is difficult.

But Paul makes it pretty darn clear: there are no dividing lines in the Kingdom of God and there’s no room for division.

We must accept every single human being as the precious child of God they are. No exceptions. But we think of exceptions all the time. [Paul certainly didn’t mean HER …..or HIM, or that group….]

It would have been easy for Jesus to walk right by the Gerasene Demoniac. He could have, like so many of us do, just cross the street when the crazy homeless, smelly guy came bellowing toward us. If it got bad enough we could call the police, if it had gotten bad enough Jesus could have had his disciples deal with this man and his demons. BUT HE DIDN’T. He didn’t because he knew that beneath all the fear and frothing, all the screaming and yelling that man was a beloved child of God, waiting to be healed.

Paul is clear in his Epistle, Jesus is clear in the Gospel and Bp Katharine was clear in her actions: there will always be people with whom we disagree. There will always be people whom we fear, there will always be people who, on some level, wish that we would go away but God, as he did with Elijah in today’s readings from Kings, will not let us run for long and God will not let us hide….because God, in gracing us with this life, has also given us a great responsibility: to refuse to let the differences between us, to let a fear of the unknown, to let our resistance to change, keep us from offering healing and grace to one another—those we know and those we don’t. Those with whom we agree, and those with whom we don’t.

God has told us, Jesus showed us, St. Paul told us and Bp Katharine showed us: this is a broken world and only when we work together, only when we stand above our differences and disagreements, are we really living Christ-filled lives.

Today is World Refugee Day. Here in Buffalo we are blessed to have many refugees living among us. Here , for generations, people fleeing danger, fleeing torment, fleeing oppression, have found safe haven in Western New York. We, as a community have welcomed these strangers, embracing them and making them safe. In honor of them and remembering the work of Christ and the words of St. Paul please stand and join me in the Prayer for Immigrants and Refugees which you’ll find in your pew. May we, like Bp Katharine, stand above our fear of difference, our resistance to change and live out our baptismal covenant by respecting all whom we encounter, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Let us Pray:

A PRAYER FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS

Blessed are you, God of all nations.

You bless our land richly with gifts of the earth and with people created in your image.

Grant that we will be stewards and peacemakers who live as your children.

Blessed are you, Lord Jesus Christ.

You crossed every border between divinity and humanity to make your home with us.

Help us to welcome you in refugees, immigrants and all newcomers to our nation.

Blessed are you, Holy Spirit.

You work in the hearts of all to bring about harmony and goodwill.

Strengthen us in human solidarity and in hope.

All-loving God,

grant us vision to recognize your presence in our midst,

especially in the stranger among us.

Give us courage to open the door to our neighbors

and grace to build a kingdom community.

Amen.

(The Episcopal Church, Migration Ministries, 2010)

Shedding Shame and Embracing Love: Pentecost 3 Yr C

+I know the reading from Kings was a little hard to follow this morning, so let me sum it up for you—Ahab is a spoiled brat who, because he was King, figured he could get whatever he wanted, just by asking. He wanted the vineyard next to his summer home but when the owner said no, it wasn’t for sale, Ahab didn’t push the issue. While he was a spoiled brat kind of King he wasn’t all that assertive. But when Jezebel, his wife got wind of this, she flipped out and proceeded to manipulate and threaten her way to acquiring the land for Ahab. Pretty brutal stuff and a behavior which any normal person would label shameful. But people like Jezebel and Ahab don’t feel shame. Because to feel shame suggests caring what others think. Rarely do Kings and Queens care what other people think.

Shame is insidious. It eats away at us and before we know it, we become so mired in self-loathing that it can take years to dig ourselves out. Therapists across the globe make a living from those of us beset by shame.

Jesus had no use for it. Shame was, to him, a worthless emotion, a waste of time, a false wall we put up between God and us.

Shame is a shame…because shame keeps us locked up and shut down.

Shame is at the root of so many self destructive behaviors that, in twelve step groups, recovery focuses on shedding shame---confronting it, admitting it to God, to yourself and to another human being. And then moving on, living a life free from torment.

Shame is paralyzing. We can be so caught up in the shame of letting someone down---or worse---that we can’t move out of it. It weighs us down. To move out of it, to step out of the morass of shame, requires both great courage and tremendous faith.

The woman in today’s Gospel had: both great courage and tremendous faith.

Let me set the scene a bit. In Jesus’ time, a dinner, such as the one Luke describes, had the guests seated—well reclining really-- in couches lined in a semi circle around a banquet room. The servants would scurry about behind the scenes, out of view. Other people, beggars usually, would be invited in for a portion of the evening, to take their shot at getting a handout or two. This is probably how the woman gained entry. But instead of seeking a handout, a scrap of food or a few coins, this woman boldly walked in and dared to touch Jesus, bathing him in aloes, cleansing him for whatever would come next (the other evangelists place this Gospel on the cusp of Holy Week, interpreting her actions as an anointing ritual, preparing Jesus for his impending death---but Luke places this episode much earlier in Jesus’ ministry.)

This behavior was incredibly risky for the woman---at best she would be further ridiculed and rejected by society, at worse, she would be arrested and put to death.

This woman, in encountering Jesus, knew that she was sitting at the foot of love and forgiveness and that nothing---not even that wall of shame around her, the judgment of the world, the scorn of the host, the whisperings of the others in attendance----would keep her from the source of love. She had such faith and such trust in God that she was able to let go of her shame and sit at the foot of forgiveness. And by doing so she was healed—she was freed from the bonds of guilt and shame. Through her own outpouring of love for another she was washed in love herself. Her giving of love freed her to accept the love of God through Christ. By giving love, she received love. Shame blocks the light of Christ from our lives. Shedding that shame, brightens our life because the light of Christ is given full access to all corners of our being---illuminating the darkest corners of our souls, where we store our shame. When we hold onto our shame, we block that love—it can’t break through unless we are willing to set our shame aside.

That’s the real lesson in all our readings today:

We must be willing to love freely and without restraint. By shedding our shame we will, like the woman in today’s Gospel, open ourselves to receiving the free, abundant and unrestrained love of God as given to us in Jesus Christ.

Likewise, we must be willing to shed all the hurtful thoughts words and deed we inflict upon others—words and actions we use to shroud others in shame.

Only when we free ourselves from shame—the shame within us and the shame we throw upon others—are we able to receive the full bounty of God’s love, a love which was promised to us at our baptism.

The cleansing waters of baptism open us to the Kingdom of God.

Those promises made today on behalf of Sophia at this very font, the promises we all made—or had made on our behalf--give us all we need.

The cleansing waters of the baptism, the seal of chrism on our foreheads and the promises made through the baptismal covenant is the perfect antidote to shame and doubt and fear and sin.

You see, we don’t earn the love and forgiveness of God, it’s a grace bestowed upon us at baptism.

A grace which will wash over Sofia Rae is a few moments.

So, no matter what Sofia may encounter in her life, no matter what we have and will encounter in ours---no matter how far any of us may stray from the love of God, that love is never removed. If , like the woman in today’s Gospel, we have faith then all our human foibles, all our miscues, all our sins won’t keep us from the love of God.

The only thing-- the only thing-- which keeps us from that love, the light of Christ—the love of God in the flesh-- is us--our own doubt, our own fear and our own shame. So, on your way up to the altar, to be fed the food of eternal light and life, dip your fingers into the font and remind yourself of the healing, forgiving and enduring love of God.+

YR C Pentecost 2

Today the Second Sunday after Pentecost is our first Sunday in what is commonly called, in church parlance, ordinary time. Ordinary time is that time in the church year when we aren’t accounting down to Christmas or Holy Week and we aren’t counting away from Easter Day. Ordinary time is the regular steady week in and week out passage of time, which takes us through the summer and fall. It ‘s Ordinary. But its not mundane, it’s not boring, it just isn’t extraordinary. We all have extraordinary moments in our lives. The birth of a child, meeting the love of our life, seeing an incredible performance in the theater or at the symphony. For some of us it’s a spectacular vacation, an incredible bike ride or run---regardless of the specifics, our extraordinary times are, when we look over the whole of our lives fleeting, brief moments in time. Our life, the bulk of it, happens in ordinary time. Regular day in and day out life. But,as I said, ordinary isn’t mundane, it isn’t drudgery…for it is within the ordinary days of our lives when our faith, our relationship with the Holy and Undivided Trinity and our living out our faith in community can really take hold. It’s when we take the wonders of Christmas, the joy of Easter and the thrill of Pentecost and let it settle into our lives. It’s when the rubber of our faith meets the road of our life. And, if we’re serious about it, if we are attentive to living out our faith in all we do, extra-ordinary things will happen---amazing events will happen upon us as we pass through the ordinary times of our lives. Today, as we settle into Ordinary Time, we hear stories of ordinary people living through pain and loss, which, through the grace of God, turns into extraordinary grace. The dead are returned to life, the outcasts are given hope and the impossible becomes possible. Within the ordinary, we get the extraordinary. Today we begin a several week dip into the First Book of Kings, with special focus on the actions of Elijah and his response to King Ahab’s pagan practices. A horrendous drought has come over the land as Elijah encounters a widow and her son. Now it’s important for both the Hebrew scripture reading today and our Gospel, to know the significance of widows in ancient culture. A widow was the poster child for outcast. A widow, especially if she didn’t have a son to care for her, was generally left to beg on the street, competing with dogs for scraps. The most famous widow in Scripture is probably Naomi, whose daughter in law Ruth risks her own security and future to stand by her deceased husband’s mother. Widows don’t have an easy go of it. The widow in our reading from Kings is struggling with a famine and she is at the end of her rope, realizing that she and her son are going to die, when Elijah asks her to use her last little bit of meal and make him a cake. This ordinary woman listens to this crazy man and, inexplicably, gives him the last of her food. This act of extreme faith leads to a seeming unending jar of meal feeding her household for days on end. A happy ending until her son, who had survived this multi year drought and famine is taken ill and seems to die. A turn of events straight out of a TV melodrama, this shakes both the widow and Elijah to their core. In his own mourning and sorrow, Elijah prays and cries out to God and the young man is returned to life. In the ordinary life of a widow in ancient times, comes an extraordinary man who did extraordinary things in the name of God. This regular woman in the midst of a very painful yet very familiar event in the world of poor people—then and now-was attentive enough to say yes to crazy Elijah the Tishbite and by doing so, the grace of God broke through the ordinary and wrought something extraordinary. Ordinary time gives us an extraordinary opportunity to knit our faith into the fabric of our daily lives. These past six weeks at Good Shepherd have been full of activity and excitement and hubbub. After the glorious reception you all gave me on my first Sunday, the completion of the floor refinishing in Jewett Hall, the amazing renovations in the rectory, my moving into the rectory just last week and finally yesterdays’ beautiful and moving Celebration of New Ministry have provided a fair share of extraordinary days. Now it’s time to use all that energy to catapult us into sharing the Good News with one another and the world around us. Today we begin the settling in of our life together. We’ll get to know each other and our faith stories; we’ll break bread together at this altar and around fellowship tables in Jewett Hall and in our homes. We’ll attend the theater together, we’ll serve at Friends of the Night People, we’ll work in the food pantry, we’ll welcome the members of our community who come through our doors, using our space to meet, to heal and to dance. Today, we begin the ordinariness of our lives together. The ordinariness which, if we are attentive, will bring us extraordinary moments of grace, tucked in the midst of our daily lives. Our faith may get a shiny new coat of paint each Christmas and Easter but it’s during these regular days of the year that our faith gets its workout. So let’s get busy, let’s be attentive and let’s invite the grace and truth of God as shown to us through the varied and mysterious workings of the Holy Trinity to surprise and delight us throughout these, our ordinary, yet so very precious days. Amen.

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. +