HAPPY TRINITY SUNDAY!
(Our job today is to make that exciting!)
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
The readings for today are the ones that the lectionary
Chose to fit this feast Day of the Holy Trinity
And there is a lot of motion in them
From Paul
There is peace…God’s peace
Moving through Jesus Christ
There is sharing the Glory of God
Glory of God meaning the presence of God
And God’s Love on the move
Being poured into our hearts
THROUGH the Holy Spirit
From Paul…Lots of motion
From the Gospel of John
Spirit of truth coming
Guiding
Not speaking on his own but as the link to God
The Spirit will glorify me
Which means…The Holy Spirit will make visible the presence of God
THROUGH me
to you… (those bewildered disciples)
AND TO all of us
lots of motion in these readings
And this isn’t surprising
Because our base metaphor for God is LOVE
Which is something that this community holds to strongly
I noticed this morning that your statement of “Who We Are”says
We believe in the unifying message that ‘God is Love’…heads, hearts, hands for Christ in service and celebration”
The Christian tradition keeps reaching for ways to talk about God
The Gospel of John is a good example the Gospel of John
John is vivid and deliberate in stacking image upon image
And so between chapter 6 and chapter 15
he uses 7 ‘I AM’ statements familiar to everyone here:
I am the bread of life
I am the light of the world
I am the gate, protector of the sheep
I am the resurrection and the life
I am the good shepherd
I am the way, the truth, and the life
I am the vine
But there's never enough
After all…we are talking about GOD
…the throbbing heart at the center of the Universe!
Today’s text from Ch 16
Comes from Jesus’ farewell discourse
For 5 chapters Jesus is saying goodbye
As he offers comfort and instruction and finally the promise of the Holy Spirit
He returns to LOVE “The Father had Loved me as I have loved you”
He returns to the base metaphor introduced in Chapter 4
“God is Love, and all who live in love live in God and God lives in them.”
The best…the least incomplete thing we can say about God
(…if not the most concrete)
Is that God is Love
And love is in motion
Why do we have this doctrine of the Holy Trinity?
Not because of 5th century deep thinkers had a lot of time on their hands
That's not how tradition works
No…The Trinity comes directly out of the Church’s experience
of the presence of God in Christ..
palpable…in the gut…experience
And the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the Church’s way
Of describing the BREADTH
The WIDENESS of God’s visibleness!
It’s the Church’s way of describing an ongoing relationship with the LIVING GOD.
We don’t come here
to worship a guy who walked around the ancient near east 2k years ago
No, that’s not who we are.
We believe that the Risen Christ is present…
In the world
In our neighbor
In this assembly
In our own hearts and lives
And this presence…full of movement
In and of and through
is LOVE
So today we highlight the Trinity
That image of
God in motion
God that is an energetic ball of giving and receiving love
The Church highlights this
As. it. Asks. Us.
To be faithful
To be faithful in our living
It asks us to live in imitation of the God of Jesus Christ
To live in love and relationship and communion
It is sooooooooo abstract
Isn’t it?
The real question is
What does this look like!
A while ago, 6 months…maybe a year
I took a screen shot of a blessing that I saw posted on some website.
I end up with a bunch of these “screenshots”
cluttering up my desktop
eventually I’ll come back
and either name them and put them in a folder or trash them
Anyway, I opened it a couple days ago…I read it…and I thought
This is what it looks like
This is an example of what the Holy Trinity looks like
at work
in the world
through a person
As I googled around to find out who the author was (so I could use it and credit him)
I ended up at the blogsite of Rev. Dean Baker,
an episcopal priest…from somewhere west of here
And the story behind the blessing made it even more perfect for today
Dean Baker is 60…
He tells of dropping of his young son at West Point
He calls him his “Captain America” son
And the next day his older daughter
Who he describes as
“my amazing hippie, dread-locked, tattooed, I’m more of a Buddhist” daughter
His daughter, who he delights in, asked him and his wife to go with her to BURNING MAN
[I had to look it up…Burning man seems to be a weeklong Woodstock + Art Fair of thousands of people in the desert where you have to pack everything you need to survive…google it;)]
Apparently, it’s not an art fair where you buy and sell your wares…
the whole experience is about sharing.
So, Rev Baker wondered what he might be able to share in this sharing economy
He thought “I’m not an artist or a musician…what do I have to share?”
And it turned out to be this blessing which he printed on little business cards along with his temporary BM-Hut-Address (apparently there are addresses)
The cards…and some holy water;)
Here is the blessing:
May your eyes be so blessed you see God in everyone
Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor
Your hands, so everything you give
And everything you receive,
Is a sacrament
And your feet, so you run to those who need you.
May your heart be so opened
So set on fire
That your love
YOUR love,
Changes everything.
There has been a lot of motion or should I say commotion in my head of late
· I was in Denver visiting a daughter and a son…and the homelessness
The blocks of tents and garbage…
· And The never-ending nature of parenting
· Then there is The reversal that makes me a parent to my father
· And how about…47 school shootings so far in 2022
Lots of commotion
And then
this blessing
This blessing that INVITES me see it all differently
Instead of my litany of commotion
This blessing is asking me to see opportunities to participate in Love
Opportunities to participate in healing
To participate either by offering my own brokenness up for healing
Or by inviting another into God’s healing.
Giver, Receiver
Healer, or in need of healing
Love-in-motion really is the answer
For Rev Baker it was made concrete on a business card printed with this blessing, an address where he he could be found, and bottle of holy water.
But the opportunities to participate
To invite another into the love of God in motion in us and among us
are daily and endless
This idea of participation
got me thinking
How does it work?
Are we in Christ
or is Christ in us?
It is both…it has to be both
It is the rhythm of Christian life
When we gather
We are gathered by the Holy Spirit into Christ
Here…Together…We are his body…we are in Christ
Giving praise and thanksgiving to God
When we leave
We take Christ in us out to the world
NOT the whole Christ…Thank God
But that which is given to us to share
It is like breathing and breathing out
And this is how we are invited to participate
in that energetic ball of giving and receiving love
That we name the Holy Trinity…God who is love.
How are we doing?
That's the next
How are we doing?
What gets in our way…what are our stumbling blocks?
Is it pride, having all the answers…needing little from anyone?
Is it envy, that causes us to live by comparison and results in a life of ‘over-against”?
Is it wrath, which keeps our arms folded in anger and resentment?
I pick in these three of the seven deadly sins because
They’re the ones that sneak up on me with a certain regularity
My guess is that yours are just as familiar to you;)
Whatever our weaknesses
This gathering place is a place to breathe in
To breathe in The Holy Spirit
Here is a place to offer up what needs healing in us
Both individually and as a community
Here is a place to remember our place in the body of Christ
And from here
To heal and bless in Christ’s name
Remaining open to being healed and blessed along the way
The rhythm of Christian life
Testifies to the fact that we are always a work in progress
This side of eternal life
We need each other
We need God
Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
