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!
In the Parish where Rob and I raised our family
The Easter Season was taken very seriously
On every Sunday of the Easter Season
Fr Steve, our pastor, would begin his homily…with
“Happy Easter Church!”
Now this wouldn’t go over very well if there were half dead lilies all over
And we know how notoriously short-lived they are in dark churches;)
So the trick was trying to keep Easter Flowers fresh through the 7 Sundays of Easter.
And that job was my very first “inside the church” ministry
Of course, every Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection
Every Sunday is Easter
But in the Easter season we sharpen our focus
It’s kinda like birthdays
We celebrate the birth of people we love on a particular day
But we are grateful all year long…
We are glad they were born every day…or at least most days;)
but ONE day we set aside ONE day so that we can sing and eat cake and ice cream!
The best way that the Church helps us focus comes from the lectionary
The Gospel selections tell of Jesus making his presence known
He pops in and out of rooms…never mind the locked doors
He sneaks up beside us on the Road
He cooks breakfast on the beach
And for the last three Sundays we are revisiting Jesus’ final words to his disciples…
…today focusing on the gift of the Advocate…the Holy Spirit…the presence of Christ promised to be with us to teach and remind and give peace
And the first readings in Easter all come from the Acts of the Apostles
And many of these first readings tell of the miraculous growth of the early church…
Myriads and myriads of joyful converts…and miracles too!
But today is different
Today we have the concise but important story of Lydia
Biblical Scholars usually refer to the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as one book: Luke-Acts
Written by the same author
They mirror each other
Just as in the Gospel, Jesus moves from Galilee to Jerusalem
So, in Acts, Paul moves from Jerusalem to Rome
The story of Lydia
Placed as it is at the hinge of the story of Acts
Is the pivot point
This is a significant episode
Midway through Luke’s gospel
Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem
And midway through Acts
Paul gets deliberate about Rome
But Paul is not Jesus.
Before today’s happy meeting between Paul and Lydia…
Paul had been having his share of trouble
He had some relationship trouble with Barnabas
And then some directional trouble with “where to go next”
In fact
He tried every other compass direction
He tried
And he was blocked
The text says “the holy spirit put up roadblocks”
So here’s the picture in my head:
You know when you are trying to get somewhere new
And you are relying on your google-maps?
Then you make a wrong turn and that little circular crank starts to turn and turn???
Paul goes through that re-routing thing until…finally…
There are no other options…which is when he has his dream;)
Why is Paul reluctant to go west to Philippi?
Well…because it is hard, and dangerous, and…well totally ROMAN!
The city of Philippi is a mini-Rome
The people who live there are the children,
ancestors, or slaves of the original conquering soldiers.
The natives are long-gone.
The success and vitality of this town is directly related to Rome
I bet every one of us would have saved Philippi for last;)
Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem
It wasn’t going to be easy
The Holy Spirit
Finally gets through to Paul
IMAGE: One hand on either cheek…
The Holy Spirit, with one hand firm on each of his cheeks
sets Paul’s face to Philippi and toward Rome
…where the story will end with Paul’s martyrdom
He is going.
But even then, Paul can’t escape his unchecked-cultural-assumptions
He sets sail believing that he is journeying to meet the “Macedonian Man” of his dream
Instead, just outside the city, he comes upon a group of women
He meets Lydia, a Woman from Thyatira!
Quite simply…NOT a Macedonian man;)
(I love that he gets things so wrong
It makes me feel better about my sometimes-wayward discipleship)
The Lord opened Lydia’s heart
And Paul spoke into it
And like those disciples on the road to Emmaus
Lydia “prevailed upon” Paul and Silas and they enjoyed her generous hospitality
This is only part 1 of the story…in part 2 Paul and Silas get into trouble in the city
They end up beaten and thrown into prison.
And after a swift conversion of the jailer and his family
…the section ends with Paul and Silas back at Lydia’s
Back to her comfortable, lively, re-juvenating house-church
Lydia signifies something important
In the dramatic story of Acts
With its powerful sermons
And myriads and myriads of conversions
Lydia begins tending to the inside of the growing church
I am comfortable supposing
That the newbie Christian Church
Didn’t need a Macedonian Man
The Church needed a Lydia
The Church always needs Lydias
There is a lot going on in the lives of the people of St Stephens
1-Young people finishing College and transitioning to an uncertain world of work and Career. Where will I live, what will my work be like, will I have friends?
2-and young people moving on to college from High School
To being away from home…away from the familiar…
For the first time
3-on the flipside there are parents wondering what it will be like after he/she leaves
Will we like having a quiet house?
4- And among us there are many dealing with the slow creep of aging and the debility that often accompanies it
5- And one rests in a hospice bed while her beloved keeps vigil beside
And I’m sure there are more…
These…shall we say…transitions
These Philippi experiences…
Where there is plenty of anxiety and fear
lots of questions
And hard to come by answers
Well…wouldn’t having a Lydia nearby make a difference?
I began with an emphasis on Easter
And an Easter message is always a message of promise and hope and presence
We are an Easter people
And being an Easter people takes us all—Pauls, Silas’, Macedonian men, and Lydias…it takes us all
Some of us here today are coming up against road-blocks
Some of us are in the midst of a little re-routing
And maybe some of us are in a place
To take on the role of Lydia
To step into some inside-the-church ministry of caring
Even though I would never say that Church is the only place to rest in the presence of the Holy Spirit
I am comfortable saying that it is a privileged place
Especially here at St Stephen’s
Where both Pauls and Lydias seem to surface when needed
Each one of us
On this Easter Day
Made our way here
Perhaps some of us made our way in response to God’s love for us
And others did so in search of it
And the Easter Word
Gives us Paul and Lydia and the Holy Spirit
In the power of the Holy Spirit
Christ is present among us
Helping us to be Christ for each other
It starts here…
Or better yet…here is a point on the ongoing pattern of Christian Life
THIS/HERE is both refuge and prompt
Paul was nourished and comforted
In the house-church that was Lydia’s home
That pattern continues
It is the Easter Pattern
It is our pattern
Prayer of St Ignatius
RECEIVE
You have given all to me
To you, Lord, I return it
Everything is yours
Do with it what you will
Give me only your love and your grace
That is enough for me
I’m curious
What do you think the other dinner party guests were talking about as they walked home from that dinner party?
This is an extremely sensual…maybe even disturbing, episode
In the context of John’s unfolding narrative
this episode offers us an almost impossible depth of richness
We have a bit of a problem from the get-go
Because we have been reading from the Gospel of Luke
We have talked about Lucan themes and the Lucan Jesus
And PLOP
The lectionary switches to the Gospel of John!
So we need to take a look at where we are
We need to put on our John glasses
Today’s scene follows directly after the Raising of Lazarus story
It might even be considered a continuation of that story
…the stories are meant to go together…they need each other
The Lazarus story begins by foreshadowing what Mary will do:
“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany,
the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
Mary WAS the one who anointed the Lord with perfume
and wiped his feet with her hair”
So the narrator is identifying Mary by what she hasn’t yet done!
That’s a clue that it is really important…it is DEFINING
When Jesus went to Lazarus’s tomb and said “take away the stone”
Martha warns: “But Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days!”
Looking at the two episodes together
I am struck today by contrasts
Let’s start with Mary and Judas
For Mary, the monetary analysis of her sacrifice never entered her thoughts
For Judas, everything is weighed and calculated…measurability is key
For Mary, extravagance and exuberance erupt naturally in the presence of Jesus
She only has eyes for him…
she is not navigating the concerns of others in the room…
she is utterly free and unencumbered…sitting at the feet of Jesus
Judas is attempting to manipulate the scene
He points a deriding finger at her…look at her…what a waste!
Who could ever condone such behavior!
Judas is corrupt…His motivations are corrosive.
There is nothing likeable about Judas in John’s gospel.
The common purse is for the needs of the poor
He manages the common purse
He is a thief
Mary’s extravagance could have lined his own pocket
Mary does NOW what Jesus will ask his disciples to do in the next chapter
He will wash their feet
And instruct them “Do this in memory of me”
Mary becomes a model disciple NOW…intuitively and without instruction!
Judas corrupts discipleship…
Mary gets discipleship…
Then there is Life and Death
Lazarus is dead…and is resuscitated
He is alive and continues to be present in the story
For John this is what propels the political and religious forces to coalesce against him
Mary’s anointing is in anticipation of Jesus’ death
She senses deeply the mission of Jesus and she responds in the moment
Without reserve
With abandon
She won’t get another chance
And then there is the assault on the senses
Aroma versus Stench
The aroma of Mary’s ointment counters the stench of Lazarus’ tomb…
the stench of death
This detail in the story seeped into my imagination
And it demanded my attention!
I googled “why are smells so evocative?”
The olfactory bulb sends its information directly to the amygdala – the memory bank for emotional experience. There is no extra processing en-route, as there is for our other senses, so smell memories link to emotional memories in a raw state.
I sent out this prompt to 10-15 friends
Describe a smell that floods your mind with an arresting memory—person place or event:
There was a bit of overlap…but here are a few of the responses:
My mother’s perfume---Estee Lauder
My father’s pipe tobacco…it signaled: I’M HOME!
The Peonies that lined the driveway of my family home
The aroma of my mother frying chicken
The smell of coffee being ground…I remember my mother taking me the grocery when I was four or five and her getting a bag of freshly ground coffee
Perfume of a girl I made out with in High School…don’t use my name;)
The smell of lily of the Valley…the crisp fresh jasmine-like scent of a small bouquet I picked on the way to school to give to my favorite teacher Sr. Michelle…I was in the 1st grade
But one shared memory really helped me understand this gospel story in a fresh way.
My friend, Mary…of course it was a Mary…
Responded:
Lilac bushes lined one side and the back edge of our backyard where I grew up. Each Spring, when the lilacs bloomed, my Mother would send us kids out to make cuttings so that she could make bouquets for every room in the house. The bouquets were replenished for as long as the bushes provided. The fragrance filled the house! Lilacs = Spring = Mom. When I was first married and we bought our first house, I brought transplants from my parents' yard to plant in my first home. I just couldn’t imagine spring without Lilacs to cut…without that fragrance in my home!
I began to wonder about Jesus’ Mary
About her rich and fragrant ointment
Mary is rubbing this on Jesus’ feet
She used enough for it to fill the house
And she takes her hair and wipes at the excess
Her hair is saturated
Perhaps Jesus’ Mary…
Like my friend Mary and her essential Lilacs
Perhaps Jesus’ Mary
Wants to take the aroma of Jesus
The scent of Love with her
She saturates her hair
She wants a remnant of his presence
Something to carry with her
And perhaps Jesus takes her---
Her scent of devotion and love
With him to his Passion
It is a scent of love
And Love always goes both ways
Giving and receiving
LOVE always in relationship
This is rich imagery
But it’s true isn’t it?
Love does have a scent
Fear and corruption do too…
There are giveaways in our language:
We say that something “smells fishy”
Or from Shakespeare “There is something rotten in Denmark”
Or when some person or event “leaves a bad taste in our mouth”
On this fifth Sunday of Lent
As we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week
I feel drawn to investigate the smell of my life
What is my life’s ratio of aroma to stench?
What lingers in the wake of my encounters with people and places and events?
If I can see corrosiveness trailing in my wake
Am I keen enough…honest enough… to investigate?
Does my Judas-like outrage against …just against
Overpower
My Mary-Like freely-spent…devotion and love?
What lingers after I pass by?
When I was working in the hospital…during my chaplain days
I was often with dying patients
And its true…death definitely has a stench
And it doesn’t magically go away
But the nurses taught me about an ointment that you could put
Under your nose…above your upper lip
It doesn’t make the smell go away
It just deals with it
We Christians don’t deny death
Holy week will take us through the cross to Easter
Not around it
Or under it or over it
Through it
Of the 10-15 people I polled
And I used the word smell deliberately
so that it could refer to the
pleasant as well as the unpleasant
All the responses were sweet memories
even if tinged with loss and longing
John’s gospel is keen on abundance…a major theme starting with all that WINE (chapter 2)
Abundance
Be assured
there is plenty of fragrant love on offer
It seems to me that our discipleship challenge is to gather it up
The loving and being loved
Gather it up
Grace upon grace
…enough to saturate our hair…
What do we give off as we encounter people, places, and events?
Is it a love that lingers?
A love that leaves a scent?
Is it a love with a measure of momentum?
So that
beyond us…it will take on ever new life?
LET IT BE SO!
