Sermon – Romans 5.1-5, John 16.12-15, TS, YC, May 22, 2016

Tags

activity, attention, community, disciples, doctrine, faith, God, grace, grow, guide, heresy, Holy Spirit, Jesus, learn, love, seminary, Sermon, suffering, theology, Trinity, Trinity Sunday, world

In seminary one of my favorite professors was our theology professor.  I did not like her because of the subject she taught.  In fact, her class was one of the classes that gave me the most headaches as I struggled to understand theological arguments.  Instead, what I liked about her was the way that she taught.  She had a dizzying intellect, and yet she had the ability to gently make you feel like you were not an idiot.  Someone in class would ask a question, trying to get their head around a theological concept.  Her soft response would be, “Oh, yes, yes, I could see how you might get to that conclusion.  So-and-so also argued that heresy in the fourth century.”  Or she might answer, “Oh yes, that heresy is one of the church’s favorite,” and then go on to explain how the church struggled to counter the heresy.  What I loved about her responses was she let you know that although you clearly did not understand the theological concept, you were not the first person to struggle to understand and you will not be the last.  Struggling to understand and articulate a cogent theological concept without slipping into a heretical argument is a basic part of being a Christian.

What I loved about the pastoral nature of my professor’s responses was she understood that being able to articulate a definition of God is incredibly difficult.  More important to her than you getting that articulation correct was your engagement with the concept.  Perhaps she understood that theologians for centuries have tried to do the same thing – define who God is and what God means.  That may be why she never seemed bothered by our heresies – because she knew that her role, and in fact the role of the church, is to be involved in the ongoing endeavor of naming God’s activity in our world.[i]  That is the same work that we do every year on the feast of Trinity Sunday – embracing the endeavor of naming God’s activity in our world.

To help us in that endeavor, we get two great pieces of scripture today.  In our gospel lesson from John, Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit will guide the disciples into all truth.  Jesus’ promise to the disciples tells us those closest to Jesus, those who have been sitting at Jesus’ feet, learning truth from the source, are still going to need help.  The disciples, who will be commissioned to go out into the world to share the Good News, will not do that work alone.  The Spirit will go with them, helping them to continue to learn and grow into the fullness of faith.

I was recently invited to come to Sunday School for a little round of “stump the priest.”  I laughed at the title, but inside I was thinking, “What if they ask a question that really does stump me?!?”  Luckily, a cooler head prevailed.  The truth is they probably will stump me – several times over.  But that will give us a chance to talk about how the Spirit guides us into all truth – in childhood, in young adulthood, and into our older years.  But more importantly, I hope that we get the chance to talk about how the community of faith is a vital part of that learning of all truth.  We are certainly dependent on the Spirit, but we are also dependent on each other, because the Spirit so often speaks to us through people and the words of those around us.[ii]

That is one of the things I love most about being in the Episcopal Church.  The Episcopal Church has always been a place where ambiguity is okay.  As David Lose explains, “…being part of being a Trinitarian community [means] striving to be a place that knows it doesn’t have all the answers, and so consequently makes space for conversation and values those who bring different voices and experiences into its midst.  Conversation, valuing difference, being inclusive – these things aren’t easy, but genuine community, while challenging, is also creative, productive, and enriching.”[iii]

The other great piece of learning today comes from our reading in Romans.  On the surface, this piece of scripture has always troubled me.  Paul’s claim that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, has always sounded a little dismissive about suffering.  But I do not think Paul meant for this formula of suffering leading to hope was not meant to be prescriptive, but descriptive.[iv]  In other words, he is not saying those who are suffering should be grateful.  What he is saying is those who are suffering have the opportunity to not waste the pain.  Peter Steinke says, “We ‘waste’ suffering if we gloss over, deny, avoid, or neglect its message…. If, however, we can learn from pain, [pain] is not wasted but a source of life and health.”[v]  My suspicion is that Paul is trying to capture what we learn from our gospel lesson today.  Even in the midst of suffering the Holy Spirit and the community of faith can guide us into all truth.

I have been a part of parishes that have a communal component to their premarital counseling.  In addition to meeting with the priest, each engaged couple is partnered with a married couple in the parish for mentoring.  One would think that the married couple’s job is to tell the engaged couple how to do everything and give them advice.  But more often, the couples end up talking about how hard marriage is, what struggles they have dealt with, and how they got through the suffering.  The relationships between the mentors and the mentees often last well beyond the wedding.  When done with honesty, vulnerability, and compassion, the couples realize that they gain strength from one another and find a place where they can go when they are looking for truth and guidance.

Our gospel and epistle lessons today weave together an understanding of the Trinity that is both vertical and horizontal.[vi]  Vertically, we learn that our understanding of God is ever changing and dynamic – much like God is ever changing and dynamic.  I think that is why my professor was so open to us stepping into and out of heresies and doctrine.  She knew that every Christian had to take that journey of steps and missteps.  But I think she also understood that truth was ever evolving and that the Spirit was with us in that journey.  She was not worried about us because, “…a critical characteristic of faith is an ever-striving and dynamic making sense of God.  The Trinity [cannot] be the only way to get God.  [That theology] is as limited and finite as our humanity.  [The theology of the Trinity] is one attempt of the church to articulate the being of God in a particular time and place.”[vii]  We will continue to walk toward truth in our own time and place too.

Horizontally, our lessons teach us that we find our way to that truth the Spirit is showing us through the vehicle of those around us – both those in the church, and those outside our walls.  I cannot count the number of times I have learned something profound about God by someone who never harkens the door a church.  Our job is to pay attention:  pay attention to the way that God is using others to show us more about God; pay attention to the ways God invites us to interpret our sufferings with others; pay attention to those who are struggling toward truth along with us.  We will surely step into heresy now and then.  But we will also step into God’s love and grace through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and those around us.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “Trinity Talk,” May 15, 2016, as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4648 on May 18, 2016.

[ii] David Lose, “Trinity C:  Don’t Mention the Trinity,” May 17, 2016, as found on http://www.davidlose.net/2016/05/trinity-c-shh-dont-mention-the-trinity/ on May 18, 2016.

[iii] Lose.

[iv] Richard L. Sheffield, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 39.

[v][v] Sheffield, 41.

[vi] Lose.

[vii] Lewis.

Sermon – Isaiah 6.1-8, TS, YB, May 31, 2015

Tags

experience, forgiveness, God, hem, Holy Spirit, Jesus, repentance, robe, Sermon, theology, Trinity, Trinity Sunday, volunteer, worship

“God sat Sunday in her Adirondack deck chair, reading the New York Times and sipping strawberry lemonade, her pink robe flowing down to the ground.  The garment hem was fluff and frill, and it spilled holiness down into the sanctuary, into the cup and the nostrils of the singing people.  One thread trickled loveliness into a funeral rite, as the mourners looked in the face of death, and heard the story of a life truer than goodness.  A torn piece of the robe’s edge flopped onto a war in southern Sudan and caused heartbeats to skip and soldiers looked into themselves deeply.  One threadbare strand of the divine belt almost knocked over a polar bear floating on a loose berg in the warming sea.  One silky string wove its way through Jesus’ cross, and tied itself to desert-parched immigrants with swollen tongues, and a woman with ovarian cancer and two young sons.  You won’t believe this, but a single hair-thin fiber floated onto the yacht of a rich man and he gasped when he saw everything as it really was.  The hem fell to and fro across the universe, filling space and time and gaps between the sub-atomic world, with the effervescent presence of the one who is the is.  And even in the slight space between lovers in bed, the holiness flows and wakes up the body to feel beyond the feeling and know beyond the knowing…”[i]

I stumbled on Michael Coffey’s poem as I struggled with the idea of how to preach about the Holy Trinity on this Trinity Sunday.  And then I realized something:  we understand theology much more through experience than through reading some heady fourth-century theologian.  The concept of the Trinity is not an easy one to understand.  In fact, the concept is so complicated that most of us try not to think about the Trinity at all.  We simply know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as truth, and do not worry too much about the details.  That approach is probably fine most of the time – until you have to explain the concept of the Trinity to a child or non-believer.  Trying to explain how God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all the same and yet all distinctly separate is not as simple as it sounds.  Then try to explain how all three are co-eternal and I promise you, you will get looks of confusion.  The questions about how Jesus can be born in a particular time and place and yet be co-eternal with the Holy Spirit and God will make anyone stutter.

I have begun to wonder then if part of why we do not often spend time working through the theology of the Trinity is because we do not necessarily need to think about the Trinity – we simply need to have an experience of the Trinity.  That realization became clearest to me this week as I thought about our lesson from Isaiah.  Now you may be wondering how I found an experience of the Trinity in the Old Testament.  Certainly, we need the fullness of the New Testament to really understand the Trinity.  But we have to remember that the Trinity has always been – remember that word “co-eternal”?  Now I must admit, this notion makes me uncomfortable too – reading a New Testament theology into the Hebrew Scriptures is what a lot of purists call anachronistic – a chronological inconsistency where we juxtapose two different time periods incorrectly.  But given our theological understanding of the Trinity as being co-eternal, many theologians argue that seeing the Trinity in our Isaiah text today is not, in fact, anachronistic.[ii]  If you buy that logic, the song the seraphs sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts…” reminds us of the old hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy” which contains the line, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  The seraphs’ song hints at the three persons of the Godhead.  And when God wonders what prophet God will send to the sinful people, God says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  That “us,” by many scholars, is considered yet another precursor to the concept of the Trinity.[iii]

But all of that is academic to me.  We can certainly debate whether or not the Trinity is hinted at in the Isaiah reading today.  But what is more important to me is that we get a better understanding of the experience of the Trinity through the Isaiah story.  The story starts with Isaiah seeing the Lord sitting on a throne, with that hem that Michael Coffey describes so vividly in his poem.  The text says the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.  Imagine, as Coffey does, the hem of that robe filling this entire church.  Imagine fabric billowing over the pews, draping over the altar rail, spilling out the front door.  Imagine us stumbling over the enormity of that fabric, getting tangled up in the hem’s folds.  And all of that fabric swirling around us is only the hem of the robe – not the whole robe, but the hem of the robe.  Isaiah’s description is of a God that is larger than life, that is incomprehensible in size and vastness.  Just the tip of God’s garment is larger than the greatest Cathedral and certainly overwhelming in a space like our intimate church.

In fact, the experience of God is so overwhelming, that Isaiah is brought down to his knees in fear – not a simple fear of God, but fear because Isaiah realizes he is woefully sinful and unworthy of being in God’s presence.  He even shouts among the folds of fabric that entangle him, “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…”  That is the second experiential understanding of the Triune God.  First we are overwhelmed by the Trinity’s vast, mysterious incomprehensibility, and second, we are crippled by the shame of our sinfulness in response.  But then, another profound realization happens.  When Isaiah confesses his sinfulness, the seraph simply touches his mouth with a hot altar coal and Isaiah’s sin is blotted out.  That is the third thing we discover about the Trinity.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are quick to forgive a repentant heart.  No Hail Mary’s are necessary.  No Our Fathers.  Forgiveness is swift and full – much unlike human capacity for forgiveness.  Finally, we learn yet another interesting thing about the Trinity.  God-in-three-persons needs us.  The Lord says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  There is not strategic plan; there is no preordained conception of who should go.  God does not say, “Isaiah, you shall go and be my prophet,” which is unusual because in most of the call stories we hear, God does call people by name.  But not with Isaiah.[iv]  Here, the Trinitarian Godhead is wondering who in the world will go and be the prophet.  That is what we finally see about the Trinity.  The Trinity openly invites – and according to Isaiah’s response, “Here am I: send me!” we learn that the Trinity inspires people to recklessly volunteer for things they probably shouldn’t.

Of course, when we really think about what we learn about the Trinity in Isaiah: that God is vastly other, inspires repentance, readily gives forgiveness, and causes wanton willingness to serve the Lord, then we begin to see that all of those insights are part and parcel of our own experience of the Trinity every week in worship.[v]  Every week, we start our worship in praise.  We praise God in word, song, and prayer.  We marvel at the vastness of God’s hem as we read and reflect on God’s Word.  We profess our Trinitarian faith in the Creed and then we confess.  Like Isaiah, all that praise, wonder, and realization of God’s enormity pulls us down to our knees as each one of us confesses our unworthiness aloud.  A chorus of voices comes together as we each confess our faults and failings over the past week.  And then, just like a snap, the priest delivers God’s forgiveness.  We are offered the Eucharistic meal, which, like the coal on Isaiah’s lips, wets our lips with forgiveness.[vi]  And when the priest tells us to go out into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, we find ourselves overwhelmed with the words, “Here am I; send me!”  We find ourselves jettisoning ourselves into the world, longing to serve the God whose robe knocks us over and whose meal sets us free.

Michael Coffey’s poem brings us full circle to our Trinity Sunday ponderings.  About God’s robe, Coffey concludes, “…And even as we monotheize and trinitize, and speculate and doubt even our doubting, the threads of holiness trickle into our lives.  And the seraphim keep singing “holy, holy, holy”, and flapping their wings like baby birds, and God says: give it a rest a while.  And God takes another sip of her summertime drink, and smiles at the way you are reading this filament now, and hums: It’s a good day to be God.”[vii]  Amen.

[i] Michael Coffey, “God’s Bathrobe,” as posted on May 31, 2012 at http://mccoffey.blogspot.com/2012/05/gods-bathrobe.html as found on May 27, 2015.  Punctuation and formation changed for ease of preaching.  Original structure found on website.

[ii] Donald K. McKim, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 30.

[iii] McKim, 28.

[iv] Patricia Tull, “Commentary on Isaiah 6.1-8,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2458, May 31, 2015, as found on May 27, 2015.

[v] Kristin Emery Saldine, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 28, 30.

[vi] Melinda Quivik, “Commentary on Isaiah 6.1-8,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1284, June 3, 2012, as found on May 27, 2015.

[vii] Coffey.

Sermon – Matthew 28.16-20, TS, YA, June 15, 2014

Tags

church, community, disciples, God, heresy, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Trinity Sunday, triune

There have been many jokes around the Andrews-Weckerly household this week about why in the world I chose this Sunday, of all Sundays in the liturgical year, to return from maternity leave.  Trinity Sunday is sort of a dreaded Sunday for most preachers.  This is the Sunday that rectors give to seminarians, curates, and deacons because they feel overwhelmed by the prospect of preaching the doctrine of the Trinity in the pulpit – perhaps out of a fear of committing heresy or just out of a fear of producing a theologically correct, but pastorally unengaging sermon.  And trust me, the thought crossed my mind to let our beloved Deacon Anthony pinch hit today.

The truth is, we all struggle a bit with the Trinity, even if we do not realize that we struggle.  Think about your prayer life and whether you tend to favor one person of the Trinity in your petitions.  I know people who habitually pray to God, but somehow get tripped up on saying Jesus’ name in a prayer.  I know others who feel awkward praying to the Holy Spirit, not really sure what language to use.  Still, there are others who do not like the masculine images associated with God the Father, and so they are more likely to either pray to the Holy Spirit, or use feminine language for God.  And that is just our prayer life.  Have you ever tried explaining the Trinity to a four-year old?  Words like “coeternal” and “holy, undivided,” are difficult to explain to a kid who has learned the stories of the Bible, but does not quite know how to make sense of the fact that Jesus is both the Son of God and coeternal with God – or that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove, but is also the same God as God and Jesus.

Confused yet?  The good news is that you are not alone.  The Church took over a hundred years of debating to finally be able to articulate a coherent theology of the Trinity.  Theologians Arius and Athanasius debated long and hard over the persons of the Trinity, who they were, how they related to one another, and what the implications were for those theological conclusions.  Though we are quite used to the Creed we say every Sunday, and the use of the Trinity in blessings and other parts of the liturgy, those creeds and liturgies did not just develop overnight or without a great deal of arguing and prayerful consideration.

And yet, here we are today, celebrating Trinity Sunday and reading Jesus’ instruction to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ instructions today are not just for the disciples – those instructions are for us too.  So how are we supposed to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost authentically if we do not even really understand or feel comfortable with the idea of the Trinity?  Does our lack of understanding matter?  The first answer is yes.  We do need a working understanding of the Trinity, because a fuller understanding of the breadth of God helps us to engage in fuller worship of and relationship with God.[i]  We cannot go out into the world without understanding that, “The same God who is God over us as God the Father and Creator, and God with and for us as the incarnate Word and Son, is also God in and among us as God the Holy Spirit.”[ii]  In fact, our God is so big, so strong, and so mighty that we take an entire Sunday, Trinity Sunday, to celebrate this awesome God who is relational, self-giving, and full of love.  So, yes, our lack of understanding about the Trinity matters.

But the gospel lesson today tells us something else too – our lack of understanding does not matter.  The lesson from Matthew begins, “The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”  This group of disciples – a group who is already down to eleven – in their final encounter with Jesus still have some doubts.  Though they worship, they still struggle with questions, uncertainty, and confusion.  Jesus even has to tell them, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,” because he wants them to understand who he is in relation to the God they know and love – a fact that they clearly still do not fully comprehend.  To this shrinking group of confused, doubting, questioning disciples Jesus declares, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Jesus trusts them to go and to make disciples and to baptize and to teach, even if they do not fully understand this Trinity business.  Jesus’ affirmation of the disciples even in the midst of their doubt is an incredible affirmation for us today too.

So if our understanding of the Trinity both matters and does not matter, how do we live into this ambiguity?  How do we faithfully live as disciples in this tension?  Well, the disciples tell us that too.  We live into the tension in community.  While I was on maternity leave, I gained a new appreciation for the value of community.  I watched this community from afar as you took on new responsibilities in my absence, as you ministered to one another, and as you shared the Good News, even when you did not realize that you were.  As you baptized a baby, buried a matriarch, and worshiped outside in God’s creation.  As you visited the sick, prayed for the weary, and fed the hungry.  As you taught our children, learned from one another, and walked the streets of Plainview as members of this church.  You did all of those things probably with a sense of the triune God, but also probably with a healthy dose of doubt as you worshiped and worked.

Many of you have asked me whether I missed being away from church during maternity leave.  Though there were certainly things that I enjoyed taking a break from, I realized palpably how much I missed our community of faith during Holy Week.  As I watched each day of Holy Week passing, I felt a sense of deep longing and absence.  I had not realized how strongly I am marked by the ritual and presence of this community.  Even when I struggle to define the Trinity, I have a community of faith that always gathers and makes meaning in my life.  Being absent from the community during that time was almost like losing an arm or being a foreigner in a foreign land.

This day that we celebrate is certainly about the creator, redeemer, and sustainer God that we sort-of know.  This day is also a day that we celebrate the wonderful gift of a community of faith with which to worship and doubt together in a beautiful dance before our triune God.  If you have not taken a moment recently to fully appreciate the gift of this community, I invite you to do that today.  If you have been so busy with renovation projects, running a ministry, or just trying to get to church, take a moment today to appreciate the gift of this community.  Or if you are relatively new to this community, or just do not feel like you have found your own ministry in this place, I invite you to take that next step, and to find a way to connect more deeply to the life and ministry here at St. Margaret’s.  I think you will find a wonderful set of companions who do not have “it” all figured out, but who worship in the midst of their doubt – and who have a triune God who is with them always, to the end of the age.  Amen.

[i] Stephen B. Boyd, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 46.

[ii] Steven P. Eason, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 46.