Trinity Sunday
June 7th, 2009
In the documentary Into Great Silence, about monks at a very strict monastery in France, one of the young monks decides to fill his time alone (which is a LOT of time alone) by “solving” the mystery of the Trinity.
You know: the Trinity— the Christian doctrine that God is One in Three persons. As one of the ancient creeds of the church puts it, “Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.”
The young monk fills notebook after notebook. Finally, after a long time, he closes the last of the books and puts it aside. His journey has brought him face to face with a mystery, a capital-M Mystery, that simply cannot be solved.
But we’re humans and compelled to try and grasp mystery somehow. So we turn from the left side of the brain to the right: to art and literature and music.
Look at the window above our altar—what’s it about?—Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.
Another artist’s attempt to grasp the Trinity is a famous icon by the Russian artist Andrei Rublov. In it Rublov portrays the Trinity as the three beautiful young men who visited Abraham and Sarah in the Book of Genesis.
A recent attempt is this novel, The Shack. Everybody’s reading it (and that isn’t always a recommendation for a book!).
You may know the story:
Mack’s an ordinary guy who has suffered an extraordinary loss. His little daughter has been murdered. Several years after her death, he receives a mysterious note to return to the place where his daughter was killed. The letter is signed, “Papa,” which is his wife’s name for God.
God, at this point, is not an intellectual or theological issue. He feels utterly abandoned by God, furious at God, not willing to believe any more in God.
But he goes—he can’t help himself. And he does find God.
But NOT God the old white-bearded guy, but three very unexpected personalities:
Here’s Mack’s meeting with God the Creator: “. . . the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. .. . she crossed the distance between them and engulfed him in her arms, lifting him clear off his feet and spinning him around like a little child all the while she was shouting his name . . . with the ardor of someone seeing a long-lost and deeply-loved relative.” [82]
And here’s the Holy Spirit: “a small distinctively Asian woman . …..he had a difficult time focusing on her; she seemed almost to shimmer in the light and her hair blew in all directions . . . It was almost easier to see her out of the corner of his eye than it was to look at her directly.” [84]
Only Jesus, the Son, is described in familiar way although not the idealized Jesus of much Christian art: “He appeared Middle Eastern, and was dressed like a laborer, complete with tool belt and gloves. . . . His features were pleasant enough, but he was not particularly handsome—not a man who would stick out in a crowd. But his eyes and smile lit up his face and Mack found it difficult to look away.” [84]
As he stood and stared at them, “Mack thought: ‘Was one of these people God? What if they were hallucinations or angels, or God was coming later? . . . Since there were three of them, maybe this was a Trinity sort of thing. But two women and a man and none of them white? Then again, why had he assumed that God would be white? He knew his mind was rambling, so he focused on the one question he most wanted answered. ‘Then,’ Mack struggled to ask, ‘which one of you is God?’ ‘I am,’ said all three in unison.” [87]
It was a “Trinity sort of thing,” Precisely.
The remarkable thing about this book for me was not the images of God as female, etc. Of course God is Spirit and therefore isn’t male or female; black, Asian, or white. Although it is great to break up our stereotypical image of God as looking like a white-bearded Gandolf in the sky.
The remarkable thing for me was how the writer, Wm. Paul Young, brings to life the abstract “doctrine of the Trinity” (three persons in One Godhead—“Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity”). How he actually makes the Christian mystery of Unity in Trinity and Trinity and Unity actually matter in Mack’s life.
“Papa” (the African-American woman) begins, “If I were simply One God and only One Person, then you would find yourself in this Creation without something wonderful, without something essential even. . . “ And Mark stumbling, asks, “’we would be without . . . ?” She answers, “Love and relationship. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exists within Me, within God myself. I am love” [101]
Think about it: If God is Trinity, then relationship is basic to the universe. Nothing—not even God—exists utterly alone and independent. And it’s not only relationship, it’s a particular kind of relationship—a relationship of love.
The three persons of this Trinity share everything, even the wounds of Jesus: “[Mack’s] eyes followed hers [Papa’s] and for the first time Mack noticed the scars in her wrists, like those he now assumed Jesus also had on his. She allowed him to tenderly touch the scars, outlines of a deep piercing, and he finally looked up again into her eyes. Tears were slowly making their way down her face, little pathways through the flour that dusted her cheeks. ‘Don’t ever think that what my son chose to do didn’t cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark,’ she stated softly and gently. ‘We were there together.’.” [95-96]
Later Mack notices something surprising and says to Jesus, “I love the way you treat each other. It’s certainly not how I expected God to be. . . . I know that you are one and all, and that there are three of you. But you respond with such graciousness to each other. Isn’t one of you more the boss that the other two? I’ve always thought of God the Father as being sort of the boss and Jesus as the one following orders . . . . “ [121]
The persons explain that the Trinity is not a “chain of command” but a “circle of relationship,” a “relationship without any overlay of power. We don’t need power over each other because we are always looking out for the best. [122].
God the Trinity doesn’t want “slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.” Mack replies, “And that’s how you want us to love each other, I suppose? I mean between husbands and wives, parents and children. I guess in any relationship?” [146].
The Shack shows beautifully, how, even though we can’t understand it, believing in a Triune can change the way we live our lives.
It can help us realize that like God, we are nothing if we’re not in relationship with others and with God, if we’re not enmeshed in circles of relationship.
And more— the Trinity gives us lenses to critique the relationships we’re in. Are they loving? Are they relationships in which we share one another’s wounds, our joys and sorrows. Do they show mutual respect for one another? Are they characterized by kindness and graciousness toward one another?
The relationship of equals is God’s vision for humanity, because that is the very nature of God. That’s what we should strive for in our own relationships.
It’s hard:. I can hold it for about a minute, until someone threatens my ego, or a bomb kills children, or the State Senate invites slot machines and casinos into my beloved state.
We are fallen away creatures in a fallen away world. But that doesn’t alter the nature of our God. Our God waits and hopes and continues to love us into ways of being together as humans who mirror the exquisite Triune dance of love.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Pentecost Sunday May 31st, 2009
Pentecost Sunday
May 31st, 2009
In our Confirmation classes for teenagers this year and in years past, here’s one of their favorite exercises:
We stand in a circle, preferably outside. Each person in turn lights a match and as in burns down says whatever comes into their heads about God, Jesus, their faith.
On a windy day outside, you may not have long. It’s amazing what gets blurted out. This year as we stood shivering in a circle in the parking lot up at the CLC, I remember one boy shouting out: “God wants me to make the world better!” before the flame blew out.
The point of the exercise? So that when someone suddenly turns to you and says, “So, why do you believe in God?”, or “Why do you bother to go to church?”, or “What do you Christians believe, anyway?,” you can answer with spontaneity and integrity.
These questions hardly ever arise after you walk out of church fresh from sermon and Communion or as you drive home after a church adult education class.
Nope, in my experience these questions pop up when you least expect them. And since people these days don’t have very long attention spans, you’ve got to whip out some response right then and there. In those situations you don’t usually have a lot of time to compose an answer.
That’s why the match exercise is so helpful. It’s amazing how a “tongue of fire” burning down to your fingers focuses the mind!
The feast of Pentecost—our special feast since we’re the Church of the Holy Spirit—is all about fire.
“Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.”
A tongue: of course that’s a description of the shape of the vision of fire above their heads. But the Holy Spirit knows what She’s doing! Because those “tongue-shaped” flames loosened the apostles’ tongues.
They rushed to the windows and began to shout down the news that had been burning in their hearts for 50 days: “This Jesus we knew and loved has risen from the dead, and we have witnessed it ourselves!”
As if the matches were burning down in their fingers, they couldn’t wait any more. They had to shout out the good news.
Their words sparked answering flames in the strangers in the street who turned up their faces to see what all the fuss was about.
In fact the apostles’ shouts bypassed the listeners’ normal brain circuits and burned right through into their hearts and souls.
The language patterns that divided them, each from another—the diverse languages of Persia and Mesopotamia, Judea and Egypt, Israel and Libya—toppled before the fiery words of these ignorant Galilean fishermen and tax collectors. The Book of Acts quotes the hearers’ wonder: “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power!”
God has a flair for the dramatic! And the disciples needed a bit of fire.
Notice that until the Holy Spirit came, Jesus’ friends, men and women, were waiting, isolated in their own safe little community, for whatever Jesus had promised was going to happen.
They prayed together, they told stories of when and where and how Jesus had first looked into their eyes and said, “Come, follow me.”
Each one had a different story of how the presence of God in Jesus Christ had changed their lives—in some cases, like his friend Lazarus, had given them back their lives.
But reveal what God, what Jesus had meant to them to the people outside that house?
No way. Too scary. Look what had happened to Jesus! So they agreed they’d wait until the time was ripe, until they’d practiced more, until they were really ready..
I’ll bet if Jesus’ followers had been left on their own, they would have grown old together in that little house in Jerusalem and never made a peep outside it.
But God had other ideas: One morning tongues of fire licked their heads and the Spirit of God said, “NOW!!”
Because there were just too many other people out there in the scary world outside who needed the fiery words of new life.
The “gift of tongues” on Pentecost means this:
Not the whole foreign language translation-without-dictionaries business, although that’s pretty neat.
But the real gift of tongues happened when Jesus’ friends poured out to other people what his life and death had meant to them, and other people felt a yearning for what Jesus’ life and death could mean to them
Each person who spoke spoke their own truth in the Spirit; each person who heard, felt their own longing for a more meaningful, more abundant, life.
We are living in the age of the Holy Spirit. We are all “Pentecostals”!
And when we speak our truth about our faith to another person, the Holy Spirit speaks through us.
I want to be clear that by “our truth about our faith” I don’t mean doctrines or dogmas. I don’t mean hammering abstract truths into people’s heads.
I mean fire! Our truth about our faith is whatever warms us—sometimes like a gentle fire in the stove on a cool evening, sometimes like a bonfire on the verge of veering out of control.
When you or I speak to someone out of that truth, our truth, they’ll feel the Pentecost fire. If they’re ready—and the readiness is God’s business not ours—an answering spark will spring into flame.
Match, please! [light] “God in Jesus Christ loves me. I am enough. I don’t have to be anything or anyone else”.-----------------Amen.
May 31st, 2009
In our Confirmation classes for teenagers this year and in years past, here’s one of their favorite exercises:
We stand in a circle, preferably outside. Each person in turn lights a match and as in burns down says whatever comes into their heads about God, Jesus, their faith.
On a windy day outside, you may not have long. It’s amazing what gets blurted out. This year as we stood shivering in a circle in the parking lot up at the CLC, I remember one boy shouting out: “God wants me to make the world better!” before the flame blew out.
The point of the exercise? So that when someone suddenly turns to you and says, “So, why do you believe in God?”, or “Why do you bother to go to church?”, or “What do you Christians believe, anyway?,” you can answer with spontaneity and integrity.
These questions hardly ever arise after you walk out of church fresh from sermon and Communion or as you drive home after a church adult education class.
Nope, in my experience these questions pop up when you least expect them. And since people these days don’t have very long attention spans, you’ve got to whip out some response right then and there. In those situations you don’t usually have a lot of time to compose an answer.
That’s why the match exercise is so helpful. It’s amazing how a “tongue of fire” burning down to your fingers focuses the mind!
The feast of Pentecost—our special feast since we’re the Church of the Holy Spirit—is all about fire.
“Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.”
A tongue: of course that’s a description of the shape of the vision of fire above their heads. But the Holy Spirit knows what She’s doing! Because those “tongue-shaped” flames loosened the apostles’ tongues.
They rushed to the windows and began to shout down the news that had been burning in their hearts for 50 days: “This Jesus we knew and loved has risen from the dead, and we have witnessed it ourselves!”
As if the matches were burning down in their fingers, they couldn’t wait any more. They had to shout out the good news.
Their words sparked answering flames in the strangers in the street who turned up their faces to see what all the fuss was about.
In fact the apostles’ shouts bypassed the listeners’ normal brain circuits and burned right through into their hearts and souls.
The language patterns that divided them, each from another—the diverse languages of Persia and Mesopotamia, Judea and Egypt, Israel and Libya—toppled before the fiery words of these ignorant Galilean fishermen and tax collectors. The Book of Acts quotes the hearers’ wonder: “How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? In our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power!”
God has a flair for the dramatic! And the disciples needed a bit of fire.
Notice that until the Holy Spirit came, Jesus’ friends, men and women, were waiting, isolated in their own safe little community, for whatever Jesus had promised was going to happen.
They prayed together, they told stories of when and where and how Jesus had first looked into their eyes and said, “Come, follow me.”
Each one had a different story of how the presence of God in Jesus Christ had changed their lives—in some cases, like his friend Lazarus, had given them back their lives.
But reveal what God, what Jesus had meant to them to the people outside that house?
No way. Too scary. Look what had happened to Jesus! So they agreed they’d wait until the time was ripe, until they’d practiced more, until they were really ready..
I’ll bet if Jesus’ followers had been left on their own, they would have grown old together in that little house in Jerusalem and never made a peep outside it.
But God had other ideas: One morning tongues of fire licked their heads and the Spirit of God said, “NOW!!”
Because there were just too many other people out there in the scary world outside who needed the fiery words of new life.
The “gift of tongues” on Pentecost means this:
Not the whole foreign language translation-without-dictionaries business, although that’s pretty neat.
But the real gift of tongues happened when Jesus’ friends poured out to other people what his life and death had meant to them, and other people felt a yearning for what Jesus’ life and death could mean to them
Each person who spoke spoke their own truth in the Spirit; each person who heard, felt their own longing for a more meaningful, more abundant, life.
We are living in the age of the Holy Spirit. We are all “Pentecostals”!
And when we speak our truth about our faith to another person, the Holy Spirit speaks through us.
I want to be clear that by “our truth about our faith” I don’t mean doctrines or dogmas. I don’t mean hammering abstract truths into people’s heads.
I mean fire! Our truth about our faith is whatever warms us—sometimes like a gentle fire in the stove on a cool evening, sometimes like a bonfire on the verge of veering out of control.
When you or I speak to someone out of that truth, our truth, they’ll feel the Pentecost fire. If they’re ready—and the readiness is God’s business not ours—an answering spark will spring into flame.
Match, please! [light] “God in Jesus Christ loves me. I am enough. I don’t have to be anything or anyone else”.-----------------Amen.
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