The Three-in-One Experience: A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

 

I have never been lucky enough to pass off preaching on Trinity Sunday to someone else. And I really don't like the expectation that the sermon needs to "explain" the Trinity with some wonderful metaphor. Most metaphors I've heard often lead to arguments over their inherit heresy. And, despite what was taught in my systematic theology class in seminary, I firmly believe the only way to know anything about the nature of the Trinity is to have an experience of it...and to understand that God can manifest as God a Father/Creator...or God the Son/Redeemer.....or God the Holy Spirit/Sustainer. One God can and is all that. What's been your experience?

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8: 12-17, John 3: 1-17 

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Trinity Sunday: one of the most exasperating Sundays of the church lectionary calendar.

It’s not that I don’t like the Trinty. I do.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the Trinity. I do.

But the Trinity…this concept of “God in Three Persons”… is not actually in the Scriptures in so many words.

There’s no set passage assigned for this Sunday…an old standard that one can rely upon.

No.

So what the heck do we mean by this God…who is Father…Son…and Holy Spirit…(or God the Creator…Redeemer…and Sustainer…whichever way you prefer to look at it)?

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is an understanding that came out of the minds of early church theologians…

Primarily a man named Tertullian.

He lived during the 2^nd Century at a time when Christianity was facing many pressures from what is called Gnosticism.

There were two schools of Gnosticism: those who believed Jesus was fully human but not really of God…and those who thought he was not ever human but more of some sort of ethereal Godly presence who only looked human.

It took Tertullian… a Latin theologian and Christian author from Carthage… to declare that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—were all co-equal persons of one substance…firmly stating that Jesus was both human and divine.

The Holy Spirit…which… when we look at the book of Genesis was the wind moving over the waters of chaos…was with God then…and has always been with God…and was also infused in the body of Jesus.

That doctrine was later accepted by the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.

And that’s where we have the language that we now know as the Nicene Creed…and will be reciting as we do every Sunday.

So…there’s your two-minute history of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

That is not end of this sermon.

This is the Sunday in the church year where priests and deacons…and especially aspiring seminarians…have been called upon to preach a sermon to “explain” the Holy Trinity.

But honestly, I think that expectation is a clever ego trap.

I believe that “explaining” the Trinity will only lead to more confusion as we drive ourselves over the cliff of multiple half-baked metaphors…attempting to intellectualize it.

For me…the only way to truly understand this idea of One God being a unified threesome is through our experiences of God showing up in our lives in three co-equal persons.

God has a way of being a loving parent…and a big brother…a loyal friend and advocate…and that inner voice or that jolt of energy that helps us take a stand or hold ourselves together in a crisis.

How God’s multifaceted self is manifested for each of us may depend upon the time…place and need.

But God is there…has been there…and will keep being there into the future.

So what is an experience of this God like for us?

 

Everyone here probably has their own answer to that question.

Certainly one version can be found in the story we heard this morning from the prophet Isaiah.

The awesomeness of Isaiah’s encounter feels so overwhelming.

God has no face…none at least that we can see.

The hem of God’s robe is so great it fills the entire room.

Even the seraphs…winged snake-like creatures…are covering their eyes…in fear and amazement.

Isaiah…he’s so terrified…

God’s so huge.

He’s so small.

And…in the thinking of his days…humans can’t look at God and live.

He’s stumbling and bumbling about his unworthiness… when one of the seraphs…gaining enough composure…takes a hot coal to Isaiah’s lips.

A bit extreme? Yes.

But this is the image of preparing a prophet to quit trembling.

There’s no more time for nonsense about being unworthy.

God needs Isaiah to go speak some hard truths to his people…truths they won’t hear or see or understand.

God needs a human mouthpiece…one who can channel a message of salvation to a nation engaged in what seemed like an insurmountable war.

We hear God asking…” Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”

And Isaiah…who only moments earlier was a puddle of worry and doubt…pipes up:

“Here am I; send me.”

This story is talked about as the “Isaiah Call Story,” the moment when Isaiah is brought into God’s commission.

It’s one of many call stories we’re familiar with from the Bible: Moses is beckoned to take off his sandals and stand before a bush that is burning but is not consumed.

David is simply taking care of sheep and not looking to lead anything when he gets summoned inside and Samuel hears God say, “That’s the one! This is the new King of Israel”

My personal favorite is Jonah—the one who does everything…including getting swallowed by a giant fish…to avoid having to go speak hard truths to the people of Nineveh. I always enjoy that when the Ninevehites take his warnings seriously…Jonah’s response is to go off pouting and sulking because he had wanted God to smite his enemies.

Tough to know that God actually does love the ones we don’t like.

God seeking us out…calling to us to be the hands…feet…and voices needed in our world doesn’t always come in such amazing and vivid signs as what Isaiah experienced.

And our response may not even be as immediate and confident as to say, “Here I am; send me.”

Sometimes…life is giving us so many challenges that we cry out, “Abba, Father, help me!”

We turn to God…seeking that parent-like source of support.

We may find that our relationship with God feels like an impossible puzzle or a strange maze that we keep wandering and bumping into walls. A little bit like Nicodemus trying to understand what Jesus was revealing to him about the nature of God.

It takes some time…but by the end of John’s Gospel…Nicodemus joined Joseph of Arimathea…revealing himself to be one who had come to understand Jesus and was ready to take up his own cross and follow.

There’s no telling how the Trinity will show up to shake us up.

But when it does come into our lives…it does change us…and open us to see the work of God in the world more broadly.

Our task is to trust and be OK with those changes…giving ourselves permission to feel some trepidation while knowing that this Holy Trinity is ready to meet us in that fearful place with the love of a doting father…the loyalty of a brother-son…and the inner voice of a spirit telling us it’s going to be OK to say, “Here am I; send me.”

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

 

On Fire: A Sermon for Pentecost 2024

 

I am stunned I was able to get this sermon written!

Almost immediately after driving home from Valdosta after last Sunday's service, I was back in a car, making the 14+ hour trip to Austin, TX. We were burying my father-in-law's ashes, having a short visit with my wife's brother and other friends, and then immediately turning around to make the same trip back to Florida. We timed our departure on Thursday to get ahead of another violent storm system. And, as it happened, we got out of the Houston area about four hours before the weather went downhill and strong 100+ mile an hour winds blew out glass windows in the Houston downtown area. 

Adding to the complexity was a full Saturday that started with the commemoration of Mary Turner, a pregnant 19 year old black woman who was lynched on May 19, 1918 after she protested the lynching of her husband, Hayes. Her killing was horrendous. The white mob hunted her down, hung her upside down at bridge between Lowndes and Brooks counties, doused her in gasoline and lit her on fire. Someone also cut open her womb, and her eight month-old baby dropped to the ground crying. The mob stomped the baby to death, and then shot up Mary Turner. Their bodies were buried in a shallow grave, marked by a whiskey bottle and cigar. No one was ever held to account for this crime against humanity.

While Turner's great granddaughter was on hand to tell the ugly truths, our backdrop was a mural at Christ the King in which Mary Turner is depicted as a Tree of Life. For most of us, that was the basis of our comments.

These experiences all were playing in my head as I pressed on to finish this sermon. See what you think.

Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 15: 26-27, 16:4b-15

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So after all the wild weather we’ve been enduring…not to mention in other parts of the country and Canada… for me to start talking about a mighty wind blowing through that upper room…and tongues of fire…might feel a little….eehhh….I dunno… some might say “triggering”?

Recent weather craziness…and even future storms aside…today is not a disastrous day.

This is really a time of exuberance and fun. 

We like to call this Pentecost Sunday…” The Birthday of the Church.”

Only the birthday candles on this cake are ones that no one can extinguish.

Because the Holy Spirit is on fire and lighting up every person in the room!

This is a day of excitement…and celebration…as we think about the Spirit’s extremely dramatic entry…a show of such power and flair so as to leave no doubt:

God is here and ready to get us up off the couch and into the streets!

If we’ve been paying attention to Jesus’ last will and testament that he’s giving us in John’s Gospel…we can hear Jesus promise that one of the big reasons he needed to ascend into Heaven was to make way for this amazing multi-colored force.

There’s a Spirit that’s about to come blowing in…and it’s gonna push the disciples out of that hiding place in Jerusalem to go out and do the work that still needed doing.

Because the work of the Spirit is never done.

Beyond those doors of the upper room…there were people who wanted to meet this God who loves beyond all measure without boundaries and borders and special requirements.

There were so many people who had yet to experience what it means to feel that love and care for them without demanding anything in return for the kindness except to receive it and believe it to be real.

And so the Spirit…not worrying about or stopping for a locked door and or sealed windows…just blows on in…and begins firing up this room full of people.

Suddenly…they find that the Spirit is giving them the words to speak.

Foreigners are extolling the wonders of God not in their own native languages…but in those of the other.

In all of that babbling…individuals are picking out the sounds and the phrases that spoke directly to them.

They’re hearing their heart language…coming from someone not of their own kind.

These are no longer foreigners from this country or that province…

Now they are all fellow sojourners.

Soon…this Spirit is going to lead them to have amazing encounters with random strangers…people racially and religiously different from themselves.

Out in the world beyond the upper room…they discover there’s a hunger to know the story of God through the life and teachings of Jesus.

They’ll be lead into truths that they didn’t even know they didn’t know before all this happened.

And when they run into trouble…this Holy Spirit will give them the courage to speak up…even with their voices tremble and their knees knock.

It’s oh so incredible and…

Oh…wait a minute.

Hang on here.

I’ve been talking like this Holy Spirit business is some passive event…something that we just read about every 50^th day after Easter Sunday.

Ahhh…but this Spirit…this vision of God we sing about…and raise our prayers and praises to every Sunday…has been with us all along.

And the coolest part about this incarnation of the Holy Trinity…it absolutely doesn’t care about our concepts of time and spatial limitations.

This Spirit seriously doesn’t care about the artificial boundaries we keep erecting to keep ourselves separated from each other.

It’s ready to blow away the fear and the need to control that has perpetuated racism…classism…ableism…homophobia…and misogyny.

Talk about the stuff that really needs to be blown apart and burnt up!

The Holy Spirit doesn’t have time for dragging people down.

This is a Spirit of upward mobility in the truest sense…lifting up people who have been heavy burdened and beaten down…by the judgment and doubt of the world. 

Filling them with the hope that comes from believing in a God of love…justice… and mercy.

And to make that happen…it’s ready to flip on the power switch in us.

Because it’s through our experiences with this part of the Trinity that we become people others see and think, “I wanna have whatever it is that they’re having!’

I’m reading a book co-authored by one of the priests in our diocese, my friend the Rev. Kimberly Dunn…who serves at St. Paul’s in Augusta. The book is called “Experiencing God.”

Kimberly initially started out writing this book as a paper for one of her seminary classes.

But then Dean Ian Markham of Viginia Theological Seminary decided this needed to be a bigger work with many voices from across the Episcopal Church chiming in with their stories as Episcopalians having genuine spirit-filled encounters with God.

And—yes—Episcopalians can have mystical experiences.

Some of them small…some of them times filled with ecstatic wonder.

All of them moments where God’s presence is so real….so intimate…that some might want to dismiss it as just the product of a delusional mind.

But these supposed flashes of delusion are so powerful…that they’ve made the person having the experience…sit up and take notice and make changes in their lives that radically took them in a more Godward direction.

A direction of truly seeing the connectedness of all people to this amazing source of love that is God.

These times of feeling the deep presence of God is what sometimes is the kick in the pants to go out and bring this understanding of the depth of God’s love to our friends…families…and communities.

Again: not just by talking about it. But through actions.

Through truly caring and taking necessary items to the homeless shelter.

Feeding medical students coming to the area to provide services to our migrant farmworker population.

Giving rides to people for their doctor’s appointments.

Even sitting in silence…doing centering prayer…and waiting for that still small voice to speak:

You are loved.

You always have been loved.

And I will always love you.

Now…we need to go share that love without hesitation.

In the name of God…F/S/HS

Look for the Helpers: A Sermon for All Trauma

I don't feel the need to do a lot of explaining here. Needless to say Ascension Day came and went...and where I lived was greeted the next day with two...possibly three...EF2 tornadoes and 100-mile per hour straightline winds. It was a harrowing experience. And it greatly changed the trajectory of my sermon.

The Collect for the Seventh Sunday of Easter:

O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son
Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven:
Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to
strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior
Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

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Sometimes…unexpected things happen.

I had had many thoughts on our readings at the beginning of the week.

But my life…and the lives of countless others in Tallahassee… took a strange turn in the pre-dawn hours Friday morning.

It’s the same…or at least very familiar…experience many of us have been having these past several months...where wind and rain have done more harm than good to us…and those people and possessions we hold dear.

The National Weather Service has confirmed what many of us already knew: we in Tallahassee had lived through a tornado….and it’s associated straight-line winds of 100 miles per hour.

Those of us who paid attention to the weather the night before knew that we were in for some rocky thunderstorms and strong winds.

But somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45 in the morning…the alarms on our phones…and even off in the distance…signaled for us to seek shelter immediately in an interior room.

And so we did.

A roaring sound of wind.

The exhaust fan overhead began rattling.

 Rain pelted against the house.

When it all had finally stopped…our phones starting vibrating with texts.

“We have trees down, no power. We need to recharge batteries for an oxygen machine. Who has power?”

“Huge tree branch cracked through our ceiling.”

“Our house was hit by the tornado. Our back porch is smashed to pieces.”

“I smell gas in the neighborhood.”

“OMG. We’re calling the city.”

Gradually…all of us began emerging from our homes.

We met in the street…the rain still falling…but much more gently…as we stepped carefully over downed wires and branches from trees…some of them from trees we didn’t recognize.

A plastic drink cup here…a roof tile there.

A screen door bent open at this house.

And indeed…our neighbors’ washer and dryer on their elevated back porch now looked like a Salvador Dali design…metal warped and tilted and smushed together.

One neighbor couldn’t join us in the street.

A pile of busted trees limbs and large sections of a live oak had practically barricaded her front door and the lock for the gate to their backyard was on the outside.

Because they’re in the restaurant business…her husband had gone to work hours earlier.

Some of their friends arrived.

I told them she was trapped inside.

One of them climbed over broken limbs and steady himself until he reached the front door.

She was able to slip her hand out to give him the keys to back gate.

Carefully…he retraced his steps over slippery branches and was able to get around to unlock the gate and get her out of her house. 

Smiles…and celebrations lasted for a few minutes.

Then it was back to the reality of this huge and daunting task.

When can we get someone here to get rid of these trees blocking the street?

How can we cut up and lift these heavy limbs?

How can the city get our power back on with all this mess?

Only a half-mile away…the scene was even more bleak.

The growing and eclectic Arts District in a small former industrial park called Railroad Square…had suffered huge losses.

This included the roof of the theater company that has been part of my life since the early 1990s.

My friends….the neighbors whose back porch was mangled….now stood inside this theater that they’d built and developed…creating a creative community of writers and performers.

Now we stood with them…looking up through the trusses where the roof once had been.

The blue theater seats soaked and sprinkled with pink insultation.

It was a lot to take in.

These are moments that any of us can relate to.

The underlying emotion is grief.

Grieving a profound and sudden loss.

It leaves one feeling numb…unmoored from everything else…and plunged into a liminal space of neither here nor there.

It isn’t very often that you’ll hear me…or likely anyone…preach a sermon on the words of the Collect for the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

But the phrase “do not leave us comfortless” has been playing on repeat in my brain since about seven o’clock Friday morning.

In its context…the phrase is a prayer recognizing that last Thursday…the church marked the fortieth day of the Easter season….the day on which we say that Jesus finally ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God.

We pray for the arrival of the Holy Spirit…which we will celebrate on Pentecost next Sunday.

So where we are in our church story is also a liminal space.

Jesus’ earthly ministry is over…but we have not yet…in theory…received the Holy Spirit.

At least that’s the story.

But in reality…that spirit is already with us….in us…and moving in and out…and up and down in our lives.

We know that’s true when something like a natural disaster…or any other major disruption happens to us.

When we’re plunged into a liminal space.

Because the spirit of God…is a spirit that doesn’t sit still.

The Holy Spirit of God is a motivator.

It pushes us to move outside of our selves…and rise up.

As the great theologian…and Presbyterian minister…Mr. Fred Rogers told those who hung out in his PBS Neighborhood… these are times to look for the helpers.

Because the spirit moves people to help…to support…to carry us when we feel the weight of sadness and despair pressing us down.

That spirit is present in a guy who climbs through a wet messy pile of moss-covered tree limbs to free a woman trapped in her home.

It’s those helpers…opening a home that is running on a generator to give respite from the heat…a cold cup of water…and a place to plug in battery packs…cell phone chargers…even running an extension cord to a neighbor so they can have a fan blowing in their home.

It’s the loaning of cars to those who’ve lost their transportation…the giving of clean clothes to those who can’t access their closets.

The offers to help clean up debris…run to get water and ice…or simply sit and hold the hand of someone who just needs to cry…and process the grief.

In those times when we want to scream…”How long O Lord, how long?”

Look for the helpers.

Be ready to receive them.

For they are the ones whom God’s spirit has called upon to show up…in answer to our prayers.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

 

Honoring All of God's Creation: A Sermon for 6B Easter (Rogation Sunday)

 

This was a first for St. Barnabas: a celebration of the Rogation Days, a practice from the 5th Century England where the priests and church would bless the land in hopes of a fruitful harvest. These days are celebrated right before the Ascension Day, whcn Jesus is finally lifted into heaven. And while this was primarily started as a time to ask a rogatio or blessing from God on the land, the Episcopal Church has expanded it to also include commerce and industry. This way urban and rural can meet each other in a time of seeking God's mercy and grace upon all that we do here on the planet. 

As I said, St. Barnabas had never done a Rogation Day celebration before. But we have a group focused on Creation Care and linking faith to action in taking care of things around us. I felt that we could take some of that a little further...and came up with a sermon that looked at all of creation. See what you think.

Texts: Acts 10:44-48, Ps. 98, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

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Welcome to Rogation Sunday!

Rogation…that fancy schmancy word for “asking” or “petitioning” God for a blessing.

We began our worship this morning outside at our gardens. We prayed for the goodness of the soil and those who tend it.

We blessed the fish in our koi pond and sought God’s help to remember our part in caring for the fish and all animals.

We gave thanks for the Bishop’s Garden and asked for a blessing upon this space where we’ve gathered for prayer and worship.

We lift all these prayers on this Sunday.

If we really wanted to get into the spirit of Rogation Days…we’d take this next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as times to seek divine providence to bless all industry and commerce in our area.

We’d be at the entrance to Moody Air Force Base…and downtown at the seat of local government…at the offices of the Valdosta Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce…at V-S-U and South Georgia Medical…blessing the industries of our local area.

Maybe next year.

We blessed each of these areas with the waters of baptism. 

The same waters that connected us to Jesus and the whole history of God’s people.

We heard it in our first reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles.

Just like last week’s reading with the Ethiopian eunuch…Peter and the other Jewish followers are witnesses to the truth that God’s grace, love, and mercy are meant for everyone…without any kind of proof of proper pedigree or pre-requisites.

The spontaneous response to this witness was to baptize these Gentiles…bring them into the growing community of believers.

They use water to signify that those who were “them” are now one of “us.”

Water as that symbol…that outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace.

And if you think about it…that’s what we’ve done today.

With our blessing of flowers…plants…and fish.

What we’ve said is that these wonders of creation are also one of us.

It’s something that I don’t think we’re always aware of in our day-to-day living.

That phrase about stopping to smell the roses…is more than just a reminder to slow down. But to really understand that we have a connection to those roses.

I think one of our greatest sins of our day is to separate ourselves from all the rest of creation.

As wonderful and amazing as the Industrial Revolution was in opening our minds to engineering better and more efficient ways to produce food and make our lives more comfortable…I think it also disrupted our relationship to the land and the sea and all that moves within it.

In those moments when we are reminded of our role as stewards of creation…we can fall into thinking that stewardship means a paternalistic role…as if we are the better and smarter part of creation that needs to tend to these lesser things.

I remember some years ago attending a lecture by the Old Testament scholar Dr. Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School.

She was doing a teaching on the Book of Leviticus…which she says is the greenest book of the Bible.

Dr. Davis talked about how in Leviticus the various codes of proper living involved a trinitarian like relationship: God is in relationship with humanity and with the land. She drew a triangle with God as the apex and humanity at one corner and the land at the other with the lines connecting all three together.

Davis said that God holds an equal relationship to humanity and the land and that we…as the human part of creation…are to have an equal level partnership with the land…not a domineering subduing type of relationship.

She noted that the Holiness Codes in Leviticus use the body as a guidepost for how one is to treat and be in relationship with the land.

For instance…verses that talk about men not trimming the edges of their beards were a bodily physical reminder to not trim the fruit from the hedges…so that foreigners would have something they could pick and eat.

But Davis also drew our attention to the verses at the end of chapter 18 in Leviticus…ones where God gives warning to humanity…to us…about what can happen if we don’t treat the land with respect.

Right there in the text…the Hebrew is translated to say that the land can “vomit us up” if we defile the land.

So our scriptures do give us guidance for how we are to treat the land…the sea…and all that is in it. To see them as having equality to us in the eyes of our creator God.

And while we work to improve how we treat those parts of creation…our Gospel reminds us that we have another responsibility.

We must love one another as Christ loved us.

We must look to the ways in which Jesus stepped outside of himself…went beyond just his own kind…to meet people in their lives…sat with them at the water well and engaged with them. Took a stand for those whom the rest of society were ready to stone to death. Most importantly…sat at the table with the ones considered the disinherited rabble.

Not only did he “lay down himself for his friends” in the truest sense by going to the cross; he laid down himself over and over again to heal and treat people with the respect and the dignity and love for the other person.

Because this is the love that God has for all of us. And Jesus wanted the whole world to know it.

That message is just as true now as it was some two thousand years ago.

Caring for creation means caring for all of creation…plants, flowers, animals, fish, and human beings.

As we have blessed all those things that remind us of life…may we remember that we have the responsibility to be a blessing to all others.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.