Trinity Sunday 2014

Trinity Sunday 2014

All of us know how important it is to have a solid, foundational understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, right?

I mean, who of us hasn’t found ourselves harassed upon all sides by Gnostics, Arians, Valentinians and the like, only to be saved through a clear and thorough articulation of Trinitarian Doctrine… If only you had a nickel for every time that’s happened, am I right?

Well, in case you aren’t from the 4^th Century, and you only find your understanding of the Trinity challenged by precocious seminarians and Jehovah’s Witnesses—then it’s likely that you don’t have a ‘pet’ explanation of Trinitarian Doctrine, and it’s also likely that you’ve gotten on with your faith just fine so far…

Now, so as not to make light of all of this; I will say that in earlier ages in the Church, the articulation of the Nature of God and why Three Persons in a Trinity of Being still made sense for a monotheistic faith system was a bit more important—there really was a bit more at stake.

After all, rival theological statements—some of them more popular than others—posed an understanding of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) sometimes in ways that disconnected our historical roots to the same God of Israel.

Beyond this, and other matters, these rival theologies were also a bid for power—but in the end, Trinitarian theology prevailed, and the Nicene Faith affirmed, after hundreds of years of trying to figure out what to make of Jesus and the Holy Spirit—both of Whom the Church venerates and worships. But how to do that without creating two more separate gods was the question.

So, for people like Gregory of Nazianzus, his brother Basil the Great, Athanasius, and a host of others; articulating a faith statement that made sense of this was more than a matter of street cred—it was an attempt at explaining what Christianity meant for the world in a time of immense upheaval and transition.

   The statement that they adopted then, in 325 at the Council of Nicaea, was what we now know as the Nicene Creed (a clever name). And is the Creed that we recite every Sunday (unless we don’t). Yet, even though in its original Greek it is a loaded, complex and elegant statement of the faith, it’s about as clear as mud.

What this leaves us with today, especially regarding the Doctrine of the Trinity, is a belief that (while it is considered foundational) is all the same difficult to understand, hard to articulate, and really only important to persnickety catechism teachers. At least that’s how it seems.

But rather than throwing the whole Doctrine of the Trinity out, or trying to over-simplify it with bad analogies—perhaps we need to start by trying to understand what the Nature of the Trinity speaks to our own time and culture—which, like the 4^th Century, is also very much in transition…

First off, let’s just get some basic handle on what it is that is articulated in the Nicene Creed. Effectively, the Creed affirms that God is One, and that the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same substance with the Father. God is before all things, through the Son (Jesus), all things were created; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.

Somehow, because the Three Persons of the Trinity are so perfectly in communion, they are of One Substance, yet because God is Love—and we understand that Love by nature has to have some kind of economy, and is therefore shared—in this way, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit share perfectly in one substance because they are perfectly in love, and therefore God is Love.

Now, we’ve been through this already a couple of times before, and I even had a few people dancing here in the front to better demonstrate that the Co-existent Nature of the Trinity is often described as a kind of dance—each Person of the Trinity is in perfect inter-procession with and among one another. Again, like the Nicene Creed, clear as mud. But, once again we find our language less than equal to the task of speaking of such things.

Anyway, what all of this seems to speak to, for us, and perhaps generations before us, is that God (the Holy Trinity, and the perfect image of loving and whole community) calls us not only to be in community (with God and others), but calls us to healthy and whole community.

This, I think is particularly important—healthy, whole community—because, of course whole and holy have the same root, and as we know, God calls us to holiness, which in turn is wholeness. And, I would imagine if a community of faith were about creating and cultivating such a community—we would be less worried about programs and advertising, because we would honestly have no trouble drawing people to be part of such a community.

But what would this kind of community look like? How do we even work toward living into such a vision?

Well, first, I think we need to work at the integration of our faith and our lives. So, this means taking our faith seriously. This doesn’t mean living into some rigorous, or complex holiness code. But it does mean beginning with the very basics: Love God, love our neighbors—and live and love as if it really mattered.

We need to believe that people are worth something because God says so, and by God’s grace, we do our best to see it. What this means is keeping in mind how we treat one another; how we talk about one another; and how we value one another. Because as long as we continue to give ourselves passes on these whenever it suits us, we’ll never really be changed, and neither will our world.

Along with taking our faith seriously, we also need to get past childish faith. Notice I didn’t say “Childlike faith,” I said childish faith. Childish faith is the idea that everything you learned about God and faith when you were six is still enough to get you by as an adult. The fact is that I’m not really comfortable teaching anyone, of any age easy answers to faith questions—but, I am interested in age appropriate conversations about faith. However, the sad truth is that for many of us, our faith has been formed by naïve, easy answers when we all know full well that the world is asking tough questions. And easy answers are just insufficient, and irresponsible. So, I think we do a disservice to ourselves, and others when we don’t try to grow more mature in our faith.

Finally, we need to learn to not judge—whether that be people, or even situations. We need to be able to step back, take a breath, and check to see that we’re seeing the bigger picture. Because, more often than not, communities of faith have the exact same patterns as family systems. So, like families, there is a kind of homeostasis that is kept—and this can be healthy or unhealthy, constructive or destructive—but, unless the people in the family system, or even the community system try to step back and see matters more clearly, often the system remains in negative cycles. What’s more, because some of these systems are so used to being unhealthy, and that feels more normal to them—the system will resist change, even healthy change…

 So as people of faith, it’s up to us to check out our notions, or even our understanding of situations—otherwise we might find that we’re perpetuating negativity, and most likely resisting possible healthy change.

So, getting back to the Nature of the Trinity; remember that I said that God, as Three Persons existing as One God, in Perfect Community, invites each of us into Divine Union with God’s Self—to be in community, even communion with God. However, as is the nature of being in community, we don’t do it alone—God doesn’t call us to a one-to-one relationship (personal, yes, but not isolated). What this means then is that there will be other people who are called together with us, to be in communion with God. But if we’re not willing to strive to be healthy and whole as a community, we can never pretend to be holy, either. We likewise can’t hope to be agents of healing, if we’re not, ourselves, trying our best to be healthy. And we’re if not a holy community of faith, or workers for healing in the world, then what is the purpose of the Church? Because there are plenty of country clubs, and organizations who can make individuals feel like they belong—but it’s the Church’s work to be an agent for positive change in the world. But that positive change has to begin with each one of us in this community, so that we can carry that same work out into the world in the name of Christ. “And we will with God’s help.”  

Trinity Sunday 2015

Trinity Sunday 2015

Today is the Sunday known as Trinity Sunday, and it appropriately follows Pentecost (the day the Holy Spirit was given to world), and the Seasons of Advent and Christmas, when Jesus was born and revealed as the Incarnation and Son of God. Of course, throughout all of the Church seasons is the constant and enduring Presence of God the Father.

So, in terms of the Church year, today represents the first Sunday after which we have recognized each of the Three Persons of the Trinity—and, that ‘s kind of a big deal.

However, this is a big deal, perhaps, not for the reasons we might think… I mean, after all, no matter how many times we celebrate this day; no matter how much time any of us may spend reading Athanasius or Gregory of Nazianzus (something I’m sure you all do in your spare time); and no matter how many times we encounter the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds—the nature of the Holy Trinity still doesn’t make a lot of practical sense to most of us.

I remember when I was in seminary, there was this underlying sense of anxiety that all of us (once we were in ministry) would regularly find ourselves asked to make an account for the Holy Trinity. All of us just knew that at any moment, we could be asked about the Trinity at Coffee Hour, and our answer could mean the difference between a life of joyful, quiet, fulfilling orthodoxy—or the misery of continued confusion…

  

Like most of my seminary colleagues, I worked to sort out the “orthodox,” or correct teachings on the Trinity. I sought out what I believed would be the easiest ways to try to communicate this mystery, without over-simplifying it, and falling into some terrible, horrible heresy while I was at it.

Well, I was glad I did expend all of that energy and time in seminary, because there came a day in my ministry when a seminarian happened to be at the church where I was working, and he really wanted to hear an accounting of my understanding of the Trinity.

It’s likely that he thought I was a heretic.

But this gets at what I think is most difficult about our theology of the Holy Trinity—all of our best attempts to understand it are so difficult and convoluted, they are almost irrelevant. And, while the stakes were a bit higher when people were drafting things like the Nicene Creed, or the Apostle’s Creed—in reality it was mostly the Emperor Constantine and the bishops who were making such a big deal about all of this…

The thing is, we know that Judaism is a Monotheist religion—this is the belief in a single God—but, that can mean a number of things. For Israel, in the early days, it meant that God—YHVH—was a God above all other gods. And while this belief evolved in a few different ways, the basic idea is that YHVH is God, and that’s it.

Of course this was the very clear statement and belief that was held by Israel at the time of Jesus’ birth… and while he spoke of God in terms of a Son referring to a Father—there was this sense of equality that began to emerge after the resurrection.

Finally, add to all of this Jesus sending his followers into the world to baptize in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—and the Holy Spirit’s descent into the world on the Day of Pentecost—well, all of a sudden the math doesn’t quite work out for monotheism.

So, as early as some of the letters of Peter, and Paul, we begin to see attempts at trying to hold in tension this weird problem of having God revealed in Three distinct “Persons.” But that’s to say, I think they were a little more comfortable with that creative tension than we are today.

Fast forward, then to the early-mid-4^th Century. The Emperor Constantine has not only converted to the Christian faith, and made the bishops of the Church throughout the Empire into governors; but he also sets about trying to fulfill this dream (or urge) to create a catholic (literally universal) Church in the world. And he does this by encouraging the bishops of the Church to begin codifying, and “clarifying” some of the trickier aspects of the Christian faith.

  

Now, in a lot of ways, these bishops, and perhaps even Constantine, really were trying to build the Church—there is this sense that they were building the actual Kingdom of God in the midst of this earthly empire. So, it wasn’t completely all about the politics necessarily. But, then, politics and religion make very awkward bed-fellows, all the same.

However, Christianity had been going pretty strong throughout the world for at least 2 or 3 centuries already—and like many things about the faith—this wasn’t the first attempt at trying to make sense of the faith. In fact, by the time Constantine called together the Council of Nicaea, (this ecumenical council that worked out a statement of faith in the Trinity, and  formulated the Nicene Creed)…even before this, there were a variety of views about the nature of God, and except for a few of them—these varied understandings didn’t seem like a threat to the existence of the faith.

Unfortunately for Constantine and these bishops, their main disadvantage was that they were working from a Greek Philosophical worldview. So, to them there was this understanding that everything—including the nature of God—could be (at least) articulated, if not understood in a rational way. Because our own culture is a product of that worldview, this might not sound too outrageous—except that I don’t think any of us would say that God could be understood or articulated rationally…

  

But in the same way that a clear and concise understanding of the Trinity only seems important to seminarians and clergy—these Nicene bishops under Constantine set a precedent with their Creed. And once that council happened, it sent shockwaves throughout the world which, even today (believe it or not) have some strong resonances.  Sadly, not all of these were positive.

Then again, before you run home and toss out your copy of De Trinitatis by St. Augustine of Hippo, all in a huff, I would like to point out a few things.

First, while it might have been fashionable around the time of the Nicene Council to really have a clear understanding and confession of faith in the Trinity—the truth is, no one’s here to quiz you on the finer points of Trinitarian theology. In fact, the whole business of the Nicene Council didn’t get settled out for another couple of centuries—and even then it still had its problems. So, our understanding about this mystery of the Trinity shouldn’t be a deterrent to our faith, or its fullness. Besides, the language of the Creeds really only make the most sense if you’re a philosopher, a lawyer and speak Greek…so, not terribly helpful.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly—the nature of God escapes all of us. This is the reason that Jesus spent all of his time speaking in parables and metaphors. The reality is that God, and the Nature of God cannot be articulated easily. Our ancestors of the faith knew this, and weren’t uncomfortable about this problem. But, I suppose it’s when we feel that we have concreteness about certain things that we feel a sense of control, or stability. Except that placing our complete trust in any limited, or insufficient statement or claim about God will always prove to disappoint us. In fact, it may even make living a life of faith all the more difficult.

Finally, I want to make it clear that it isn’t that I don’t believe in the Creeds of the Church—so, you don’t need to call Bp. Lee. However, I do think it’s important to hold these statements of faith in tension with the larger, much more mysterious and ineffable reality of God. And so, I think it’s okay if we don’t fully understand what the Creeds mean, or even if we have a little trouble buying into them. However, I also think that they do give us some language, and even some important images that can be helpful in our understanding of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—and, certainly, God’s relationship to us, and each of us to one another. If nothing else, we learn that loving community is part of God’s very nature, and as creatures made in the Image of God, we were created to love God and love one another.  

Feast of Pentecost 2015

Feast of Pentecost 2015

It seems in spite of our sensibilities, or even what we say we understand about sacraments in the Church, many of us still have this idea that they’re somehow ‘magical.’ In fact, “Hocus Pocus,” allegedly came from the Latin Mass when the priest would say the words “hoc est corpus meum” (this is my Body) during the Eucharistic prayer. But because the people really no longer spoke Latin, and because the Eucharist, like many of the other sacraments, had been kept at such a distance from people—well, they didn’t make a lot of sense. So, we get “hocus pocus” from this magical stuff that the priest apparently did at the altar table…

Now, it could be argued that magical thinking does kind of affirm our sense of mystery, but it also renders these symbols unrealistic—even, otherworldly. Without some kind of rooting then, sacrament sort of just becomes a bit meaningless. So, it shouldn’t be such a surprise when we find some people simply “going through the motions.” Sacraments become simply “what we do” and what’s expected, whether we believe in them or not…which just feels icky to me.   

Whether bad religious education is to blame, or the over-specialization of the sacraments—whatever the case, they have lost their connection to our daily lives. They’ve lost their simplicity…their accessibility. What good is an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace” if the outward and visible no longer make sense? What does that say about the inward and invisible grace? Do you suppose?

  

It’s pretty sad actually, because the Sacraments are not only simple, they’re commonplace…they’re elemental. This is why the basic staples of bread and wine can be for us the very Presence of Jesus. This is why our full initiation into New Life and faith can come from something as simple as bath time. And all of these things can easily find their meaning and rooting in story…effectively, God’s story and our own.

So the sacraments are kid’s stuff.

But as to the elemental nature of sacrament—well, we have: Wind; Fire; Water; even Earth. As we heard from the Acts of the Apostles, the wind burst through the windows when the Holy Spirit came. We also heard that tongues of flame appeared above their heads. As to water, baptism of course comes first to mind. But water is also the element we’re told is present with God in the very beginning of Creation. Also, it’s through water that Israel is delivered from Egypt. And, as any biologist, water is essential for life.

Where earth comes into play, then, is simple: it’s us. We’re it. We’re told in the story of Creation that God bent down and grabbed a handful of clay, and molded a person. But, it wasn’t until God breathed into the clay person that it had life. It should be no surprise, then, that the words in Hebrew and Greek for spirit (Ru’ach and Pneuma) both are also the words for wind and breathe.

  

The first thing the doctor or midwife does when we’re born is to see that we’re breathing—that we’re taking in life. And so it was on that day of Pentecost—there was a new birth. Certainly, the Church was born, but these clumsy, shy, followers of Jesus, were suddenly empowered by fire and breath, and thrust out into the world. No longer hiding, but invigorated with wisdom and understanding, they began proclaiming the new life they had been given at their baptism, through Jesus Christ.

It was a kind of waking-up, really. They had already been sent out before—back before Jesus was killed and returned to life. But here we see they’ve become progenitors of the Church, literally a community of the Spirit. And like Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones, these apostles have been renewed—they’ve got their their flesh and bones back on them—and now they’re ready to go out, as Jesus commanded them.

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was given, recklessly, by God, to all people. God was literally prodigal with this gift. It’s why we see later on that Simon Peter and the others are compelled to baptize and include gentiles, and anyone else besides in this emerging faith.

And while the Church, as inheritors of this beautiful and reckless gift, spent centuries restricting all of the abundance that God has given in the Holy Spirit, and likewise the Sacraments; the ways and places which God has chosen to meet us are far too accessible to be completely denied to all of us.

We can find water; we can find bread; we can find wine—and the Spirit has already been given to all of us. So who’s to deny God’s People? All we need to do is allow the Holy Spirit to help us see the mystery of God’s Presence in every…simple…thing.

Today, we have the privilege of baptizing Brooke Charlotte Huddleston into her new life in Christ Jesus, and the family of the Church. Together, we’ll agree with her parents and godparents to do our best to help in forming her into the full stature of Christ. But even as she is the one who is being given to God, and received into the Church—it’s not Brooke’s baptism only. Because all of us reaffirm the promises which we made, or were made on our behalf at our own baptism. Together we re-dedicate ourselves to the covenant life of the baptized, and we also remind ourselves that we are no longer our own, but are sent out into the world to be the skipping, jumping, walking, talking Body of Christ.

What this simple, sacrament of Baptism affirms, then; is the truth that we are also sacrament. In all of our simple, accessible, elemental ways, we are an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace. And what Pentecost teaches us is that as the baptized, we are given generously, graciously, and recklessly to the world that God loves, to continue the work of redemption begun by our Lord, Jesus Christ.  

  

So with regard to sacrament, the reality is, they aren’t magic, per se—but they are actually pretty cool—because somehow, through story, bath and table, God meets us directly. It’s a mystery, but it’s also very elemental: wind, fire, and water for signs of new life—and…us. The earthen vessels, the dust, which has been given life, and given to the world as proof of God’s love and grace. Sacrament can get no simpler than that. 

Feast of Pentecost 2014

Feast of Pentecost 2014

As you may or may not have deduced from my red socks, today is the Feast of Pentecost. This is the day, 50 days after the Resurrection of Jesus, when the Holy Spirit was poured out into the world. It’s also, technically, the birthday of the Church (Happy Birthday), because once the Holy Spirit came and empowered the disciples, they no longer continued to meet in secret, but went out into the world preaching the Gospel.

But apart from simply being an excuse for us all to wear red, and have a party—the Day of Pentecost is a significant event. As I said, this was the birth of the Church—what’s more, though, for us this means that we are empowered by God’s own Spirit to do the work of the Church. So God is no longer far away. We no longer have to go to Jerusalem to find God in the Temple, and Jesus is no longer relegated to any certain time or place geographically—because the Holy Spirit is with us…

Now this may not seem like a big deal to us—I suppose part of this is because we may not have ever known a time when we didn’t have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. But, if we take a look at the history of God calling people—prophets, kings, priests—all of them had only a measure of God’s Spirit, and it was kind of like something that these people wore like a garment.

So, Moses for instance… Moses, the man who defied Pharaoh, announced a series of plagues to Egypt, parted the Reed Sea, and led Israel out of captivity in Egypt—even this guy only sort of wore God’s Spirit. In fact, at one point in the Book of Numbers, God tells Moses to call together elders from the 11 tribes, and God would “take some of the Spirit which was on Moses, and put it on the elders…”

Even Elijah, the prophet who called down fire from heaven, which consumed an offering to God; the guy who called down fire to consume groups of soldiers who had come to arrest him; and the same guy who later on got taken into heaven in a fiery chariot (there seems to be a theme here)—even this guy passed God’s Spirit on to his disciple Elisha by giving him his mantle…

The point is that these are two major figures in the Old Testament, and important people in the history of Judaism and Christianity. Yet, we’re to understand that neither of them possessed the Holy Spirit as a gift in the same way we do now…

The trouble is, that even if we think all of this is very cool; we may still wonder what all of it means. I mean, obviously none of us is going to need to call down heavenly fire; and likely we’ll never need to part any large body of water to escape slavery (no matter how useful either of these things would be). So…what does it mean to be people sealed by God’s Holy Spirit?

Well, along with a host of gifts, many of which are outlined in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians; we’re given the power to be Children of God. Through Christ we’re reconciled to God, but it is also the Holy Spirit which marks us as belonging to the Church—which is pretty important, especially since this wasn’t always the popular perspective.

See, in the early days of the Church, there was a major shift in understanding. Suddenly, the disciples were beginning to understand that these reforms that Jesus was bringing to Israel weren’t just reforms, and they weren’t just for Israel. Instead, what Jesus was ushering in was a Kingdom which far surpassed ethnic and cultural borders. We read in Ephesians that the wall that had separated us had been destroyed in Christ—and therefore, through him there is a much broader understanding of who is included in God’s Kingdom.

And as we see in the story of the Day of Pentecost, God’s message was heard by all kinds of people in all of their respective languages; this further affirming that God has always had a much more generous idea of who gets to be called “God’s People.”

Some time ago I came across an interesting, short documentary about something called the “Overview Effect.” According to the Overview Institute, the Overview Effect

          “refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is           immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and           nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.  From space, the astronauts tell us, national           boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to           create a planetary society with the united will to protect this "pale blue dot" becomes both obvious and imperative (www.theoverviewinstitute.org).”

Basically, the term “Overview Effect” was coined to describe what astronauts and cosmonauts have experienced when seeing the Earth from space. It’s described literally as a cognitive shift in awareness, one which prior to the developments in cognitive science had nothing to compare it to scientifically, and only later found cognates in ancient religious texts.

What strikes me about the Overview Effect is that from this experience that astronauts have had, there has spawned an institute—an actual non-profit organization who are not studying the effect per se; instead, they’ve devoted themselves to sharing the power of the message of this experience. Their mission is to challenge people to see beyond political borders, ethnicity, all of it. Because the fact is, for all that we find these things to be so extremely important to our world; they want to remind us that our world is just a pretty blue marble in a sea of void…

Something has to change in the world, all of us know it, but one of the main reasons we haven’t changed enough is because our perspective is so small. It’s the belief of the Overview Institute that this greater perspective could change everything.

What’s interesting, is that there was a time in First Century Palestine—in a small room in Jerusalem, where a small huddled group of believers received a different kind of Overview Effect.

When the Holy Spirit came rushing in, blasting windows open, and alighting on their heads likes flames of fire—the disciples received more than just a cognitive shift. They received an imperative call to share the hope that has been given in Jesus Christ: the promise that while each of us is important, we are part of a much bigger community to which we are responsible.

And far from being resigned to spend the rest of their lives within the some 200 square miles that contained all of Jesus’ earthly ministry—they stepped out into the world and began changing it forever…

With the Overview Effect, science seems to have claimed this perspective—and somehow the Church has all but forgotten it.

 You see, somewhere when we decided that being the Church was about facilitating mystical experience, or about being the most popular group in town; we lost something. Because what it means to be the Church, is that we’re about changing the world. We’re called to speak peace into a violence-drunk world, and believe it can happen. We’re called to speak justice into a world that makes its promises with its fingers-crossed, and we’re supposed to believe we can make a change.

But most importantly, we’re called to love as Christ loves us—we’re called to seek and serve Christ in all people; and we need to know that it makes all the difference. Because we’re not being sent out into the world to do these things like naïve idealists. We go out to do this work because it is the work of Christ; it’s the work of his Father, and ours. And we do this work because we have had a cognitive shift through the Holy Spirit—a shift which calls us to not only see others from God’s perspective, but calls us to see others as a deeply integrated part of ourselves—and all of us, all of us called to God’s People.

So, let us go forth, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit—power which causes us to see all things from a new perspective, and empowered by that same Spirit to make a difference.