Sermon preached on Trinity Sunday Year B
June 3, 2012
St. Saviour's, Bar Harbor
Based on the day's readings (linked here to NIV versions on biblegateway):
The most useful thing I've
ever heard about the Holy Trinity is this: the words “father” and
“son”, the way we normally use them, are not people's names. They are names of
relationships. God is in-- or God
is—father-ness and son-ness. Focusing on relationship as
the reality of God, the mystery I'm trying to
get to know, helps steer the conversation
away from sticky debates about whether God is an old guy with a beard
in the clouds, or about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, relationship
thinking invites deep questions about personal experience. It's one reason I like songs
and art that refer to the Trinity as “Creator, Redeemer, and
Sanctifier.” It's easy to think of
stories of when you created something or were created, when you redeemed something
or were redeemed, when you sanctified or were
sanctified.
A fun vocab word for this
conversation is perichoresis, the dance of the Trinity. It means “round dance”
or “dancing around,” and is used in theology to
refer to the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a dance wherein each dwells within,
and transforms into, the other.
Last fall the Occupy Wall
Street movement made news. It was unprecedented in my
lifetime for a popular protest
movement to get this much airtime on the major news outlets, and become something
everyone in the country knew about. Not everyone felt they
understood what it was about, and not everyone thought it
was a good idea, but everyone heard the
cries.
In our reading from Romans,
Paul says “When we cry, "Abba!
Father!" it is that very Spirit
bearing witness with our spirit.”
Whatever your own feelings
about Occupy, I ask you to explore with me for a few minutes the shape of the
relationships involved. Not the politics, but the
possibility that cries of “Abba!
Father” and “This is what
democracy looks like!” might have the same shape,
the same deep source. That a rising up of part of
a generation might, like the Holy Trinity, be about co-creation, relationship, and transformation.
I didn't go to New York to see the home base of
Occupy Wall Street for myself, but I heard a story from a
friend that made me think of these
holy relationships. Chris is a group process
consultant and workshop leader. He was working in New York for a few days in October, and took a walk down to
Zucotti Park. There were many police on
duty making sure the encampment and protest
didn't spread outside certain boundaries. Chris saw one policeman and
one protestor talking with each other over this boundary. It sounded like a debate
about some of the Occupy issues, but they were deeply engaged
in their conversation, and seemed to be enjoying
themselves. When the protestor took a
step closer to make a point, the policeman stopped him. He said, “Please don't
step over that line. If you do, I have to arrest you, and I'd much rather keep
talking to you.” A relationship was built, and as each of them shared
his ideas and experience, their roles that might have
led to conflict began to blur. Began to dance.
As a community organizer I
was taught to always ask questions that
will help me learn about the other person's self
interest. What's important to them, what motivates them, why they do what they do. Without these conversations, I might assume that the
protestor is a lazy kid who would rather protest
than get a job to help pay for school. I might assume that the
policeman is a grumpy, cold-hearted
control freak. But I wouldn't know unless I
talked to them. If I asked questions, I
could look for ways in which both are motivated by
wanting to be of service to their community. As long as I don't assume I
already know what I'm going to hear, and am ready to share
something of myself, I can join the dance. One of our principles was
that political agitating can be healthy and
productive, like an agitator in a
washing machine, but only if you educate
yourself and build real relationships first. We said “agitation without
relationship is irritation.”
Along
with listening well and asking good questions, sometimes
speaking and crying out are the steps in our dance. The
letter to the Romans urges church members to cry to God. Paul
advises us not to be whiny in our cries, with
a pessimistic “spirit of slavery.”
Instead,
we are to speak, cry, and pray with
a “spirit of adoption,” with
knowledge that each of us is a member of the holy family, an
heir to the eternal kingdom. We
have a right to be heard and, what is more, we
love our hearers and
know they will continue to love us no matter what we say. The
“spirit of adoption” might be what Isaiah received when
the angel touched the coal to his lips. He
was terrified to speak for his sinful self and sinful generation, but
received a gift of divine love that opened the way for his prophecy. That
love was so powerful that he became a prophet we remember to this
day. If
we cry with this spirit, what
we say will be much wiser and more loving than we ever thought
possible.
Remember Ram Dass and his
book from the 70s, Be Here Now? Writing
in another era with young people in the streets, he
took this idea one step farther. He wrote
hippies create police
police create hippies
if you're in polarity
you're creating polar
opposites
you can only protest
effectively
when you love the person
whose ideas you are
protesting against
as much as you love
yourself.
love and coercion can never
go together
but though love can never be
forced on anyone
it can be awakened in him
through love itself.
love is essentially
self-communicative.
If you think back on our
sacred stories, love is the fuel for the
dance of the Trinity. For God so loved the world, Father became Son so that we
humans could have someone to relate to, to love better. Son became Father in an act
of love that was self-sacrificing
but not coercive.
In his debate with
Nicodemus, Jesus draws distinctions
between things of the flesh and things of the spirit. Pharisees like Nicodemus
were famously concerned with rules and regulations, with what can be pinned
down. I think when Jesus talks in
this story about earthly and fleshly
things to be transcended, he meant rules that have
ceased to be life-giving, and attempts to put the Holy
Spirit in a cage. He tells Nicodemus not to
try to predict where the wind is coming
from or where it goes, but to stay open and pay
attention. When you're dancing with
God, relationship is more
important than goals, deadlines, or rules. No matter what happens,
we've got to stay connected. In the bonds of love lies
our perfect freedom.
Let us practice the dance
with a prayer from the New Zealand Anglican tradition:
Eternal Spirit, living God, in whom we live and move and
have our being, all that we are, have been,
and shall be is known to you, to the very secret of our
hearts and all that rises to
trouble us. Living flame, burn into us. Cleansing wind, blow through
us. Fountain of water, well up
within us,
that we may love and praise
in deed and in truth.
Amen.
