Holy Trinity

 

June 4, 2023

 

 

Matthew 28.16-20

+ Well, this is the first Trinity Sunday sermon I’ve preached in at least three years.

Since Deacon John was ordained, I usually let him take this Sunday to preach.

I do that because I’ll be honest…I’m not very good at preaching about the Trinity.

And Deacon John always does a good job talking about it.

I know that sounds awful.

After all, I taught Systematic Theology for 10 years.

You would think I could preach something worthwhile about the Trinity.

I’m going to be blunt with you.

After ten years of systematic theology, after 20 years of ordained ministry, after forty years of searching after God, I don’t understand it.

I don’t understand it all.

I will never understand it.

And that’s just fine.

And I’m not alone.

There are, no doubt, a few anxious preachers out there in the world.

There is probably more than one who is going into the pulpits of churches quaking a bit over the sermon they have to preach today.

I think it’s all for naught, personally.

For me, as for everyone here this morning, it is all a mystery.

And there is nothing wrong with preaching on the mystery of God.

And letting it all remain a mystery.

We are not some ecclesiastical Hardy Boys or Nancy Drews.

It is not our job to solve the mysteries of God.

I like just letting it be a mystery.

That doesn’t mean I am not confused by this mystery some times.

And it doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally doubt it all sometimes.

In our Gospel reading for today, we find that some worshipped Jesus when they saw him resurrected.

And we find that “some doubted.”

I think that was a normal reaction for those people, who were still struggling to understand who Jesus was, especially this resurrected Jesus.

And the fact that we too doubt things like the Trinity is normal as well.

It IS difficult to wrap our minds around such a thing.

It’s complicated and it’s complex.

And, speaking for myself, sometimes the more I think about it, the more complicated it seems to get.

Especially when we try to think in the so-called correct (or orthodox) way about it all.

But the doubts, the complications and intricacies of God are all part of belief.

Belief is not meant to be easy.

It is meant to be something we struggle with and carry around with us.

And doubt isn’t always a bad thing.

We all doubt at times.

Without doubt we would be nothing but mindless robots of God.

There are moments when the mystery of who God is does confuse me and I am filled with doubts.

Sometimes my most common prayer is, “Seriously, Lord? Really?”

I am one of those people who occasionally just wants something simple in my faith life.

I just want to believe in God—the mystery of God, the fact that God is God and any complexity about God is more than I can fathom.

I sometimes don’t want to solve the mystery of God.

In fact is the very mystery of God that I love the most about God.

One of my major influences as a poet, R.S. Thomas, the great Welsh poet who was also an Anglican priest, once said,

“If there is God, if there is deity, then He, even as the old hymn says, He moves in a mysterious way and I'm fascinated by that mystery and I've tried to write out of that experience of God…”

I love the mystery of God.

I don’t want God defined for me.

I sometimes don’t want theology.

I sometimes just want spirituality.

I sometimes just want God.

But, as a Christian, I can’t get around the fact that as much as God is here with us, God is also so far beyond us as well.

And so I struggle on, just like everyone else.

Yes, I have my doubts.

Yes, my rational, intellectual mind prevents me from fully understanding what this Trinity could possibly be and, as a result, doubts creep in.

However, every year, on Holy Trinity Sunday, I place the Andrei Rubelev’s famous icon of the Trinity in the Narthex.

I will post this icon on Facebook and on my blog.

Be sure to take a  look at it and see how truly beautiful it is.

In it you’ll find three angels seated at a table.

According to some theological interpretations, these three Angels represent God in multiple forms.

In a sense, this icon is able to show in a very clear and straightforward way what all our weighty, intellectual theologies do not.

What I especially love about the image is that, in showing the three angels seated around the table, you’ll notice that there is one space at the table left open.

That is the space for you.

In a sense, we are, in this icon, being invited to the table to join with God.

We are being invited to join into the work of God.  

This icon is saying to us: no matter who you are,  no matter what your divisions are, come, sit here with the Divine Presence.

Sit here in the presence of the One in whom there are no divisions.

Sit here in the presence of the One in whom those dark and terrible things that divide us have no place.

Sit here at this table and become one with the One who invites us there.

And I think that is why this icon is so important to me.

It simply allows me to come to the table and BE with God.

It allows me to sit there with God and be one with God.

No need to wrestle with God, or debate God, or doubt God.

And we realize, certainly in our own life here at St. Stephen’s, that God is still calling to us to be at the table with God.

Here, at this altar, we find God in some form, God our Parent, God in the flesh or God in the Spirit inviting us forward.

And from this table, at which we feast with God, we go out to do the ministries we are all called to do.

We go out to do the work of God.

We don’t need to rationalize everything about our faith in God.

We don’t need to sit around and despair over it.

We don’t need to risk our sanity.

Or our salvation.  

God goes on, in that eternal, wonderful relationship with us.

 And no matter how much we might doubt in our rational minds, we are still being called to the table to sit and to serve with God.

So, let us do just that.

Let us sit down at that table.

Let us bring our doubts and uncertainties with us.

And let us leave them there at the table.

Let us let God be God.

And let us go out from this table to do the work each of us has been called by God to do.

Jesus today, in our Gospel reading, commands us to go and make disciples of all the nations.

By doing so, we are joining in that communion of God.

And by doing so, we know, despite our doubts, despite our uncertainties, that God will be with us always.

Always.

Even to the end of the age.

Let us pray.

Holy God, you are a mystery even to those of us who long to know you; help us to live within the bonds of the mysteries of our faith that in seeking you, we may truly find you; we ask this in Jesus’ holy Name. Amen.

Pentecost

May 28, 2023

 

Acts 2.1-21

 

+ This  Wednesday, on May 31^st the Feast of the Visitation, I will celebrate a big event in my life.

 

It will be the 40th anniversary of my calling to the Priesthood.   

 

For me, that day was sort of my own personal Pentecost.

 

On that day, I felt the Holy Spirit move in me.

 

I knew that presence was holy and good and true and right.  

 

It was on that day that I clearly heard to Spirit say to me that God wanted me to be a priest.

 

Of course, I was a 13 year old Lutheran kid.

 

What did I know of priests?

 

But it was a very clear calling.

 

It was clear to me on that day that God wanted me to be a priest, for whatever reason.

 

And with that realization, my  life changed, and I was led to places by that same Spirit which called me that I would never have thought for myself.   

 

We are of course celebrating our own calling by the Spirit to serve God and each other today.

 

Pentecost is an important feast in the Church.

 

In fact, it’s one of the most very important feasts in the church, right up there with Easter and Christmas.

 

In fact, like Easter and Christmas, it even has a vigil service the evening before.

 

With the ending of this day of Pentecost, the Easter season officially ends.

 

This evening, I will move the Paschal Candle back out to the Baptismal font in the Narthex.

 

We will say Alleluia a bit less than we have during the season of Easter.

 

But, we will continue to live into the resurrection and into the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence among us.

 

Pentecost is the feast in which we celebrate the Holy Spirit—or more specifically the Holy Spirit’s descent upon those first followers of Jesus.

 

It also gives us an opportunity to think about a very important thing that we often just don’t think about but which works in our lives on a daily basis:

 

The Holy Spirit.

 

The Holy Spirit, after all, is God in our midst.

 

God’s very Presence here on earth with us and in us.

 

The Holy Spirit is that gift that Jesus told us would be the gift we receive now that we no longer have Jesus physically with us in the flesh as he was before his Ascension.

 

 

It’s a very important day in the life of the Church.

 

Today is essentially the “birthday” of the Church.

 

But, in Judaism, the feast of Shavuot was celebrated this weekend.

 

It actually ended last evening.

 

Shavuot is a wonderful and important Jewish feast.

 

It is now 50 days since Passover.

 

The word Shavuot is Hebrew for “weeks.”

 

The belief is that, after fifty days of traveling after leaving Egypt, the nation of Israel now has finally arrived at Mount Sinai.

 

And on Shavuot, the Torah, the “Law,” the 10 Commandments were delivered to them by Moses.

 

So, in a very real sense, this is an important day not just for Judaism, but for us as well.

The Torah, the 10 Commandments, are important to us too.

 

Our feast of Pentecost is very similar in many ways. 

 

It now 50 days after Easter.

 

The word “Pentecost” is the Greek word for 50.

 

And it’s connection with Shavuot is pretty clear.

 

Shavuot is this  feast on which the early Jews offered to God the first fruits of their harvests.

 

Now that is particularly meaningful to us Christians and what we celebrate on this day of Pentecost.

 

It is meaningful that the Holy Spirit came among us on this feast in which the first fruits were offered to God.

 

After all, those first Christiana who gathered in that upper room in our reading this morning from Acts, were truly the first fruits of the Church.

 

And let’s not forget that those first Christians were also Jews, gathering to celebrate the festival of Shavuot.

 

God chose to send the Spirit on those first followers of Jesus on just the right day.

 

Still, like nuclear power or electricity, God’s Spirit is sometimes a hard thing for us to grasp and understand. 

 

The Spirit can be elusive and strange and sometimes we might have a hard time wrapping our minds around the Spirit.

 

But it is clear from the words of Jesus before he ascends back into heaven what the role of the Spirit is for us:

 

 "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

 

Although Jesus’s prophecy from God might no longer be among  us as it was when Jesus himself was with us physically, the prophecy does remains with us in the sending of God’s spirit.

 

Jesus will leave—we will not be able to touch him and feel him and listen to his human voice again, on this side of the veil.

 

But God is leaving something amazing in Jesus’ place.

 

Jesus is gone from us physically, but God is still with us.

 

In a sense what happens with the Descent of God’s Spirit upon us is the fact that we now have the potential to be prophets ourselves.

 

The same Spirit which spoke to Ezekiel, which spoke to Isaiah, which spoke to Jeremiah, which spoke to Moses, which spoke through Jesus, also can now speak to us and be revealed to us just as it spoke and was revealed to those prophets from the Hebrew Bible and through Jesus.

 

That is who the Spirit is in our midst.

 

The Spirit we celebrate today—and hopefully every day—is truly the spirit of the God that came to us and continues to be with us.

 

It is through this Spirit that we come to know God in ways we might never have before.

 

God’s Spirit comes to us wherever we may be in our lives—in any situation or frustration.

 

God’s Spirit is with us, as Jesus promised, always.

 

Always.

 

For those of us who want to grasp these experiences—who want to have proof of them—the Spirit doesn’t fit well into the plan.

 

We can’t grasp the Spirit.

 

We can’t make the Spirit do what we want it to do.

 

In that way, the Spirit truly is like the Wind that came rushing upon those first disciples.

 

So, how do we know how the Spirit is working in our lives?

 

Well, as Jesus said, we know the tree by its fruit.

 

In our case, we know the Spirit best through the fruits God’s Spirit gives us.

 

Remember what the feast of Pentecost originally was?

 

It was the Jewish feast on which the first fruits were offered to God.

 

In a sense, what happens on our Pentecost, is God returning those fruits back to us.

 

On the feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the fruits the Spirit of God gives to us and we can be thankful for them, and, most importantly, share them in turn with those around us.

 

The Spirit comes to us and manifests itself to us in the fruits given to us by the Spirit.

 

For me, the Spirit of God came to me not in a noisy, raucous way, but rather in a quiet, though just as intense, way.

 

The Sprit of God as I have experienced it has never been a “raining down” so to speak, but rather a “welling up from within.”

 

The fruits of the Spirit for me have been things such as an overwhelming joy in my life.

 

When the Spirit is near, I feel clear-headed and, to put it simply, content.

 

Or, in the midst of what seems like an unbreakable dark grief, there is suddenly a real and potent sense of hope and light.

 

When the future seems bleak and ugly, the Spirit can come in and make everything worth living again.

 

We experience God’s Spirit whenever we feel joy or hope.

 

As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, the Spirit of God is a Spirit of Truth.

 

We experience God’s Spirit when we strive for truth in this world, when truth comes to us.

 

In turn, we are far from God’s Spirit when we let bitterness and anger and frustration lead the way.

 

We frustrate God’s Spirit when we grumble and mumble about each other and hinder the ministries of others in our church, when we let our own agendas win out over those who are trying also to do something to increase God’s Kingdom in our midst.

 

We deny the Spirit when we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

 

No doubt everyone here this morning has felt God’s Spirit in some way, although we might not have readily recognized that experience as God’s Spirit.

 

But our job, as Christians, is to allow those fruits of the Spirit to flourish and grow.

 

For us, we let the Spirit of God flourish when we continue to strive for truth and justice, when we stand up against the dark forces of this world.

 

The Spirit of God compels again and again to stand up and to be defiant against the dark forces of this world!

 

That dynamic and life-giving presence of the Spirit of God speaks loudly to us.

 

Certainly we have seen God’s Spirit at work here in our congregation as we celebrate a bountiful harvest—the growth and vitality here.

 

We see the Holy Spirit at work in the ministries we do, in the love we share with others, with the truth we proclaim as Christians, even in the face of opposition.

 

We experience this Spirit of truth when we stand up against injustice, wherever it may be.

 

This is how God’s Spirit comes to us.

 

The Spirit does not always tear open the ceiling and force its way into our lives.

 

The Spirit rather comes to us just when we need the Spirit to come to us.

 

Though, often the Spirit comes to us as fire—an all-consuming fire that burns way all anger and hatred and fear and pettiness and nagging and all the other negative, dead chaff we carry within us.

 

So, this week, in the glow of the Pentecost light, in the Shavuot glow with the Law written deep in our hearts, let us look for the gifts of the Spirit in our lives and in those around us.

 

Let us open ourselves to God’s Spirit and let it flow through us like a caressing wind and burn through us like a purifying fire.

 

And let us remember the true message of the Spirit to all of us.

 

Whenever it seems like God is distant or nonexistent, that is when God might possibly be closest of all, dwelling within us, being breathed unto us as with those first disciples.

 

On these feasts of Shavuot and Pentecost—these feasts of the fruits of God—these feasts of the fire of God—let us give thanks for this God who never leaves us, who never stops loving us, but who comes to us again and again in mercy and in truth.

 

 

 

7 Easter/The Sunday after the Ascension

 

May 21, 2023

 

Acts 1.6-14; John 17.1-17

 

 

+ As many of you know, these last five years have been hard years for this old priest.

 

It has been a long, hard journey for me.

 

My mother’s death in January 2018 upended my life in ways I could never have foreseen.

 

And I found myself in those days and weeks and months…and yes, years…afterward struggling.

 

My writing career essentially ended.

 

For twenty-five years before that, I was a disciplined writer.

 

I was up early every morning, and every morning without fail, I would write at my desk.

 

I would proclaim to my students, “There is no such thing as writer’s block!”

 

I would say, “If you can’t write, sit yourself down at that desk and write anyway. And it will come!”

 

But when my mother died, sitting down at the desk itself became something impossible.

 

I couldn’t do it.

 

I was up early every morning.

 

But it was not to write.

 

I did eventually manage to get back to some semblance of writing.

 

But it wasn’t like it was before.

 

And then, when I finally finished the book about my experience with my mother’s death, I received only silence from every publisher I sent it.

 

Not rejection.

 

The book never got rejected.

 

Just silence.

 

Which was new for me.

 

A colleague told me that showed how far I had come in my career.

 

“They’re afraid to reject your work.”

 

But I’d take a rejection any day over ghosting.

 

It was so bad that last February when I was in Florida, I made the resolution that I was simply going to throw in the towel regarding my writing.

 

I was done with writing, I told myself.

 

Besides, I had written enough.

 

And then…when I got back, another colleague I shared my resolution with, told me to contact a poet friend of his.

 

She in turn told me to submit my manuscript to a press she suggested.

 

And within a week, the book was accepted!

 

And the floodgates suddenly opened.

 

The end of that dark five year wandering in the desert finally came to an end.

 

Just like that.

 

And here I am, up every morning, writing every morning.

 

I have not one but two books coming out this fall, plus a show with local painter Marjorie Schlossman in September.

 

And I’m working on a full-length play for Theatre B.

 

Sometimes, this is what life is like.

 

Sometimes, life is a matter of the death of the cross.

 

Sometimes, it is an unending waiting in the tomb.

 

And sometimes, it is resurrection.

 

And sometimes it is not even just resurrection.

 

Sometimes, it is ascension.

 

This past week, at our Wednesday night Mass, we celebrated the eve or Vigil of the Feast of the Ascension here at St. Stephen’s on Wednesday night, as we always do.

 

(Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension)

 

And as I said then, I repeat this morning:

 

I really love the Feast of the Ascension.

 

I love all that it represents.

 

I love that sense of going up.

 

Of rising.

 

Of moving upward.

 

Of this ultimate triumph over death and darkness and defeat and rejection and wondering about in the desert.

 

Ascension is, of course, all about rising.

 

This week, we move slowly away from the Easter season toward Pentecost.

 

You can almost feel the shift.

 

For the last several weeks, we have been basking in the afterglow of the resurrected Jesus.

 

In our Gospel readings, this resurrected Jesus has walked with us, has talked with us, has eaten with us and has led the way for us.

 

Now, as we hear in our reading from Acts this morning, he has been taken up.

 

We find a transformation of sorts happening through these scripture readings.

 

Yes, there is this absence as Jesus ascends.

 

We feel an absence in our relationship with the God of Jesus, whom we have come to know intimately through Jesus.

 

But, we realize, we will be given something that will not leave us.

 

We will be given God’s Spirit, right here with us.

 

We find that truly this Spirit of God is, in our midst.

 

Us, right here. Right now.

 

At Pentecost next week, we will acutely see the fact that God has truly come among us.

 

God is here, right now, with us.

 

No, God is not speaking to us not from a pillar of cloud or fire, nor on some shroud-covered mountain, nor in visions.

 

Now God is here, with us, speaking to us as we speak to each other.

 

At the Ascension, the puzzle pieces really start falling into place.

 

What seemed so confusing and unreal before is starting to come together.

 

God is with us and truly loves us.

 

God dwells in us and through us. 

 

And next week, one more puzzle piece falls into place.

 

Next week, we will celebrate God’s Spirit descending upon and staying with us.

 

For the moment, though, we are caught in between those two events, trying to make sense of what has happened and trying to prepare ourselves for what is about to happen.

 

We are caught between Jesus’ ascent into heaven and the Spirit’s descent to us.

 

 It is a time for us to pause, to ponder who we are and where are in this place—in this time in which everything seems so spiritually topsy-turvy.

 

I’m not certain there is a way we can make sense of the Ascension, but what we are faced with is the fact that the God of Jesus still acts in our lives.

 

God acts in us and through us.

 

I can’t repeat that enough.

 

The commission that the ascended Jesus gave to the apostles, is still very much our commission as well.

 

We must love—fully and completely.

 

Because in loving, we are living.

 

In loving, we are living fully and completely.

 

In loving, we are bringing the God of the ascended Christ to others.

 

And we must go out and live out this commission in the world.

 

For those first followers of Jesus, it seems like they didn’t have much of a chance to ponder their life-altering experiences.

 

As soon as one life-altering experience happened, another one came along.

 

Just when they had experiences Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, they encountered this outpouring of God’ Spirit in their lives.

 

The waters, it seemed, were kept perpetually stirred.

 

Nothing was allowed to settle.

 

That is what life is often like.

 

We have ebbs and we have flows.

 

There will be times of dryness and there will be times of flourishing.

 

And the great thing about our faith is it shows that oftentimes, when things seem like they are dead and gone, we find life renewed.

 

And not just renewed, by life resurrected and ascended.

 

Our job, in this time between Jesus’ departure from us and the Spirit’s return to us, is to simply let God do what God needs to do in this interim.

 

We need to let God work in us and through us.

 

We need to let the God of this ascended Jesus be the end result of our work.

 

Oftentimes we are so downcast by the things life throws at us that we forget to look up.

 

Because if we do look up, what will we see?

 

We will see that the Ascension is happening.

 

Above us, Jesus has risen.

 

And we are rising with him, even when it seems like we are bogged down in this very earth.

 

Above us, Jesus has been seated at the right hand of God.

 

All we have to do sometimes is look up.

 

All we have to do is stop gazing at our dirty, callused, over-worked hands—all we have to do is turn from our self-centeredness—and look up.

 

All we have to do in our exhaustion as we wander about in what seems like a landscape of death and rejection is simply to look up.

 

 

 

And there we will see the triumph.

 

Jesus’ ascension is our ascension as well.

 

We too have ascended to our God.

 

The joy we feel today comes when we realize that fact and truly act as resurrected and ascended people.

 

Yes, we are, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “in the world.”

 

And because we are, we must do the work we are called to do in this world.

 

But we are also of the world to come, as well.

 

So, let us stop wringing our hands and lamenting our losses.

 

Let us stop wandering about aimlessly in our grief and sorrow.

 

There is work to do.

 

Right here.

 

Right now.

 

Let us turn toward those around us in need.

 

And let us be the ascended Christ to those who need Christ.

 

And there are people who need us to be Christ for them.

 

There are people who need us to be kind and compassionate and full of love.

 

There are people who need our acceptance and hospitality.

 

When we love others, when we bring a God of love and acceptance to others, we allow others to rise and ascend as well.

 

We embody and allow the Ascension to continue in this world.

 

So, let the joy of the ascension live in us and through us and be reflected to others by us.

 

We will be sanctified in the truth of knowing and living out our lives in the light of the Ascension.

 

We will rise.

 

This morning, we have looked up and we have seen it.

 

We have seen that rising—his rising and our rising—happening above us in beauty and light and joy .

 

Let us pray.

Holy God, as we proceed through these last days of the Easter season toward the Feast of Pentecost, prepare us for the Holy Spirit. Open our hearts and our minds to an outpouring of your living and life-giving Spirit. We ask this in the holy Name of Jesus. Amen.