Sermon for Trinity Sunday

May 30, 2010

Readings

So, you may have noticed that we have the flags up front this Sunday. A parishioner wrote and asked if we couldn’t have them up front on this Memorial Day weekend to honor those who gave their lives in the service of their country. Seemed like a good idea, so here they are. There are a lot of good reasons why the national flag is being moved away from the altar in churches. The Catholic church called for their removal over thirty years ago, but it still seems very appropriate that we show these colors on this weekend, so I was glad someone made the request.

My father piloted a flying boat in world war two picking up downed pilots in the Pacific. I’m guessing he had lots of stories about friends who didn’t make it back from that war, I just never heard them. He didn’t tell stories about the war. Sometimes he’d catch a battle scene in some movie on tv and either say, “it wasn’t like that,” or just get quiet. I learned more about his service in the war from commendations and letters I found among his papers after he died than he ever told me in all the time I knew him. What he did talk about though, what did kind of light him up as a he spoke were stories about being a cadet in flying school. He talked about his friends in the good times, the “safe” times right before the war. He occasionally told a story of something that happened to a friend during the war, but only if that friend made it back. My Godfather flew with my dad as a tail gunner, and it amused me as a little kid more than it should have that he had gotten hit in the backside on one of their runs. I didn’t get any real sense from my father of what the war and being in it was like. What I did get was the idea that in those awful times and in some pretty terrible situations a community formed and life-long friendships were created. At the end of the day, what my dad wanted to remember was his connection to the people who had been there with him, a community that in hard times sustained and gave courage to its members. And it is that community message I got from him that now turns me back toward the message of this Trinity Sunday in which we celebrate the God who begins as community.

Some of you may know that I joke at times about this Sunday. I joke about trying to get out of preaching the deep and unfathomable concept of the triune God. I have had seminarians preach on Trinity Sunday, I have been on vacation or sabbatical on this Sunday. Two years ago I even managed to get the bishop to visit on Trinity Sunday. I suppose I could just stick with Memorial Day and skip the Trinity this morning but the truth is, I like the richness of Christianity’s understanding of God. So I am glad that every few years I am pushed to spend some time thinking about this three-in-one God of ours.

That really is the way to approach thinking about the Trinity. Come back year after year and see what you notice, see what new vision of God is visible at this point in your journey, what new understanding of God might be possible because of recent experiences in your life. The three readings today each emphasize a different person of the Trinity but they do it in a messy kind of way that sort of mixes the three up. The Proverbs reading speaks about creation. The Creator, the first person of the Trinity is brought to mind in this reading, but is named Wisdom, a name more commonly associated with the Spirit of God. Then Paul in his letter to the Romans points to Christ, the second person of the Trinity as the one through whom we receive access to grace. He then goes on to say that he can boast about his hope in Christ only because the Spirit has been poured into him. Finally, today, we hear Jesus in John’s gospel telling his disciples about the Spirit, who will guide them in all things.

Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. They are all here, and in the readings they seem a bit scrambled. Anyone familiar with the beginning of John’s gospel, you know--in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and everything was created through the Word--anyone who has heard that will here hear the voice of that creating Word in Proverbs today. For Paul, Christ and the Spirit are a party of the same answer. In John, Jesus speaks of the Father and the Spirit. What stands out for me this year as I approach the Trinity is not the distinction between these three faces of the one God, but their connection, interrelatedness and interaction with each other. I am reminded that very early on in its life the Church began to speak about the God who is community, the God who begins as community and would draw us into the community that already exists between Creator, Christ and Spirit.

Everything we really need, the good for which we were created comes to us through our association with others. Community is where we learn and grow and discover our true selves. Looking at any part of our own stories, life is what happens between us; it is what takes place between people. In relationship with others we learn who we can be, we find ourselves wanting to be more, to give more, to care more deeply, to be more courageous, to be better parents, spouses, children, friends. Who doesn’t have memories of long conversations in which the world outside the words falls away leaving only the reality and solidity of another? Who hasn’t been changed and discovered hidden resources because of the needs of another? Who hasn’t wanted to change in order to be more accessible to another? Community calls to us, draws us in. I read somewhere recently the statement, “love is community.” I’m pretty sure it would work the other way too, to say community is love. It forms us and creates us.

I’ve enjoyed live music for many years, and I am still surprised and delighted when I find myself listening to a musician whose music is fueled by a palpable connection with the audience. Who hasn’t left a concert knowing that something tangible existed for a time in the space between stage and the crowd assembled? Physicists tell us that the smallest particles of matter are held in their orbits of relationship with each other by something that is simply referred to as the “strong force.” The connections between us are so important that we organize our lives and our governments to protect the space in which those interactions take place. All of our structures, our laws, our institutions exist to support what happens between people, in community, whether we are talking a community of two or thousands. Today we celebrate the God who calls us into relationship. We remember that God is relationship. We remember today the God who invites us to join the dance that has always been going on, a dance that requires our presence if it is to be complete. Creator, Christ, Spirit and all creation. The dance was written with us in mind. For this, we were invited into being.

It really does seem to be the case that whatever is good, whatever is real, whatever is lasting and important takes place between individuals and among individuals in community. Maybe that’s why I never heard the kind of stories from my dad that a kid expects to hear about war. Maybe, in those long silences, he was still pondering lessons about what lasts and what doesn’t. Maybe he was remembering long conversations in the cockpit, friends gone but not gone, truths told, memories sealed and saved. Some stories can’t be told. Community can’t really be explained. You can write about it, talk about it, I can preach about it, but we can’t know about what happens in community until we have been in it. Whatever is good, whatever is real takes place between us and among us. And any time that kind of “real” is taking happening, you can be sure that somewhere in the mix, somewhere in the conversations and exchanges, is the God who is the life that binds us together. Amen