Grace to you and from the Triune God. AMEN.
It's true, as Jesus says in John’s Gospel here: there are still some things we can't bear to hear right now...
There is still some wisdom that we can’t comprehend, some truth that we can’t handle, even some unconditional love of God that we can’t let ourselves accept.
[slowly] But in the meantime, we reflect today on the unselfishness of our Triune God.
The "omni's" of God are often acknowledged (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence), but not often enough the unselfishness, the omni-generosity, omni-benevolence, of God, the Holy Trinity.
Today -- brace yourself and maybe you’ve looked ahead -- but today we’re going to be invited to say together the Athanasian Creed. This super-long statement of faith that dates to the 6th century -- younger actually than the Apostle’s or Nicene Creeds we usually say -- is just as much a part of our teaching and our faith tradition as the others. [Anyone memorize this?]
In the ordination of a pastor in the ELCA, you’ll hear the bishop say to the new pastor:
“The church in which you are to be ordained confesses that the holy scriptures are the word of God and are the norm of its faith and life. We accept, teach, and confess the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds. We also acknowledge the Lutheran confessions as true witnesses and faithful expositions of the holy scriptures. Will you therefore preach and teach in accordance with the holy scriptures and these creeds and confessions?”
(I said yes, with the help of God.) But in our new hymnal the Athanasian Creed was cut, because -- I learned this week -- it took up 3 pages, most churches aren’t using it, but maybe once a year, and it would always be available online.
Anyway, the point is, this is a statement of our faith too, and when you confess this with me in a bit, I hope you see the sharing that is described throughout. Divine community sharing. [Trinity icon: at table.] The three persons of the Trinity: equal in majesty, co-eternal in glory. That requires sharing. This Athanasian Creed, more than any other we confess, emphasizes the equality of the Trinity. I’d say the sharing of/among the persons of Trinity.
How that has been God-our-Holy-Parent’s message from the very beginning! Look at the creation story. Isn’t it all about sharing? Sharing of light and darkness, sharing of earth and sea, sharing of breath, sharing of bones, sharing of labor, sharing of food, sharing of care for the animals and the plants...
How Jesus-the-Holy-Child-the-2nd-person-of-the-Trinity’s whole message can be summed up in that single word: share.
From the Christmas stable, to the temptation in the wilderness, the sermon on mount, the miracle of water to wine, the welcome of the outsider, the healing of the sick, the empowering of the 12 (who are sent out in pairs), the promise of paradise from the cross, the command to his disciple and his mother to “behold” one another... all of it summed up: SHARE.
And the Holy Spirit, and the Pentecost account we celebrated last Sunday: sharing the Gospel with EVERYONE and by everyone -- Jews and Greeks, slave and free, male and female, gay and straight, black and white. SHARE. Ever had a unlikely saint preach you the Gospel? Ever learn something or get reminded of something about how much God loves and forgives you by a baby, or a Democrat or a Republican, or an animal, or a tree, or a drug addicted teenager...what are your unlikely saint stories, which bear witness to the sharing movement of Holy Spirit?
[One of mine, I haven’t told in a while: Large African American woman, “Olivia”. Downtown L.A. -- former prostitute and crack addict, giving us a tour of Skid Row, greeting everyone she saw with open arms and big hugs...]
The mystery of the Trinity. All things shared and holding together. "Everything belongs." And this includes us, we are wrapped into this cosmic dance of One-God-in-Three-Persons. The ancient desert mystics of the early church said and believed that you are actually the Fourth Person of the Blessed Trinity!
Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it like this:
“To be fully human is to be recreated in the image of Christ's humanity; and that humanity is the perfect human ‘translation’ of the relationship of the eternal Son to the eternal Father, a relationship of loving and adoring self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the Other. Thus the humanity we are growing into in the Spirit, the humanity that we seek to share with the world as the fruit of Christ's redeeming work, is a contemplative humanity.” [pause]
I’m not sure how we talk about the Trinity, i.e. this business of sharing, without talking about contemplation and meditation. In traditional parlance: prayer.
Spend some time resting in the glory, the mystery, and the unselfish generosity of the Holy Trinity this week.
My boy, Franciscan Richard Rohr, has said, “If God is Trinity and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe.”
I’m afraid that contemporary Christianity, has lost this truth. Karl Rahner, German Jesuit theologian, said in the mid-20th century that we could drop the doctrine of the Trinity tomorrow in our churches and nothing would change. We Christians are tempted to lift up a non-Trinitarian God -- some have said, we still worship a pagan god, Zeus with a lightning bolt ready to strike you down, ready to find out if you’re naughty or nice. But “if God is Trinity, and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe.” Sharing.
Take time this week, stop doing all your stuff, and sit still. Not to sleep, not to catch up on FB, not to think about your life and how everything's going...but find a place and a way to sit in the incomprehensible majesty of our Triune God's unselfishness and love. I’m going to ask you: “How did you stop this week? When did you breathe?”
Maybe this is something that we can't bear right now, but I'm going to say it anyway: We live in an unreflective culture. And because of that we've become negative, ungrateful, reactive, impulsive and anxious (root: choking). Contemplating, breathing and resting in God's sharing, in the Trinity's unselfish, benevolent essence, would fall on us like a shower after a month trekking in the desert.
I'm telling you to do it. But here's the reality, whether you take me up on this challenge or not, here’s the reality: that nothing (not even your busy schedule) can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit! AMEN.
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