The Trinity on the Square
Trinity Sunday
June 7, 2009
This is perhaps the least favorite Sunday of most preachers in our liturgical tradition -- Trinity Sunday. The day on which we consider the nature of the Trinity, the makeup of our Triune God, the relationship of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, how three are separate but one, how there are three persons but one God.
If you visit a large church with several priests, you’ll find on this day that the rector has more likely than not delegated the task to an assistant or associate or seminarian or intern-- to anyone who finds it awkward to say no to the rector.
You can imagine that Deacon Stan does not find it awkward to say no to the rector.
So that I can say I’ve done my liturgical duty, I’ll suggest that during a long sermon sometime you open the Book of Common Prayer to the small print in the back and there you’ll find the Athanasian Creed. It’s tough reading, but if you try it sometime you’ll find that it tells us that God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That the Father is God but is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. That the Son is God but is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. And that the Holy Spirit is God, but is not the Father or the Son. Not three ways of acting, but three beings in One.
So if the bishop asks, you can say I cleared that all up for you.
I’ll be honest with you. The fine points of theology haven’t been on my mind this week. Our community and God in our community has been what I’ve been thinking about.
I read this week about a study by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. He makes a compelling point about churches and their communities. His studies show that churchgoers make their communities better places. I know that sounds obvious to you and to me, but his research does bear some explaining.
He says that churchgoers volunteer more and join up for projects that improve their communities. Not because they think Jesus wants them to clean the park or coach Little League or that maybe they’ll get to heaven quicker if they do. His point is that church communities are, for the most part, healthy places. You make friends in church, you’re making friends with good people.
It’s what he calls a “moral community.” And when members of that moral community influence others, it’s most likely for the good. And when someone from your moral community asks you to clean the park or coach Little League, you’re much more likely to do it than if asked by someone from a purely secular association. It makes sense to me. And if you look around your community, I think you’ll agree.
When you’re in a healthy community, you know it. You can feel it. Have you ever walked into an establishment and felt instantly unsafe, even though you couldn’t put your finger on why? Or felt unnerved in a crowd for no discernible reason? Or found yourself employed in a place that simply felt dishonest or, dare I say, sleazy?
I’ve found myself in all those spots, feeling a sort of sixth sense about a place. I truly believe that we can feel the spirit of a place. It can be good, but a place certainly can have a bad spirit. Even an evil one. Institutions and communities take on characteristics to the extent that they can be said to have a spirit animating them.
When I was a seminarian, I remember my class buzzing about the work of theologian Walter Wink. We were excited about him because unlike so many others, Wink is unafraid of recognizing and naming the spirits that can animate groups and institutions. He turns to the New Testament and uses the Apostle Paul’s teaching about principalities and powers. A corporation or organization or town can have more than a personality -- it can be animated by a power.
“Powers,” Wink says, “are the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of institutional life.” These powers are just what they sound like-- an animating spirit that has power over people. That chill up your spine, that funny feeling you get, that inexplicable distrust -- it’s your recognition of a power beyond the usual. It’s very likely an encounter with evil, with the powers that can and do occupy this world.
There is, of course, a greater power. The power of good, the powers that oppose evil, the spirit that animates us toward the greater good. Such a power can move through our groups and communities like a wind in our sails.
It should not surprise you that this wind is the Holy Spirit, which is breathed upon the earth by the Father. It is God making God’s self known in our lives-- our individual lives and, most importantly to our point, in our corporate lives. Pushing out the other powers that seep and creep among us. But only where the Holy Spirit is invited and is welcome.
It’s not every day that you feel it. I know I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit moving through our community on the Public Square just over a month ago when hundreds and hundreds of people gathered for Megan Brittain Day. I have lived in many places, small towns and huge cities. But nowhere have I felt the presence of the Spirit in a community as I did there, and nowhere else I’ve lived have I more consistently felt its movement.
What tragedy it was that brought us all together on the Square that cloudy afternoon. I stood with my cousin in a sea of blue Team Megan shirts and we wondered at the outpouring. At the love and the sorrow and the feeling of unity that one so rarely experiences.
All for a little girl whose very being was filled with the Holy Spirit. The first time I ever talked with Megan was at a Red Cross Blood Drive over at her church, First Baptist. As we chatted about who we knew in common, she would turn away for a moment to shout out encouragement to one friend giving blood, and teasing another who looked a little faint.
“So are you the official cheerleader?” I asked. She thought about it a moment and said, “Yeah, I guess I am the cheerleader.” And then she turned to call out encouragement to yet another friend.
And there you find the Spirit animating a child, against all logic and reason. And she, in turn, encouraging and supporting others. She in turn sharing the Spirit, the Holy Spirit I felt coursing through all those hundreds of neighbors on the Square.
I felt something else this week. On Friday, at Megan’s funeral, there was the undeniable reality of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Not surprisingly, one of the preachers chose John 3:16 as his text. For just as God the Holy Spirit touched Megan in her life, God the Son touched her in death with his sure and certain salvation.
In that packed church, I found it hard to believe that there were any who had doubts. After a life in the Spirit, a death that defies death itself. For the Risen Christ, we are taught, has conquered death, and in him we find life everlasting.
That is where I have seen God in these last days. God the Father, who created a child and then received her back into his arms. God the Holy Spirit, who moved through a child and then, in a miracle as clear to me as any recorded, moved through a community and poured out its blessing, touching our neighbors as surely as the spring rains. And, of course, God the Son, who offered not just to one but to all salvation from the grave.
There's the Trinity. Not an abstraction in a theological book, but God as God lives in and through and with us, in our communities, and in our lives.
Amen.
June 7, 2009
This is perhaps the least favorite Sunday of most preachers in our liturgical tradition -- Trinity Sunday. The day on which we consider the nature of the Trinity, the makeup of our Triune God, the relationship of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, how three are separate but one, how there are three persons but one God.
If you visit a large church with several priests, you’ll find on this day that the rector has more likely than not delegated the task to an assistant or associate or seminarian or intern-- to anyone who finds it awkward to say no to the rector.
You can imagine that Deacon Stan does not find it awkward to say no to the rector.
So that I can say I’ve done my liturgical duty, I’ll suggest that during a long sermon sometime you open the Book of Common Prayer to the small print in the back and there you’ll find the Athanasian Creed. It’s tough reading, but if you try it sometime you’ll find that it tells us that God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That the Father is God but is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. That the Son is God but is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. And that the Holy Spirit is God, but is not the Father or the Son. Not three ways of acting, but three beings in One.
So if the bishop asks, you can say I cleared that all up for you.
I’ll be honest with you. The fine points of theology haven’t been on my mind this week. Our community and God in our community has been what I’ve been thinking about.
I read this week about a study by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. He makes a compelling point about churches and their communities. His studies show that churchgoers make their communities better places. I know that sounds obvious to you and to me, but his research does bear some explaining.
He says that churchgoers volunteer more and join up for projects that improve their communities. Not because they think Jesus wants them to clean the park or coach Little League or that maybe they’ll get to heaven quicker if they do. His point is that church communities are, for the most part, healthy places. You make friends in church, you’re making friends with good people.
It’s what he calls a “moral community.” And when members of that moral community influence others, it’s most likely for the good. And when someone from your moral community asks you to clean the park or coach Little League, you’re much more likely to do it than if asked by someone from a purely secular association. It makes sense to me. And if you look around your community, I think you’ll agree.
When you’re in a healthy community, you know it. You can feel it. Have you ever walked into an establishment and felt instantly unsafe, even though you couldn’t put your finger on why? Or felt unnerved in a crowd for no discernible reason? Or found yourself employed in a place that simply felt dishonest or, dare I say, sleazy?
I’ve found myself in all those spots, feeling a sort of sixth sense about a place. I truly believe that we can feel the spirit of a place. It can be good, but a place certainly can have a bad spirit. Even an evil one. Institutions and communities take on characteristics to the extent that they can be said to have a spirit animating them.
When I was a seminarian, I remember my class buzzing about the work of theologian Walter Wink. We were excited about him because unlike so many others, Wink is unafraid of recognizing and naming the spirits that can animate groups and institutions. He turns to the New Testament and uses the Apostle Paul’s teaching about principalities and powers. A corporation or organization or town can have more than a personality -- it can be animated by a power.
“Powers,” Wink says, “are the impersonal spiritual realities at the center of institutional life.” These powers are just what they sound like-- an animating spirit that has power over people. That chill up your spine, that funny feeling you get, that inexplicable distrust -- it’s your recognition of a power beyond the usual. It’s very likely an encounter with evil, with the powers that can and do occupy this world.
There is, of course, a greater power. The power of good, the powers that oppose evil, the spirit that animates us toward the greater good. Such a power can move through our groups and communities like a wind in our sails.
It should not surprise you that this wind is the Holy Spirit, which is breathed upon the earth by the Father. It is God making God’s self known in our lives-- our individual lives and, most importantly to our point, in our corporate lives. Pushing out the other powers that seep and creep among us. But only where the Holy Spirit is invited and is welcome.
It’s not every day that you feel it. I know I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit moving through our community on the Public Square just over a month ago when hundreds and hundreds of people gathered for Megan Brittain Day. I have lived in many places, small towns and huge cities. But nowhere have I felt the presence of the Spirit in a community as I did there, and nowhere else I’ve lived have I more consistently felt its movement.
What tragedy it was that brought us all together on the Square that cloudy afternoon. I stood with my cousin in a sea of blue Team Megan shirts and we wondered at the outpouring. At the love and the sorrow and the feeling of unity that one so rarely experiences.
All for a little girl whose very being was filled with the Holy Spirit. The first time I ever talked with Megan was at a Red Cross Blood Drive over at her church, First Baptist. As we chatted about who we knew in common, she would turn away for a moment to shout out encouragement to one friend giving blood, and teasing another who looked a little faint.
“So are you the official cheerleader?” I asked. She thought about it a moment and said, “Yeah, I guess I am the cheerleader.” And then she turned to call out encouragement to yet another friend.
And there you find the Spirit animating a child, against all logic and reason. And she, in turn, encouraging and supporting others. She in turn sharing the Spirit, the Holy Spirit I felt coursing through all those hundreds of neighbors on the Square.
I felt something else this week. On Friday, at Megan’s funeral, there was the undeniable reality of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Not surprisingly, one of the preachers chose John 3:16 as his text. For just as God the Holy Spirit touched Megan in her life, God the Son touched her in death with his sure and certain salvation.
In that packed church, I found it hard to believe that there were any who had doubts. After a life in the Spirit, a death that defies death itself. For the Risen Christ, we are taught, has conquered death, and in him we find life everlasting.
That is where I have seen God in these last days. God the Father, who created a child and then received her back into his arms. God the Holy Spirit, who moved through a child and then, in a miracle as clear to me as any recorded, moved through a community and poured out its blessing, touching our neighbors as surely as the spring rains. And, of course, God the Son, who offered not just to one but to all salvation from the grave.
There's the Trinity. Not an abstraction in a theological book, but God as God lives in and through and with us, in our communities, and in our lives.
Amen.
posted by Michael+ at 9:27 PM
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