O God be in my mouth as I speak
for you and fill this place with your great grace, that we may leave this place
less of what we used to be and more of what we ought to be, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen
For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.
When it comes to preaching, this
Sunday has always been a busy day on both my personal and church calendar. On
the church calendar, we gather as Christ’s Body, to celebrate Trinity Sunday,
the final feast day of the liturgical year.
If you have a moment look on
page 15 in the BCP, (pop quiz time) you will discover there are seven principal
feast days in the church year. Most of these seem pretty obvious: Christmas,
Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Trinity Sunday stands out in the crowd. It is
the only feast day that does not celebrate an actual event in our Lord’s life.
Instead it focuses is on the establishment of a specific church doctrine, or to
put it another way Trinity Sunday honors the way Christians use language to
describe God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
On the surface this might not
sound exciting especially if you are a Raiders of the Lost Ark fan and like
your Bible stories with lots of action and adventure.
C. S. Lewis captured this
tension in his book Mere Christianity when he tells the reader that his
well-meaning friends warned him about saying anything about doctrine and
theology. He was told that “the Ordinary reader does not want theology; give
him practical religion”. Lewis thankfully rejected their advice, he thought
that ordinary people are interested in having the clearest and most accurate
ideas about God that are available.
Jesus’ first followers didn’t
have PhD’s and Lewis trusted that people had good common sense and could tell
the difference between a good idea and a bad one. And while it is true on one
level a doctrine cannot take the place of our personal experience of God, Lewis
thought that like a map, a good doctrine points a Christian believer in the
right direction.
Now regarding my personal
calendar, you will recall I mentioned at the start of this sermon, that Trinity
Sunday is a day rich in spiritual meaning for me. There are two important
reasons for this.
First, it is the day that I was
ordained to the priesthood at my first parish, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in
Dayton Ohio. Secondly and more importantly, this is the week fifteen years ago
when Cynthia and I started a wonderful life together as husband and wife.
So as you can see the plate for
this morning’s sermon is quite full. And as Cynthia reminded me, the best way
to get our anniversary week off to a good start is to keep the sermon short.
It will not surprise you that
with so many significant anniversaries happening, I spent this week reflecting
on how the vows and commitments we make to God and to each other have shaped my
life in significant ways. Most of our commitments as Christians arise in the
beginning out of an encounter with God.
Paul had that encounter on the
road to Damascus and received his baptism after he had been knocked off his
horse.
In some ways the church’s
description of God as a Trinity was an early Christian response to the sacred
encounter the followers of Jesus had with God.
The Trinity gave them a
vocabulary for expressing their life-changing experience. Baptism, marriage,
ordination, these are also the basic maps that give expression to the impact
that our encounters with God have had on our lives as Christians in
community.
In this morning’s lessons for
Trinity Sunday, we see the same emphasis on that sacred encounter. Moses meets
God on Mount Horeb. Nicodemus goes at night to seek out Jesus.
In both cases, they have an
encounter that changes the way they understand their lives. In Moses’ case, God
catches his attention with a burning bush and then discloses his identity. “I
am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of
Jacob.” God’s self description says to Moses, the one you have been seeking all
your life, the questions you have had about your origins (where you came from)
are bound up in the relationship that God has had with his people in the past.
Part of knowing God better for
Moses is taking the time to understand what God has done in the past in the
lives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel.
In Nicodemus’ case the focus in
the Gospel is on the present and the future. He comes to Jesus at night seeking
a deeper relationship with God because he recognizes that there is something
special about the way Jesus teaches others about God.
In discussing how God might be
revealed, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is
born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Jesus wants Nicodemus to
understand that is it not just enough to know the past, you also have to be
open to God’s presence in the here and the now.
This is what helps makes our
witness as Episcopalians and Anglicans so rich and vital. It is a tradition
that is firmly rooted in the past. But our appreciation for this sacred and
catholic past helps us to recognize that God’s spirit is a living-breathing thing
that continues to shape the future of this church and our lives.
When we combine the wisdom of
our past with the living presence of God in our lives, there is nothing that we
cannot accomplish together as God’s people.
I know at times, it is easy to
get blasé about things we have promised to do and to take them for
granted. But days like Trinity Sunday,
give us a wonderful opportunity to renew our lives, to refresh ourselves and to
once again dedicate our lives to God’s greater purpose.
In closing, let me say one thing
further about the way the Trinity forms our lives as Christians. The expression
of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit helps us to see that we love and serve a
God who is intimate, personal, vulnerable and loving.
While we can become almost blasé
about this description of God, I wanted to leave you this morning with a
literary picture of the Trinity that has helped me from an old friend who
trusted ordinary people with Christian doctrine.
In his book, The Horse and
His Boy from the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis describes the
Trinity in this way. Lost in a fog, the young boy Shasta, who has escaped from
slavery finds imself confronted by the great Lion Aslan, the true ruler and
king of Narnia. In a moment of desperation, the young boy asks, “Who are you?”
The Lion replies, “myself, said
the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook and again “myself” loud
clear and gay and then the third time, “myself” whispered so softly you could
hardly hear it and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves
rustled with it.
Aslan the Lion, Lewis
re-imagining of God reveals himself, three times in three different ways to a
young boy who is lost in the fog and like many of us seemingly at his wits end.
In the first revealing the voice
is deep and low shaking the earth as God did when the world was first created.
The second myself is loud and
clear and joyful expressing the exuberance of the son bursting forth into
creation and finally the third “myself” is the spirit of God barely whispered
but seemingly all around us.
Once again it is that sacred
encounter, that powerful mystery of God’s presence in our lives that give a
shape and form to the vows we have taken.
It is this understanding that
speaks to my own life as a husband, father and priest.
I have always thought the last
stanza of the song, The Lord of the Dance, wonderfully captures the
power of God’s presence:
“They Cut me down and Leapt up
high, I am the life, That’ll never, never die, I’ll live in you, If you live in
me, I am the Lord of the Dance said He.”
I’ll live in you, if you live in
me………
Amen