Year B - Trinity Sunday - May 27, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

St. James Episcopal Church

Greeneville, TN

Year B - Trinity Sunday - May 27, 2018

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17
• Psalm 29

Today is “Trinity Sunday.” The day when we celebrate the unique “oneness” of the living Triune God. It is probably not a surprise to any of you…  but the word “trinity” never shows up in the bible. It’s just not there. Jesus never refers to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as “the trinity.” However, in the celebration of the life of Christ, and the church calendar year today is “Trinity Sunday.”

This is the Sunday that scares most preachers to death, as they stumble about trying to explain what was discerned by the early church…  and what has been revealed to us through their teachings as the mystery of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

So how did the concept of the Holy Trinity (the triune God) end up with its prominent place in Church doctrine, if it doesn’t show up in the scriptures? I for one, don’t think that they sat around one day and just dreamed this stuff up. It took nearly 350 years of prayer and discernment after Jesus’ resurrection, arguing and struggling to articulate their faith to one another in terms that they understood. Reasoning about how God had been revealed to them, and what it all meant.

So, in effect, if we look at it, the Holy Trinity is God’s revelation to the Church, it is how we perceive God…  as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is our perception of the mysterious divine relationship of the ONE true and Holy God.  

To our limited feeble minds… God remains unexplainable, and incomprehensible… God is divine mystery… But for some folks, that’s not good enough. They need to be able to explain the mystery – so it’s not a mystery anymore, but fact! They need to be able to explain God. But every explanation that we could ever come up with, only leads us to further confusion and frustration and a deeper need to pray and reflect on the mystery.  

To me, I like to view the mystery of the trinity as divine relationship. God is relationship… Relationship in God with God’s self - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God in Relationship with us, God’s creation… As the One who creates, redeems, sanctifies and sustains…  

There are many images that come close to describing this relationship. I think the best ones (or the ones that resonate with me) come from the early church, and they still speak to us today through the ages...  

In the 16th Century, St. John of the Cross explained it this way: “God is the One who loves so completely that there must be a co-equal lover to God to receive that love; and the love between the two is so dynamic and powerful that it is the third person. Therefore, God is Lover, Beloved and Love.”  

But, my favorite, and probably the most profound that I have ever heard, you have to go back real early…  it is the way Tertullian describes it. Tertullian was an early Church father that lived between 160 and 220 a.d. He said, "God the Father is a deep root, the Son is the shoot that breaks forth into the world, and the Spirit is that which spreads beauty and fragrance."  

Tertullian’s description is definitely one way that we can try to wrap our heads around it, but it still comes up a bit short, because (like I said) we are still trying to explain the unexplainable and describe the indescribable.

There have been some that say: The Triune God is such a mystery, that any attempt to explain it would be committing heresy… But the Holy Trinity for us, the Church, in its complexity of divine mystery and all things unexplainable, it becomes for us the lens through which we view the world. If we let it, it helps us put things into perspective so we can build the bridges for ourselves off of what we know and can relate to. 

We know the person of Jesus Christ, is the WORD of whom the prophets spoke… the word that become flesh and dwelt among us. He lived and died as a human being, yet he was without sin. While Jesus walked on this earth, he taught and healed, preached justice and peace, and he casted out demons and even raised the dead. And though he did nothing wrong, He was tried and convicted as a criminal… He hung on a roman cross… But on that cross, he continued to teach us about himself, and about ourselves... And about living in relationship and about forgiveness… On that cross he opened the way of access for us to have a direct relationship to God. We know that Jesus also rose from the dead, showing the mighty power & work and wonder of God – continuing to show us portions of that divine mystery.  

We know what the person of Jesus Christ taught us about God when he walked on this earth, he referred to God as Abba, (or Father) which is probably more like the term “Daddy” – a term of love and endearment, a term of deep compassion and respect, a term of admiration and equality.  

And we know that God, Abba, Father, created everything that is –  and is the source of all being. The Great I AM as was revealed to Moses from the burning bush. 

And We know that the person of Jesus Christ spoke of the Spirit of Truth that guides us into all truth… 

And the Sophia or wisdom… also called the pneumas Dei or Ruach – the mighty breath of God or a violent rushing wind (like we heard about last week when the disciples experienced the wind at the feast of Pentecost) that guides and sustains the Church into all truth.

So, we know God, by how we experience God… 

We know God as the One God who created us, and we know God as the One God who redeemed us, and we know God as the One God who continues to sustains us – and so, we refer to God in terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. and referring to God in those terms gives us the words that we can use to share that wonderful story – that wonderful story of love and divine relationship.

God is complete within God’s self as ONE God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… And God loves us so much, that God desires to have a full relationship with us…  and God desires that relationship to the point that God humbled God’s self and became the incarnation (became human)… Became one of us, so that God could invite us into God's self  = Into the divine relationship of the Holy Trinity. And through that divine relationship we are re-created… we become new and we are promised eternal life with our God. We may not be able to completely understand it, but we must trust and strive to live into that relationship on a daily basis…  And as we participate in that divine relationship, we also want to invite others to participate with us… It is our purpose in this life, and it is how we find true communion and unity with God and with one another.

Year B - Pentecost - May 20, 2018

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
St. James Episcopal Church
Greeneville, TN

Year B - Pentecost - May 20, 2018

• Acts 2:1-21
• Romans 8:22-27
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
• Psalm 104:25-35, 37

It is such a joy to be here at St. James in Greeneville... the long-awaited time has come for us to be together as we begin, what I hope will be for us a long and fruitful partnership in ministry. 

We are gathered on this day that we celebrate the Great Feast Day of Pentecost… The day we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The Holy Spirit – that the 3rd person of the God Head, the Paraclete or comforter, the Ruach Elohim, or the mighty breath of God. 

The mighty Wind that initially moved over the waters of the deep in the beginning of creation, that moved over the masses, those gathered there, in the city of Jerusalem, and that same wind still moves among God’s gathered people here today…

The followers of Jesus where all gathered there in one place and at once the Holy Spirit came upon them, divided tongues as of fire appeared on each of them and they begin to speak in different languages... Different Languages to the gathered assembly, and the whole crowd heard the word of God; each in their own native language.

I hope you enjoyed our little exercise this morning with reading a couple of the phrases from the 2^nd Chapter in Acts in another language. Having been in Greeneville a week, I’m not sure how many native Hungarian speakers we have. But you eached seemed to find a language, even if it was in East Tennessean, you all did real well. I know that your search committee chair, Phil Thwing, spent some time in the service in Germany and was able to pull off a pretty good German.

We do this sort of Liturgical Drama to give us the feeling of how crazy things must have been for the folks gathered together there in Jerusalem. The only problem with this creative idea is that the net effect is sometimes more a mishmash of murmuring that you can’t understand at all.

It gives us more of a feeling of Babel than of Pentecost. You remember the story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis… the story of how human pride made folks think that they could actually reach the heavens on their own power and then God’s response was to scatter them speaking different languages. This left entire world tongue-tied.

Ever since then people have struggled to understand each other. Their lack of ability to communicate over the years has lead to frustration and confusion…frustration and confusion that has led to violence and wars...  and, unfortunately, that frustration and confusion still exists.

Our world today is still tongue-tied… What CAN be misunderstood WILL BE and usually IS misunderstood. But Babel, the story of the first clash of cultures and failure to communicate, is more than just a mythic explanation of the differences among nations and languages. It is an accurate description of the human condition itself…

We often do not understand one another even when we speak in the same language. We all remain bogged down by our inability to accept the differences among us in how we live and in what we think and even of how and what we believe.   

But at Pentecost, the Spirit of God came down upon the disciples, resting on each of them and thereby bringing them, and us, the ability to come together once again. 

The disciples got a crash course that morning in the language of God. It should probably be fair to say that after Pentecost, our days of Babel should be over. But maybe our Babel today is perhaps the result of how humanity forgot the grammar of grace and the language of God?  

The great differences among us… Differences in communication and speech, in culture and race, in wealth and poverty, these differences should have all been scattered in “the rush of a violent wind.” As Acts tells us, these differences should have been burned away by tongues of fire.

On the Feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down and ignited the apostolic flame and it spread like a wildfire – out of control…  so out of control that the people were able to understand the words that the apostles were speaking about the power of God…  And they understood the message, each in their own language. What an incredible and confusing site that must have been.

So confusing that some were even accusing them of having too much to drink. Peter perks up (not one of his most brightest moments) and comes to their defense, telling them that it is only 9 o’clock in the morning and that the prophecy of Joel has been fulfilled… That the Spirit of the Living God had been poured out on all flesh and was alive right there in that place and was witnessed by all of Jerusalem.

The church is gathered here now, 2000 years later, here in Greeneville, TN and the Spirit of God continues to pour out upon us... bestowing upon us and all flesh the gifts of wisdom and reason, judgment and strength, knowledge and reverence and a wonder filled with awe.

  

And what I ask is, why don’t we recognize it? Do we recognize when the spirit is working, blowing, and speaking to us? And when we do think we recognize it, what are we doing with it??  Brothers and Sisters, God is alive right here, right now, today, present with us and the spirit is being poured out upon us...  how are we to respond?

We respond by being open and ready to receive the Holy Spirit so that same Spirit can work in our life, and empower us with courage, wonder, wisdom and reverence to restore the world. The disciples were still in Jerusalem, and they were starting to come out of hiding. After all, it had been 50 days since Jesus’ first appearance of being alive after a horrible death… And it was 7 days after the disciples saw Jesus raised into the heavens. 

They remembered Jesus’ promise…  his promise that they would not be alone, that He would send them a comforter and protector. And when the disciples were there that day, they experienced it – and it gave them the wisdom and power to communicate the power of God to everyone there in Jerusalem.

_____

I know some of you enjoyed the royal wedding yesterday, and our Presiding Bishops rousing message of love and witness lived out through the restoration of the world. He talked about love as a a raging fire... and equated the power fire to the power of love.

I want to throw you what I call a fun fact to know and tell: you may know that tall funny looking hat that the bishop wears… it’s called a miter? It is made to look that way on purpose – made to look like a big tongue. A great tongue of fire sitting on his or her head, like the tongues of fire that landed on the heads of the first apostles on Pentecost. 

The miter is a symbol of that apostolic flame the flame that continues to burn throughout the church. See, every bishop in the Episcopal Church is ordained in what we call apostolic succession (that's one you want to write that down in your notebook of churchy words) where you can trace the lineage of ordination (even the bishop that ordained me) back to the original apostles. 

To ensure this sacred legacy, Bishops gather together to ordain other bishops… This is done by 3 apostolic bishops (or more) laying hands on the newly selected bishop… thus conveying orders all the way back to the original followers of Jesus… kind of like a 2000 year old game of apostolic tag… 

At a bishop’s ordination, the bishop accepts a responsibility to bear the apostolic witness to the faith and guard the unity of the church... At Pentecost, the Spirit of God comes down upon the apostles, resting on each of them and thereby bringing them, and us, all together once again. The disciples got a crash course that day in the language of God.

As the Spirit used the speech of the disciples on Pentecost to reshape and redirect the lives of those who listened to their words, so that same Spirit on this Day speaks to us in order to reshape, remold, and move us… Move us and empower us with passion and boldness, with that raging Pentecostal fire within us that will help us unite in faith and restore the world… 

But ONLY if we are willing to listen, and be open… and love one another.