TRINITY SUNDAY — C
Proverbs 8:22-31
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15
Imagine this: there is a nun who gets up in the middle of the night to pray. She turns on the light and sits alone in the dark with God. The next day she spends in silence thinking about God the whole time. She fasts because he wants to become completely dependent on God. When she goes to Church she silently meditates on the presence of God. Her last thought putting her head down to sleep is about God. Imagine a different scene: a father wakes up in the middle of the night because he hears his child crying. As he jumps out of bed he thinks, Dear Lord, I hope nothing is wrong. The next morning on his way to work he remembers the repairs his car needs and utters a silent prayer that it makes it home again. He comes rushing in from work to help his wife get supper prepared and when they finally sit down to eat the family is able to say grace together. Before putting on the game on TV to relax he throws some clothes in the wash thanking God that he was able to buy the washing machine and not have to tote dirty clothes to the laundromat. Before lying down next to his wife to get some rest they talk about the blessing of making it through the day. Two scenes, two very different kinds of spirituality. But which is a Trinitarian spirituality?
We gather in this place on Sunday morning because of God. While the fellowship and the music and the teaching all serve to draw us here the underlying motive for coming together in this place is to connect with, to encounter God for ourselves. We are, of course, not unique in this. Every land, every people, every culture seeks to build a relationship with God. Around the world there are temples and shrines and mosques and churches and sanctuaries to provide a place to encounter God. There are books and bibles and Vedas and Qurans and Testaments to help us learn of God. There are priests and rabbis and imams and lamas and shamans to guide us on our way to God. The journey toward God has many starting points.
However, the journey toward God revealed to us as Christians has a particular starting point. God loved us so much that God broke out of the confines of heaven and snuck into creation, being born as a human being in Bethlehem. Jesus – God-with-us — showed us what it is like to have God in your life. The sick are healed, the hungry are fed, the stranger is welcomed, the sinner is forgiven, the sorrowing are comforted, the lowly are raised up, the lonely are welcomed, friendships are forged, the dead are promised life. To encounter God does not demand a sacred place, a holy book or a consecrated person. Rather, we meet God in the relationships that we build with those who are woven into our lives, particularly those who are hurting. Whatsoever we do to the least, we are doing for God. When Jesus gave us the Great Commandment — love God and love your neighbor – he wasn’t giving two commandments but only one. You can’t love God unless you are loving your neighbor. How does the song go? To love another person is to see the face of God.
Acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, confessing Jesus as Lord is a necessary step in faith but it is not a sufficient step. Jesus did not come for our admiration but for our imitation. We are called to exhibit the same kind of love, compassion, mercy, forgiveness that he embodied. The problem comes, of course, in that as human beings we find living out the gospel life Jesus proclaimed is difficult. We human beings are limited and petty, selfish and greedy, angry and resentful. Many of us have been damaged in our journey through life. How can the likes of us possibly have the strength to live up to the ideals Jesus holds out for us? We can’t. That is to say, we can’t on our own. But in the mercy of God, we are not on our own. God bestows upon us the Holy Spirit to give us the wisdom to know what to do and the strength to do it. It is the Holy Spirit planted deep in our being who enables us to love the unlovable, to forgive those who hurt us, to reach out to those who are suffering. There is a poster on my bulletin board that reads: “People ask if you need the Holy Ghost to go to heaven? Honey, you need the Holy Ghost to go to Walmart.” But happily, we have the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit has been showered upon us as the divine gift Jesus won for us. We can do all things through the Spirit who strengthens us. As Jesus says in the Gospel “the Spirit of truth will guide you to all truth.”
We are here at St. James today because of our desire for God. Our experience of God is threefold. We experience God as above us, as more than us, as beckoning us into a fuller life. With the coming of Jesus we also experience God as for us, as part of the human story with all of its triumph and tragedy. God for us wakes us up to a new kind of existence. And we also experience God as within us, as nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Deep within the divine Spirit that saturates our being transforms us from lowly creatures full of faults and failings into those who are grace-filled, capable of being more than we could hope or imagine. What we learn from the revealed word of God is that these three experiences of God – God as above us, for us and within us – actually reflects the very nature of the one God. So we describe God as Trinity, one God-three persons. How will you encounter God on this day?
