What can we say June 4? Trinity Sunday

    {Check out my 28 minute talk, "Hope as Arsenic," which I was supposed to give in Minneapolis for the Festival of Homiletics, but due to my hospitalization and the doctor grounding me, it's on video now for their video package - and for you to view too!}

    It’s Trinity Sunday – not a day for theological explication in the preaching setting, but in worship. Trinity isn’t a thing; it is in fact the thing. Then all texts are Trinitarian, all Sundays are Trinity Sunday. A preaching booboo this week might be to attempt an intellectual explanation of the Trinity. Save it for the classroom. In the liturgy, in sacred space, we don’t disentangle, analyze and explain the Trinity. We worship. We listen. We join that Holy Circle. We let the Trinity speak for itself.

   In last year’s post on Trinity Sunday, I speak of my theology professor’s agony trying to theologize about this, how the structure of a musical chord helps us make sense of things, how visuals like the Rublev icon help (or don’t) – and more. I would strongly commend to you now the video of a conversation I had with the brilliant and pastoral theologian Jason Byassee on “God as…Trinity.”

   Genesis 1, hardly a good prooftext for the Trinity, but so thoughtful regarding our probing of the heart and mind of God! My 17 minute video talking about religion and science – much of which involves Genesis 1. I love thinking there about someone like Richard Dawkins – an avowed and militant atheist, from whom I have learned, happily and gratefully, so much.

   I also lucked into a podcast conversation with Dr. David Wilkinson, that exceedingly rare astrophysicist who’s also an ordained Methodist pastor. That is well worth listening to – and pondering. I love his earthy reflection on why it took God so long to make the world. His illustration? When it’s his birthday, his wife spends much time in the kitchen baking him a cake, and it’s a mess once she’s done. When it’s her birthday, he purchases a cake. Which one exhibits the most love? God’s love takes time, and it’s messy.

   Wilkinson calls Genesis 1 not a science textbook (of course), but a ballad, a poem speaking of God creating everything; science shows us how God did so. Stephen Hawking, of course (in his Theory of Everything), explained that you can explain everything without recourse to God. I do believe God is fond of this. You don’t have to believe. It’s personal. You choose to vest yourself in it not being accidental – for which there is solid scientific backing.

   I was moved, and shall never forget, hearing an early lecture in seminary on how God brought order out of chaos – and that this is God’s business, bringing order out of our chaos! Wow.

   On a different level, how lovely is Ellen Davis’s thought (in Preaching the Luminous Word) that in Genesis 1, “God is stocking the pantry,” as Genesis is downright verbose in describing food sources. And so, “Eating is at the heart of our relationship with God and all that God has made… Eating is practical theology – a way to honor God with our bodies.” Indeed, “Our never-failing hunger is a steady reminder to acknowledge God.”

   The first people, and thus all of us, are created in God’s “image.” Which is…? Russ Reno puts it well: “that characteristic that makes us capable of receiving the consummating gift of the 7^th day, the gift of fellowship with God.” This “image” is thus the “basis for our supernatural vocation, the life in Christ greater than any possibility resident in our natural power, but which is nonetheless a genuine exercise of our nature powers.” Lifting these contradictory but fitting ironies up in a sermon is wise, faithful, and hopefully will tease out some thought from our people.

   Psalm 8 ponders all this poetically, and fabulously. Faith is precisely soaking in that God made all those universes even the Webb telescope can’t fathom, and yet the small human being gazing up at it all – and that they are interconnected, and profoundly one in the heart and mind of God! I love a statue just outside Assisi at the Eremo delle Carceri – of St. Francis lying on his back, on the ground. He did this – constantly – and pondered the grandeur of God, come down and touching his small, humble existence. What is man – me, Francis? And when medieval theologians saw “man,” they thought of Christ – which some of us think is good cause not to re-translate such texts with plural “people” and such. Who is “man” – the man being Jesus. This lying on the back, looking up: not a bad “Go thou and do likewise” sermon piece.

   2 Corinthians 13:11-13 is a lovely text, hard to preach upon (for me) – Trinitarian, yes, but actually replete with how we greet and bless one another. I benedict at most of my services using just these words from verse 13. Does it matter to people? Does it bless them in some mystical ways they aren’t even aware of? I have wondered (for instance, in my book Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week) if we have more capacity to bless others than we realize?

   Matthew 28:16-20. The so-called “Great Commission,” although Jesus’ other commissions, not nearly as vague as “make disciples of all nations,” imply touching untouchables, feeding the hungry on your doorstep, not laying up treasure on earth, befriending enemies… No wonder we made this clarion “great commission” such a big thing! – since it can be a bit innocuous. Do we “make disciples” ever, anyhow?

   What Jesus asks of us is in fact encapsulated in this text. Just as Jesus, at his birth, got the nickname “Emmanuel,” “God with us,” here, as his parting words, he clarifies he won’t be the great heavenly fixer, the insulator from all woes – but that simply he will be “with” us. Sam Wells, in his marvelous Nazareth Manifesto, suggests that the most important theological word in the Bible is “with.” God is with us. No small thing, if you ponder it over some time.

   Jesus’ commission is troubling, challenging, seemingly impossible. Go to – Afghanistan? Vietnam? The Congo? And simply tell the Good News – and they’ll fall in line and convert? Laughable. But how do we Go in our day? By loving, praying, showing up to drill wells or lift up orphans?