Sunday Sermons

Trinity Sunday C  5/30/10                             St. Augustine ’s Church

Rev’d Jennifer Phillips

Our starting places differ as we human beings discover God, but wherever we start, God is there.

God came to me first as a mystic presence in the landscapes of my childhood from earliest memory. The divine was in that invitation of the green and purple hills to “come up” - the moors above Sheffield behind our house when I was three-and-a-half, the Welsh mountains carpeted in grass and heather the green-gold color of velvet stage curtains, the milky green North Atlantic seashore and the hollow sound of flint pebbles being turned on the surf. I was, in some way I had no words for, continuous with those landscapes and the bigger reality that held them and shaped them. And later on, in the woods of upper New York State as an elementary school child, I had that sense that God was just out of sight among the trees, just behind my shoulder, just round the boundary of trunks on the path ahead. And still I have that absolute sense of God present in the Creation everywhere.

But others begin with Jesus, and this makes sense to me, too. An extraordinary, God-directed, God-infused human life lived uncompromisingly and single-heartedly, a divine personality who becomes more and more known as a companion on life’s way as stories of the past are shared and remembered and retold, as conversation and confidences are offered, as one finds that radiant companion who is part of history, yet still a living presence close at hand, Jesus the Christ, more and more trustworthy and true in a divine friendship that steers all other relationships and decisions lifelong. As we shape our own lives, it is so, so helpful to have as our guide this perfectly lived human life that shows forth God at every remembrance.

But there are many who begin with their inner light, the divine breath and wisdom that prompts their intuition and illuminates their path, the ineffable and energetic Spirit they know to be Holy. Perhaps they are those to whom the stories remain artifacts of history, to whom the uglinesses and fractures in creation prove a barrier to seeing in them more than the material rocks and protoplasm of the planet, whereas within them glows a sense of that which is larger and deeper and holds all the rest in being.

Once we are baptized into the Holy Trinity, One God, no matter where our temperament or experience led us to begin, we cannot stop until we begin to explore the other two aspects of the divine. None is complete without the others. Like a Celtic knot, each loops seamlessly back into the other manifestations of the Holy One. The Child Jesus, the truly human one, shows us the Creator whom he called Abba/Father. The Creator gives the gift of the word known in all that is created that proceeds from the divine “Let be” and “It is good,” and particularly in that crossing point of the history of creation where the Christ brings together things earthly and heavenly, the human and the divine, in one and makes - as John’s Gospel says - the Father known and shown to us, so that if we have seen the one, we have seen the other. And the Spirit within, that same Spirit which was in Jesus and is now in us and that has always brooded over and breathed in the whole creation as its life and being, is that within us which recognizes the Christ and the Creator as we encounter them. The Spirit gives the knowledge that shouts within us, “This is true! This is the way! This is the life! Come this way!”

The eternal relationship of these mysterious three Persons of the Blessed Trinity the theologian Gregory of Nyssa compared to partners in a dance. Augustine of Hippo ventured the analogy that theirs is like the relationship between memory intellect, and will; or the mind, and the intelligence with which the mind knows itself, and the love with which it loves itself and this knowledge. Scripture only takes us so far in thinking about God as three and as one - gives us hints and pointers. Proverbs and the other Wisdom books of Judaism speak of a Wisdom and Word of God which was present with and from God the Creator before the beginning of the creation and was the agency of the work being done and the joyful appreciator of all that God accomplished. That Wisdom came to be known in the world as Christ, the word made flesh dwelling among us full of grace and truth. And we become participants in holy wisdom by the presence of the Spirit within us in our wills and good desires, our love, reason, and intellect, our memory and constructive energy. This Spirit and wisdom bind and unite us to one another in the human community and in the Church, the beloved community of Jesus Christ. As the three Persons of the trinity form community together, and in hospitality invite the baptized into the life of their community, so we in turn invite others into holy community and seek to love and serve them as we would love and serve Christ and the Creator.

For some people, this divine community is itself the starting point into God. My friend and colleague Richard Valantasis speaks of his first image of God as Trinity being the sight of three Greek sisters, his aunties, dressed in identical black widow’s clothing, walking to church in single file every Sunday - which was for him an image of continuity and community directed toward the one life in God through Christ.

Now we are people of science and technology in an age of science and technology, with its many developing facets, so it quite easy for us to allow our fascination with the material world and its workings to occupy our entire minds as though it were all there is; to see trees but no forest, creation but no Creator. All this world around us is so diverting that many never look further. But you are here because you have looked further, wondered why and what for and what next and where from. Your hearts have been restless, as Augustine famously put it, and will not rest until they rest in God. This restlessness, this curiosity, this spirit of exploration, is a great gift - but a gift some choose to set aside unopened all of their lives, never knowing what they have missed. The essence of the gift God gives each of us, should we open it, is that it does not contain stuff - not certainty or knowledge or magical power, none of that - but we discover it to be a doorway into a reality for which words fail us. What might we call this place of invitation - the eternal dimension? the ground of being? the heavenly realm? the Kingdom of God ? resurrection life? enlightenment? the heart of God? the abiding place? home? love, itself?

In all of this life we barely cross the threshold, and yet sometimes, often fleetingly, know ourselves to be there. But then I am a person of landscape, and so I speak in terms of a ‘there’ and a ‘here’, a path and a territory. Perhaps you will prefer other terms. We must not dismiss one another’s different starting points for approaching God or believe we can sum up that infinite reality like Jain story of the three blind men who get hold of different parts of an elephant and each think they can describe the beast accurately - as rope, tree-trunk, or wall. The Holy Spirit draws us into community together so that we may bring together all our various perceptions and understandings of the divine in order better to know how to love and serve God in this world, a dynamic dance of knowing and loving that images back to us the community of the Blessed trinity in all its welcoming, vibrant life.

Pentecost C May 23, 2010                           St. Augustine ’s Church

Rev’d Jennifer Phillips           Acts 2:1-21;Rom.8:14-17;Jn.14:8-27

One thing about that rushing wind of the Holy Spirit that blows, as Scripture tells us, where she wills, -- the Holy Spirit brings change. We human beings sometimes yearn for change, and sometimes dig in our heels and resist it with both hands, but regardless of our desire, the wind blows and the world moves and we with it. The disciples of Jesus, after his death more than ever before realize they are called to be apostles - that is carriers of the word of God, the news of the Holy Spirit, the story of Jesus, out into all the world. They are to be world-changers, driven by that Spirit. Still shaken and somewhat uncertain, and with good reason to be afraid in turbulent times without their beloved teacher beside them, the Holy Spirit busts into their huddle. They recognize what is happening by remembering the words of the prophet Joel about the end-times, when God will stir up the earth with al sorts of signs of cataclysm, and also pour out the Holy Spirit with huge energy to move the cosmos toward that mysterious “Day of the Lord”.

John’s Gospel speaks of the peculiar peace that Jesus bestows on these followers in between his death and ascension to the heavenly places - a peace that does not settle all in pastoral tranquility, but stirs the faithful up with strength, stamina, hope, and resolution, to serve the reign of God. Within this peace is a deep trust in laying the future in the hands of God and knowing that God abides and will accomplish the divine purpose of renewal and salvation for everything and everyone. So for this peace, Jesus bade them and bids us have untroubled hearts and put fear aside. Tall order!

Fear of change, fear of the unknown goes deep in us, maybe more in some than in others, but no one is entirely immune. We generally like to feel equipped and ready and knowledgeable -- and darn, when the wind of change buffets us, we have no idea what’s next or how we will meet it.

Romans 8 speaks of fear as a sort of slavery, or slave-master, more precisely. And Paul points out that this bondage is a spirit of slavery; in other words it has power to fill us and dominate us from the inside, to take us over. We could end up with the spirit of fear dictating our every move and response. If you listen to talk radio these days, you can hear this spirit shouting on all sides…a generalized fear from those who suspect everything they have rested in has been torn loose and possessed by chaos, and that therefore groups of people (whether individual politicians, the president, immigrants, foreign powers, religious factions, bad guys of any stripe) are held to blame and feared greatly. And then they are hated. The spirit of slavery to fear does this to us.

So ask yourself as I am speaking, or afterwards: of what is it, or of whom is it, that you are afraid? Is there some corner of your mind, your heart, in which the spirit of slavery is struggling for a foothold.

The world offers a variety of remedies for fear. We may, if we choose, drug or drink ourselves silly, mesmerize ourselves with images and distractions, shop ourselves into a stupor (if we can afford it). We may build fortress walls literally or psychologically, or bury ourselves in work or other obsessions. Or we may strike out and blow off steam by attacking our perceived enemies, or watching other pummel one another into a pulp on TV. We may seek to huddle with others who share the same fear - a dangerous solution, since fear feeds on itself in groups, and is magnified and given great power. None of these strategies prevent the winds of change from blowing through. For all that such fearful people and such fruitless strategies may be dangerous and aggravating, they must also stir in the children of God deep compassion - for it is a painful, stuck, and scary thing to have a spirit of slavery and to be so afraid that change itself is greeted as the enemy, when it is the very nature of the created order - its life, its breath, its destiny.

We have another option. Jesus’ words to his friends at the end are simple: love one another, keep my commands, abide in me, ask for what you need to follow your calling. Paul calls this “receiving the spirit of adoption” instead of the “spirit of slavery to fear”. In the spirit of adoption, we recognize that we ourselves are filled with that same Holy Spirit that is blowing abroad in the cosmos. We, too, are part of its change, part of the unfolding of God’s reign, part of the new creation being birthed by God’s word. So we trim our little sails and prepare to be carried forward over turbulent waters. We suffer expecting glory. We feel alone and buffeted, yet cry out with confidence to the one Jesus called “Abba, Father!” There is no resisting the Holy Spirit - but why should we, we Christians are windy on the inside as well as on the outside. Even those of us getting quite ancient, not sure we have energy for all this, are in fact part of the new thing God is doing, part of the great energy of the cosmos from the hand of the Holy One. We have to trust all those we love to the hands of God, sooner or later, and so we do. But the great task is to entrust ourselves also. Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you since the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is God who sits above the circle of the earth…scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely have they taken root in the ground, when God blows upon them and they wither….To whom will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and see: Who created these? The One who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because God is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing!” (Isa.40:21-26)