[Propertalk] Trinity c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what comes under scrutiny tomorrow ...

I blessed feast to you on Sunday! 8 - )


Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST	               
PROVERBS 8:1-4, 22-31			 TRINITY SUNDAY  C RCL
 ROMANS 5:1-5		                      30th MAY, 2010                 
JOHN 16:12-15		                       PSALM 8

	“Ignorance doesn’t make stuff not exist.” 1
	That sounds too important not to repeat.
	“Ignorance doesn’t make stuff not exist.”
	“Once upon a time there was a pig who spoke eight languages & did sculpture with pieces of wood & rusted metal he found on his travels. One day he was out in the woods working on a new installation piece & he met a family from a small town in Tennessee. They had been walking for days. The dad saw the pig & said what are you doing, little piggie? They were all quite surprised when the pig said working with counterbalanced forces using found objects. They all stood around & looked at the piece for a long time. No one said anything. Finally, the dad shrugged & turned to the mom & said I don't know much about art but I know what I like & then they killed the pig & ate him.”  2
	Sometimes people can’t deal with things they don’t understand – deal with them physically, or emotionally, or spiritually. So they try to reduce everything to the simplest common factors with which they’re familiar. And if there’s too much that’s unfamiliar, then they’re quite open to misinterpreting the whole scenario.
	“A young woman in the Pacific Northwest left the church for several years after having endured the judgment and self-righteousness of a particular congregation. As her children entered pre-school, her husband said to her, ‘Well, I know very well what it is you don't want in a church, but tell me, what do you want from a community of faith?’
	“She responded, ‘I want help finding the mystery in all things, embracing that mystery, not trying to explain the mystery out of it.’” 3
	One of the glories of Episcopalianism, in my opinion, is its willingness to live with tension, with confusion, with contradiction, with mystery. Granted, this can be terribly disconcerting. Whenever we go through a week-load of struggle, of difference of opinion within our families or friends or work-compadres, we like to be able to come home at night and sit down with a spouse, or a parent, or a trusted friend, and simply say nothing, do nothing, allowing the peace that passes understanding which we sometimes call love and acceptance to surround us.
	So we sit, maybe with something to read, something to drink, something to which to listen in the way of music – or maybe with silence – and we allow all the noise and argument of what we left behind outside slide off our minds.
	Of course, it’s not always that easy. The argument, the difference of opinion, the antagonism will probably be there in the morning or after the weekend. But it’s good to know that we can live with these differences without having to come to some forcible compromise or fist-fight. It’s certainly good to be part of a system which allows us to live with differences, because there’s so incredibly much out there of which we have so little knowledge – of which we’ll NEVER have much knowledge until we get to the Maker’s workshop where everything that’s important will fall into place.
	Until then, though, it’s important to live as broad-minded, compassionate, relatively unflappable Episcopalians, who don’t HAVE to have every answer right now! With the proviso, of course, that NONE of us has all the answers anyway, so we shouldn’t act as if we did, and we should be polite, but firm, with those who would claim otherwise.
	All this by way of saying that if you feel somehow unworthy, or under-educated Christians because you don’t have a neat, three-word answer to the question, “What is the Trinity?” – don’t worry. Just keep being faithful. Keep being honest – say “I don’t know.” Or “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Or work out your own answer which expresses where you are at any given moment. And keep being faithful – all you need to remember, as the twentieth-century Swiss theologian replied, much to the chagrin of many intellectuals packed into a lecture hall in Chicago, all you need to remember is, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” 4
	Hang on to that thought, then, as I try to add a little confusion to our thoughts this morning, the Feast of the Blessed and Most Holy Trinity. 
	I had a friend who lived in a retirement home in Lincoln City. She died a few years ago. She wasn’t quite as close a friend as I might have wished. We respected each other and enjoyed what time we had in which to talk. It was simply a matter of both of us being busy. We each had different things to do, and we allowed the other to get engaged in the community in our own ways. Whenever I had a chance, I’d commend her to folk, and suggest that they go to meet her, to have tea with her, to listen to her stories. That way, I could hear of her life and of her journey through what others had remembered and what they had to say of her.
	It was really amazing how well she was respected. There was a verbal aura whenever her name was mentioned, and that’s what was ironic. You see, on her arm she had a number. It had been placed there a little more than seventy years ago in order to try to erase her humanity, to make her nothing but a cipher, the occupier of a bunk in a camp where horrendous atrocities were committed.
	However, she survived not merely the individuals and the regimes which tried to assign her to anonymity, but she survived to regain her name, to use her name, to talk of her name AND her number, to remind people that no one who is the image of God should EVER be treated in such a way.
And if we remember that THAT woman, and every child, woman and man in this room, in this city and state, if every human being is recognised as the image of God, and as an individual with a name, then surely the God whose image we are, surely God has a Name also.
That’s what we honour today. That’s what we celebrate today. That’s what we – NO! That’s WHO we honour today. God isn’t a number. God isn’t a cipher. God isn’t something. God isn’t someone anonymous. God is Person.
How do we deal with this, though, and still maintain that God is God – Creator of heaven and earth; Redeemer and Savior; Inspirer and Comforter?
An author who wrote a book entitled “Altogether Gift” and sub-titled “A Trinitarian Spirituality” 5 defines God’s self revelation and our understanding of God as occurring through a series of stories in which different aspects, more and more facets of God, are revealed throughout history, and recorded by those who’ve been sensitive and trusting enough to realise that God DOES speak, even to human beings. Dealing with the early struggles of our spiritual ancestors, Michael Downey writes that “love endures amidst trial, hardship, and heaviness of heart;” 6 He writes about people like Jacob and Joseph, separated by what the older thinks is death, yet still bound to each other by love. “Love’s coming,” writes Downey, “is constant, even at life’s end.
“These are stories within which God is being named. They give hints and clues; they provide letters by which the name of God is being spelled out. Then and now. As the stories are told and heard, the name of God is being spoken.”
To know the name of the Person to whom we speak is wonderful. Sometimes it’s frightening, but it’s wonderful. It brings you and me to a new level in a relationship. And to hear another speak YOUR name ….
Think of the time when someone made our heart skip a beat. We may have stood some distance from the other,
at the outside of the group. We may have been across a room, or even the street. Yet, somehow, that other made an incredible impression on us. Then, when we learned the name, we could begin to fill out the memory that we might have begun to carry in our minds until we spoke that person’s name, or she or her spoke our name – THEN a relationship was begun that felt so fulfilling, so nurturing, so life-giving.
THAT’S how it is with God. THAT’S what our ancestors have struggled to understand in their journeys of faith – whether in writing complicated statements of belief or simple ones.
	An address given at a meeting of the American Academy of Sciences seemed to offer light on what we do when we wrestle with the issue of naming God and knowing God. 
	The speaker said that one “value of science is the fun called intellectual enjoyment which some people get from reading and learning and thinking about it, and which others get from working in it.” 7  Substitute religion, faith, belief and worship of God, for “science”, and see what’s being said and, yes, faith CAN give intellectual enjoyment! 
	“We,” wrote Richard Feynman, meaning scientists – or the faithful? – “We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imaginings of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.” How about saying “the imagination of God is far, far greater than the imagination of humans”? After all, isn’t that what we’re about all our lives, proclaiming God’s Name, talking about our teeny little encounters with and experiences of God, and acknowledging how limited our faculties are in comparison with God? 
	Feynman described the awe he felt when standing on the sea shore, alone, thinking about all that surrounds us, and being caught up in delight and ecstasy at the wonder of it all. Then he said, “The same thrill, the same awe, the same mystery, comes again and again when we look at any question deeply enough. With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, luring one on to penetrate deeper still. Never concerned with the answer that may prove disappointing, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness leading on to more wonderful questions and mysteries – certainly a grand adventure!” 
	Feynman thinks that there are surprisingly few who wrestle with those deep questions, and he may be right – in terms of scientists as well as the faithful, but he makes the telling remark, “Perhaps one of the reasons for this silence is that you have to know how to read the music.” 
 	He concludes, “It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. … Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, pass them on. …. 
 	“It s our responsibility as scientists (as faithful followers of Jesus), knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom - (let me add here, freedom given us all by God); to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.” 
	Don’t worry about not understanding everything – whether it’s something you see and hear in Church or, I suspect, anywhere else. Simply remember that God loves us, and is revealed to us in SO many different ways. And remember that we need to try never to be the cause of other people’s difficulty of understanding.
	Remember that ignorance DOESN’T make stuff not exist.
	But whatever we do, we must never eat the pig!

NOTES:
 	“Treasury of the Lost Litter Box” by Darby Conley. Andrews McMeel  Publishing, Kansas City, Missouri © 2010. Page 180.
2	Cultural Fable   “StoryPeople”  7th May, 2010  Annette at storypeople.com 
3	May 30, 2010 - First Sunday After Pentecost /Trinity Sunday 
Year C  by Jason Sierra http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_122220_ENG_HTM.htm 
4	Karl Barth 1962, on his one visit to America, when asked how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/theologians/barth.html
5	Michael Downey. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York © 2000 .
6	Downey, op. cit. page 22 
7               “The Value of Science”. A public address given at the 1955 autumn meeting of the national Academy of Sciences by Richard P. Feynman, contained in “What do You Care What Other People Think?” W.W. Norton & Company, New York © 1988. Pages 240 - 248.  



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Robert P. Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban,
P.O. Box 1556,
Albany, Oregon, 97321

541-921-1076 (cell)
541-967-7051 (church)