[Propertalk] Trinity Sunday

Fri Jun 17 03:23:53 EDT 2011

I'm still working and reading but here is the first draft for Trinity 
Sunday.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                   THE FIRST 
SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – A
GENESIS 1:1 – 2:4a				      	       		       TRINITY SUNDAY
2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13					                         19TH JUNE, 2011
MATTHEW 28:16-20 								             PSALM 8

	Why does it matter what we believe? If someone has doubts about there 
being three persons in the Godhead, is that a big deal?

	Ask Athanasius when you next run into him.

	Does it matter what you might find lying around a warehouse or 
business? Ask the Fire Department here in Albany – especially after last 
Sunday night. 1

	There ARE things we NEED to know. Our safety is at stake – in both 
cases.

	Actually, if you think about it for a moment, it IS important what we 
believe, especially about God. Because every single one of us on earth – 
and I  might go so far as wonder about every being in creation – every 
single one of us is made in God’s image. Therefore who we believe God to 
be reflects back who WE think WE are.

	A book that’s been on or near the top of a pile on my end table opens 
the first chapter in a very straightforward way.

	“We learn something of God in the process of naming. Names are 
connected to stories. And there are stories of naming. In some cultures, 
names are laden with meaning, as is the process of naming.”  2

  	I remember going to a week-long workshop on the Isle of Iona, off the 
west coast of Scotland. The leader was an important Islamic scholar from 
the University of London. He began by talking about the fact that we’re 
usually given names by our parents or families, and may well end up with 
a little bit of frustration, if not resentment, about what may seem like 
our lack of control.

	I remember being bothered by this assumption because my full name is 
the same as my grandfather’s, my own father’s name not including a 
middle name. My father was given his name, without a middle one, from 
HIS grandfather, and so on. This was something which went on generation 
after generation. There was a lot of family tradition tied up in that.

	Of course, despite what one feels about family members, there’s not a 
whole lot one can do about our familial membership. We CAN distance 
ourselves, if we choose, but DNA and characteristics continue to run 
within us nevertheless.  I and you, therefore, walk around as living 
proof of relationships, and, I hope, of love, and affection, and support 
– the promise of comfort and encouragement.

	As the author of that book continued, “Our names do not pop out of a 
balloon. They are not spelled out in a vacuum. A name is given and 
received in relation to story.”

	 So it is with God. As day has followed day and year succeeded year so 
have human beings encountered God in their lives. Not that we always 
recognise God, nor do we understand God. Yet over time most of us 
experience some Being, some Power beyond ourselves, some One who appears 
to reach out to us to ask us to come into and stay in a relationship. 
How we name that Person, though, and how we relate, can vary from 
culture to culture, and the way in which we experience God can be 
different, depending on what we’re doing or where we are in our lives. 
Individuals have their own ways of experiencing how such relationships 
are fulfilling. Within certain parameters, therefore, there seems to be 
a need for flexibility. We can tell others what works for us as 
Episcopalians, and as a congregation in the Diocese of Oregon, AND as 
individuals who gather for worship within this congregation. However, it 
may not be helpful – in fact it may be disturbing – for us to try to 
name that relationship for another – even someone who shares the same 
pew with us Sunday after Sunday. THAT’S how personal God is.

	Desmond Tutu has written a book called “God is not a Christian” which 
raises important questions about our belief, therefore about how we 
interact with one another. And this idea and practice of interaction is 
key to understanding who we are in relation to God, indeed who God is.

	Archbishop Tutu wrote, “We should in humility and joyfulness 
acknowledge that the supernatural and divine reality we all worship in 
some form or other transcends all our particular categories of thought 
and imagining, and that because the divine -- however named, however 
apprehended or conceived -- is infinite and we are forever finite, we 
shall never comprehend the divine completely.” 3

	There are many ways in which the Bible is interpreted, each one being 
nuanced or influenced by different factors. Tutu argues that who we are 
and how we understand and relate to God depends on where we grew up.

	“The chances are very great that if you were born in Pakistan you are a 
Muslim, or a Hindu if you happened to be born in India, or a Shintoist 
if it is Japan, and a Christian if you were born in Italy.” What this 
should have us consider, at the very least, then, is that we need to be 
very careful in how we talk to and about one another. Showing respect, 
and acknowledging the dignity of every human being – there’s that 
baptismal covenant again! – giving respect and dignity should be the 
defining characteristic of every human being, precisely because that’s 
how many, if not all of us here, have discovered that God treats us.

	Of course, we know that showing and receiving respect is not going to 
happen – easily, anyway. We all have to work at it, no matter how old we 
are or what our life experiences. If there is a lack of presence, if one 
is dealing with something in what seems like an abstract way, being 
personal, affording dignity can be very difficult.

	There’s one thing at the heart of our faith as Christians, though, 
which offers tremendous comfort and strength. We believe that God was in 
Jesus Christ, that Jesus IS God made immediate.

	I came across a marvelous phrase the other night in an essay which 
described the author’s experience of flying with different pilots and 
talking about what different pilots can experience. They were talking 
about “the romance of flight” but it “was not freedom from the earth 
they sought as much as a release from the tyranny of distance. …(w)hat 
they discovered, what was genuinely new in their explorations, was a 
different kind of intimacy with Earthly places, both the ones they were 
already familiar with and those they were seeing for the first time.” 4

	These people were released from the tyranny of distance ..

	I’ve thought about this. Distance can be create such tension and 
heartache. When you can’t see someone, even with e-mail or a phone, one 
can’t see the reaction in the person’s face when one talks. And as it is 
among humans, it is equally true of our relationship with God. As we 
seek to find out what’s going on – why is creation here? What is Life 
about? And how do we relate with one another? And the big question: who 
is God and what is our relationship?– as we try to find out some sort of 
answer to these questions and seek an answer that will be of some 
earthly use for our lives here; as we think about why we’re here we may 
begin to discover that God as known in the Trinity has broken the 
tyranny of distance. In Jesus, God has brought us face-to-face with what 
Love, and Compassion, and Understanding are all about.

	If all that I had in life was a long-distance relationship, then I 
don’t think I’d survive long. God knows that. THAT’S why God gave 
self-revelation in Jesus, to abolish the distance and to affirm that 
God’s care for us is real and concrete. More than that, though, By 
becoming known in Jesus, and through the activity of the Holy Spirit, 
God is reinforcing not only the fact that we are all created as Images 
of God, but that this image contains within in it the necessity of being 
blessed through relationship with one another.

	John’s Gospel contains references to Jesus expressing that He and His 
Father were one. Later, Jesus pointed out that the Spirit would lead us 
into truth and understanding. It’s not possible for us to know God’s 
fullness. That’s simply too far beyond our human abilities, even with 
the incredibly wonderful flashes of inspiration which we can have. So we 
don’t need to knock ourselves out. There are things which we’ll simply 
have to take on trust. THAT’S what faith is all about.

	However, that doesn’t excuse us from trying to be open to listening to 
God and accepting guidance from God for our daily lives. It doesn’t 
excuse us from developing and nourishing relationships without allowing 
anything to limit them. Even as we struggle to put words to our feelings 
about God and about our sisters and brothers on earth, we must continue 
to seek to relish the intimacy with the earth and all in creation as we 
discover how distance has been eradicated.

	Archbishop Tutu wrote that “we should seek to share all insights we can 
and be ready to learn, for instance, from the techniques of the 
spiritual life that are available in religions other than our own. It is 
interesting that most religions have a transcendent reference point, a 
mysterium tremendum, that comes to be known by deigning to reveal 
itself, himself, herself, to humanity; that the transcendent reality is 
compassionate and concerned; that human beings are creatures of this 
supreme, supra mundane reality in some way, with a high destiny that 
hopes for an everlasting life lived in close association with the 
divine, either as absorbed without distinction between creature and 
creator, between the divine and human, or in a wonderful intimacy which 
still retains the distinctions between these two orders of reality. …

	“Surely it is good to know that God (in the Christian tradition) 
created us all (not just Christians) in his image, thus investing us all 
with infinite worth, and that it was with all humankind that God entered 
into a covenant relationship, depicted in the covenant with Noah when 
God promised he would not destroy his creation again with water. Surely 
we can rejoice that the eternal word, the Logos of God, enlightens 
everyone — not just Christians, but everyone who comes into the world; 
that what we call the Spirit of God is not a Christian preserve, for the 
Spirit of God existed long before there were Christians, inspiring and 
nurturing women and men in the ways of holiness, bringing them to 
fruition, bringing to fruition what was best in all. We do scant justice 
and honor to our God if we want, for instance, to deny that Mahatma 
Gandhi was a truly great soul, a holy man who walked closely with God. 
Our God would be too small if he was not also the God of Gandhi: if God 
is one, as we believe, then he is the only God of all his people, 
whether they acknowledge him as such or not. God does not need us to 
protect him. Many of us perhaps need to have our notion of God deepened 
and expanded. It is often said, half in jest, that God created man in 
his own image and man has returned the compliment, saddling God with his 
own narrow prejudices and exclusivity, foibles and temperamental quirks. 
God remains God, whether God has worshippers or not.”

NOTES:

1 	“Albany chemical fire prompts late-night evacuation of hundreds of 
residents” 
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2011/06/albany_chemical_fire_prompts_late-night_evacuation_of_hundreds_of_residents.html

2	“Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality” by Michael Downey. Orbis 
Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. © 2000, page 17.

4	 “An Ultimate Geography” by Barry Lopez in “The Best Spiritual 
Writings 2011”, edited Philip Zaleski. Penguin Books 2010. Page 122

Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)