Closer Than Ever

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD

June 15, 2025

Year C: The First Sunday after Pentecost – Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

Closer Than Ever 

Well, last Sunday we had a Pentecost celebration that I doubt any of us who were here will ever forget.

So, let’s see, where to begin?

        Bishop Carrie made her first official visit with us, confirming six of our young people at the 10:00 service.

        It was Rev. Amelia’s first Sunday as a priest, and Bishop Carrie very graciously invited her to give the blessing at the 8:00 service and preside at the altar at 10:00. 

        Celebrating your first Eucharist with the bishop beside you! No pressure!

        And then there was the choir. 

        Just when I think they can’t outdo themselves, they outdo themselves. They sounded absolutely amazing. And Nick Corasiniti’s trumpet-playing on Sweet, Sweet Spirit was the sweet Spirit-filled icing on the Pentecost cake.

        Oh, and yes, there was literal cake during fellowship - two of them, actually!

        And lots of people were here, with many of you remembering to wear red.

        Thanks to the faithfulness, talent, generosity, and hard work of many, it really was an extraordinary celebration.

        And now today, as we do every year on the First Sunday after Pentecost, we are invited to reflect on the inner life of God.

        Today we’re invited to reflect on our understanding of God the Holy Trinity - One in Three Persons – Unity in Diversity.

        Now, the great temptation for anyone tasked with preaching today is to try to somehow explain the Trinity. Just how is it possible for God to be both One and Three?

        Fortunately, I’m not going to fall for that temptation.

        Because the Trinity is not a puzzle to be worked over and solved.

        No, the Trinity is a mystery to be pondered and celebrated.

        So, rather than offer some half-baked explanation, here’s what I will say:

        Our understanding of God the Holy Trinity reveals to us that God is a Community of Love.

        This is what God is.

        God is a Community of Love – the perfect Community of Love – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the perfect Community of Love – Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

        And I assume that God the Community of Love could have gone it alone forever and ever – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – a perfect circle of love for all eternity.

        But, you know, the thing about love is that it’s not really love unless it’s shared. 

        Love must be shared. 

        Maybe even for God, love must be shared.

        And so, God the Perfect Community of Love creates all of us.

        And, most amazing of all, God invites all of us to join the party, invites all of us to be part of the holy and eternal Community of Love.

        And yes, you guessed it, it’s in the water of baptism that we Christians begin to accept God’s invitation to be part of the Community of Love.

        And, with God’s help, we go right on accepting God’s invitation when we keep our baptismal promises – when we keep gathering here to pray and to sing and to serve. 

        We go right on accepting God’s invitation, when we ask forgiveness for our sins, and offer forgiveness when we’ve been wronged.

        With God’s help, we go right on accepting God’s invitation when we share the joy we experience here, last week, today, next week. 

        We go right on accepting God’s invitation when we try to see Jesus in every person we meet, even the people we don’t like at all, and when we work for peace among all people, even the people we don’t trust one bit.

        And when we try to do these things, with God’s help, we move ever deeper into the Community of Love, ever closer to God.

        Now, even if you are only vaguely aware of the news, you know that it seems that our country and much of the world is moving in the opposite direction, moving away from the Community of Love, away from God.

        Hatred and violence are on the rise.

        With so many wars and threats of war, countries are spending even more precious resources on weapons, taking food out of hungry stomachs, fighting over scraps on our degraded and depleted planet.

        But it’s not so among us.

        Here, we accept God’s invitation to the Community of Love by welcoming absolutely everybody, by caring for children who are not our own and yet are our own.

        Here, we accept God’s invitation to the Community of Love by creating and, just this morning, blessing a new home for people who have traveled far from their war-ravaged land, desperately seeking refuge and peace.

        We’re not perfect, of course, but here at St. Thomas’, we accept God’s invitation to the Community of Love.

        Together, we are moving in the right direction, journeying ever deeper into the Community of Love, closer than ever to God.

        Yes, because love must be shared, God the Perfect Community of Love creates all of us – invites all of us to join the party, invites all of us – all of us - to be part of this holy and eternal Community of Love.

        And one last thing:

        In the Community of Love, the living and the dead are spiritually united.

        I have been here with you for just about four years now, which is a little hard to believe.

        And in that time, several parishioners I’ve been especially close with have died.

        And yet, because we are part of God’s holy and eternal Community of Love, and because their prayers still bathe these old walls, I can still feel Jim Piper and Donna Gribble and I can still feel Beaumont and Sandy Martin here with us – so much so, in fact, that occasionally I catch myself forgetting that they have died.

        I’m sure you’ve had that experience with people you’ve loved.

        Someone else who, to me, doesn’t feel dead at all, is my friend and mentor Dave Hamilton.

        I’ve mentioned him to you many times now. He was the priest who welcomed us to our church in Jersey City.

        His outstretched hand changed Sue’s and my life forever. 

        It was through Dave’s friendship and example that God invited me to a very different kind of life, beginning a journey that led to ordination, a journey that eventually led Sue and me here.

        Dave lived long enough to know about St. Thomas’ and some of what was happening here – and he loved hearing about it all.

        He was so happy and proud that I had landed in such a great church.

        One thing that he didn’t know, however, is that someone he had baptized would become a parishioner – a very active parishioner – here at St. Thomas’.

        Leslie Steele was baptized by my friend Dave Hamilton.

        I’ve known that for a while now – but it still kind of blows my mind.

        And now this morning, I’ll have the great joy of baptizing Leslie and Mark’s son Brendan, who has also become a much-loved member of our community.

        With all of us gathered around him, Brendan will accept God’s invitation to the Community of Love.

        And so today on Trinity Sunday, watched over by a great cloud of witnesses, Brendan and all of us here will accept the most holy invitation.

        Together, we will journey ever deeper into the Community of Love.

        Closer than ever to one another.

        Closer than ever to God.

        Amen.

Unity and Liberation

St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD

June 1, 2025

Year C: The Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22:12-014, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

Unity and Liberation

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Well, today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

Yes, it is still Easter!

But, in today’s gospel lesson, we once again back up to before Easter, back to before the Resurrection, back to the Last Supper.

In today’s lesson from the Gospel of John, read for us by Deacon Amelia - I won’t get to say that for much longer! - in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus prays for his disciples and for all his disciples to follow, very much including us here today.

Jesus prays most of all for our unity, that we may be one just as Jesus and the Father are one.

Jesus prays that we might all be united in love.

Now, if you know even just a little bit of church history, you know that over the centuries and even in our own time, we have often fallen far short of Jesus’ great hope for us.

All too often, the Church has been disunited, fighting over all sorts of stuff, and I guess that all those controversies seemed important at the time – sometimes even worth dying for, perhaps – and yet, looking back, it’s often hard to understand what all the trouble was about.

Some of you have been around long enough to remember the battles in the Episcopal Church over ordaining women, which was a big change, a big step, for sure.

My friend and mentor Dave Hamilton, whom I’ve mentioned to you many times, was a young priest back in the early 1970’s when the church was bitterly divided by that issue.

Dave was absolutely opposed to women’s ordination – so opposed that at a church meeting, he got up and said something like, “May my right hand wither if I ever participate in the ordination of a woman!”

Strong statement!

Well, a few years later, after Dave had had a change of heart, he did indeed participate in the ordination of a woman, placing his right hand on the ordinand, just as all of us priests will do for Amelia on Saturday.

Well, after the ordination was over, the bishop turned to Dave and asked him, “How’s your hand?”

Now, a few decades later, our church is so much richer because of ordained women – this community has been so blessed by extraordinary women clergy, very much including Ann Copp and Caroline Stewart, and now our Assistant Rector, Amelia Bello.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t some important principles worth fighting for.

Of course there are.

But I am saying that we need to be very careful about the battles we choose because we know that Jesus’ great desire for us is unity.

And unity is so important because if we’re fighting among ourselves, then we just won’t have the energy, or even the credibility, to do the work that God calls us to do.

And that work is liberation.

God is the God of liberation.

And Easter is God’s supreme act of liberation, freeing Jesus from the tomb, revealing to us that sin and death are defeated, revealing to us that love and life have won.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

And with God’s help, God’s work of liberation continues in and through the Church.

And we certainly hear that work of liberation loud and clear in today’s first lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles.

We pick up right where we left off last week. We don’t hear anything more about Lydia, but Paul and the other disciples are still in the Greek city of Philippi.

There, they encounter an enslaved girl with “a spirit of divination,” an ability to tell fortunes, which was very profitable for her owners.

Well, just as the demons always knew Jesus, this “spirit of divination” knows Jesus’ followers, so the enslaved girl cries out, “These men are the slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

We’re told that she went on this way for days, which very much “annoyed” Paul, though we’re not told why.

Finally, in the name of Jesus, Paul casts out this demon from the girl, which lands Paul and the others in jail, at least until God engineers yet another liberation.

God’s work of liberation continues in and through the Church.

But I want to reflect a little more on the enslaved girl.

Because, unfortunately, we don’t know what happened to her next.

Deprived of her money-making skill, maybe her owners released her. Maybe, like Lydia and other women in Philippi, she became a follower of Jesus, too. 

Maybe, but probably not.

More likely, her owners found a new and even worse way to exploit her, which is very sad and troubling to consider.

But I think this episode is a good reminder for us that God’s liberation – the liberation that we are called to do - is much deeper, much more challenging than just an easy fix.

Think of the Israelites on their long exodus, out in the wilderness for forty years.

Liberation - doing God’s liberating work - requires commitment, community, and confidence, over the long haul.

So, last week, I met with Bishop Carrie to prepare for her visit next Sunday.

I brought next week’s draft bulletins, last week’s announcements, and a copy of the 2024 Annual Report, all to give her a better sense of what we are about here at St. Thomas’.

I could’ve talked about this place for a long time – and I may have gone on a little too long - but one thing I emphasized is our unity.

We’re a pretty diverse group so, yes, of course, we disagree about all sorts of things, from politics to current events to how the Orioles can salvage this season.

         But, for the most part, we stick together, we pray together, serve together, love one another.

        And it’s that God-given unity that gives us the strength and courage to do the holy work of liberation.

        And this work of liberation isn’t just swooping in with a kind of spiritual band-aid.

        No, it’s deep work of listening and learning, getting to know the people in our community, building relationships, with all the risks and challenges that come with any real relationship.

        It’s because of our unity that we’ve had the strength and courage to walk beside our Afghan friends, not seeing them as a problem to be solved, but as beloved brothers and sisters.

        It’s because of our unity that we’ve had the strength and courage to walk beside the children and teachers at Owings Mills Elementary School, not seeing them as a problem in need of an easy fix, but as beloved sisters and brothers.

        Yes, the forces of division are very powerful, especially these days, but with God’s help, we can be an answer to Jesus’ great prayer for unity.

        With God’s help, we can be one – and as one, united church we can continue God’s holy and challenging work of liberation.

        And if we do this work, then the best news of all time will continue to echo off these old walls – the best news of all time will continue to ring out in Owings Mills and beyond:

        Alleluia! Christ is risen!

        The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! 

        Amen.