St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
May 26, 2013
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
Encircling Each Other in Love
One
thing we know for sure about Jesus is that he was pretty unhappy with a lot of
religious people back in the First Century. (And most of the religious people
weren’t too crazy about Jesus, either.)
Over
and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus condemning religious
people for their hypocrisy – preaching one thing yet practicing something very
different.
Over
and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus criticizing religious
people for their arrogance – for thinking that they were better than other people,
superior to those dirty sinners who obviously were despised by God.
And
over and over throughout the gospels we hear stories of Jesus challenging
religious people to realize that they didn’t know God quite as well as they
thought they did.
Through
his life, death and resurrection, Jesus reveals that God’s love is far greater
– far wider – than anyone had ever imagined.
Unfortunately,
often religious people have a hard time getting – hard time accepting - the
generosity of God’s love.
The
other day Pope Francis got a lot of religious Christians very upset by
something he said. It’s become the pope’s custom at weekday mass to offer
brief, informal homilies without notes, giving a real sense of his thoughts and
his heart.
Anyway,
the other day in one of his homilies the pope said, "The
Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ, all of us,
not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists.
Everyone!" We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe,
Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: we will meet one another there."
I
guess it’s no surprise that in our own time there are plenty of religious
people who are not so different from those religious people Jesus had such a
hard time with two thousand years ago.
Plenty
of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, are
hypocrites – preaching and proclaiming one thing, yet practicing something very
different.
Plenty
of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, are
arrogant, thinking that we’re better than other people, superior to those dirty
sinners out there – better than those atheists! - who are obviously despised by
God.
Plenty
of religious people today – probably including us, at least sometimes, think we
know God very well – and are not open to the reality that God’s love is far
greater – far wider – than we had ever imagined.
Well,
every year on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Church gives us the
opportunity to reflect on how much we don’t know – and, also, on how much we do know – about God.
It’s
Trinity Sunday – a day to reflect on the great mystery of one God in three
Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God
is an inexhaustible mystery. Our language is always inadequate when it comes to
describing – let alone understanding – God.
Sounding
a bit like a Buddhist, the great theologian St. Augustine once said, “If you
comprehend something, it is not God.”
But,
at the same time, God wants to be known by us. And God can be known through Scripture,
through the witness of faithful people through the ages, and through creation
itself. So, today and every day we are invited to ponder God, to reflect on
God, and to meditate on God. We are invited to get to know God better.
And
for two thousand years Christians have been doing just that. And over the first
few centuries of Christian history, some thinkers came to realize that we
experience the one holy and living God as three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
For
a long time – and still to some extent – Christians have argued and sometimes
even killed each other over how God can be Three in One and exactly how the
three Persons of the Trinity relate to each other. Meanwhile our Jewish and
Muslim brothers and sisters throw up their hands in dismay, dismissing us
Christians as closet polytheists.
Out
of all the Christian images of the Trinity, the one that I find most powerful
is the Trinity as an eternal dance – a never-ending dance among the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit – an unending dance as the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit encircle each other in love.
Now,
I guess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit could have danced away,
encircling each other forever and ever alone in a perfect, self-contained
community of love.
But,
since God’s love is far greater – far wider – than we can imagine, God chose –
God chooses – through Jesus to widen
the circle to include all of creation – to include even the atheists – to
include even us.
God
wants us to be part of the eternal
dance. God wants to encircle us with
love. God wants us to encircle each
other – to encircle the whole world – in love.
So,
we’re left with a choice.
We
can reject God’s invitation to the dance.
Or,
we say yes. We can allow the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to encircle us
with love.
We
can say yes and encircle each other with love.
We
can say yes and encircle with love the people we don’t like, the people who
never say thank you, the people who are different from us, the people who don’t
like us or maybe even hate us.
We
can say yes and encircle with love the people who have so little, the people
who have lost so much, the people who are frightened – or who frighten us, the
people who don’t seem too bright – or who seem too smart for their own good.
We
can say yes and encircle with love our city, broken by poverty, violence,
corruption and despair.
We
can say yes and encircle with love the Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and, yes, even
the atheists who live all around us.
We
can say yes and encircle with love God’s good creation by nurturing our own
little plot of soil here on Duncan Avenue and by challenging each other and our
government to be far better stewards of the earth battered and bruised by us.
Every
year on the First Sunday after Pentecost, the Church gives us the opportunity
to reflect on how much we don’t know – and how much we do know – about God.
It’s
Trinity Sunday – a day to reflect on the great mystery of one God in three
Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God
is an inexhaustible mystery. Our language is always inadequate when it comes to
describing – let alone understanding – God.
But,
God wants to be known by us.
And
through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we know that God’s love is
far greater – far wider – than we can imagine.
God
– the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – are in an eternal dance, encircling
each other in love.
And
God wants us to be part of the
eternal dance. God wants to encircle us
with love. God wants us to encircle
each other – to encircle the whole world – in love.
May
it be so.
Amen.
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