The Most Holy Trinity

Trinity:  It’s About What It’s All About

Prov 8, 22-31 / Rom 5, 1-5 / Jn 16, 12-15 

We are celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity.  But I have to begin with a confession.  I never look forward to preaching about the Trinity.  If you read about the Trinity, the theologians who write such books always end up saying something like: “Well, we really can’t understand the Trinity.  It’s a mystery of faith.  So, just say yes to it.”  But I can’t do that.  I can’t – nor should I – nor should we – say yes to what we don’t understand.  I don’t mean completely understand.  When it comes to God, we will never completely understand.  But we are conscience-bound to try to understand as much as we can. 

There’s something else that causes me difficulty when it comes to preaching about the Trinity.  It has a lot to do with our imaginations.  I find that when we talk about Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we almost always imagine an old man, a younger man and a white bird/dove somehow existing up in the clouds.  They’re happy.  We say they’re eternally happy to be where they are.  And we hope they’ll welcome us to join with them when our lives are finished here on earth.  But frankly I find that scene unsatisfying.  It’s not something that can get me out of bed in the morning – much less motivate my whole life. 

The Church asks us today to take some time and reflect on the Trinity and its meaning – its real meaning for our lives.  And it’s only right that we do that.  The Church tells us the Trinity is the core truth of what our Catholic tradition has to say about the way God is.  Trinity describes the way God lives and acts.  If you think about that – and think about God being the creator and sustainer of all that is – and if you further think that we are made in the image of God – then Trinity is about what it’s all about.  Trinity describes the life of God and so the life he breathed into all creation and into us. 

I hope what I am saying is making some sense to you.  I think so much depends on how we understand God’s life.  That understanding will shape our understanding of ourselves, our world and how we are to live.  So, what does our tradition tell us about God’s life?  What does it mean to say God is Trinity – Father, Son and Spirit? 

I want to answer keeping it simple – because that’s where the big truths are found – where it’s simple – like the beauty of an infant’s smile.  And I want to answer without benefit of the trio of old man, younger man and white dove.  Let’s keep it utterly simple and plain. 

Trinity says that God’s life is lived by giving that life away.  God lives by giving himself away.  God does not hold on to himself – but just lets himself go. 

If we see that – again keeping it very simple – then we can begin to sense what the early Christians meant when they said – in all simplicity – “God is Love”.  If we see that – keeping it simple – then we can begin to make sense of Jesus’ life and words and especially his death where he did not cling to himself.  And if we can see that –this utterly simple truth – then we will begin to sense the presence of the breath of God’s life in us – what we call “the Spirit of God” – moving us not to cling to ourselves – just like Jesus. 

When we speak of faith, we mean that movement in our lives where we give ourselves over to God – where we entrust ourselves over to God’s care.  Trinity – what we celebrate and reflect on today – tells us our faith is a wonderful response to and reflection of God’s faith.  God has entrusted himself – entrusted his very life and way of living – over to us.  We live God’s life now.  Heaven has come down to earth.  The Trinity is what it’s all about – what we’re all about.

 

The Ascension Of The Lord

Acts1, 1-11 / Eph 1, 17-23 / Lk 24, 46-53 

Where is Jesus? 

The feast of the Ascension puts a question to us:  where is Jesus?  Where do we really find Jesus?  Are we disciples only of a memory?  Or, are we disciples of a living person?  And if of a living person, where does that person live?  Are we disciples of a teaching once spoken in the past?  Or, are we disciples of a teacher still speaking?  And if our teacher still speaks, where – when – how does he speak?

Where do we find Jesus?  That’s the question Luke is dealing with in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles.  Quite graphically Luke pictures Jesus being lifted up and disappearing into a cloud.  The imagery wants to tell us Jesus is now with the Father.  That’s what the imagery of being lifted up into a clou d meant in Luke’s day.  It would be like our saying: “He has passed on to his reward.”  Jesus is now with the Father.  So that’s one answer to our question.  Where is Jesus?  He’s with the Father. 

But Luke tells us something more.  As the disciples are looking up into the sky, two men dressed in white appear to them and ask: “Why are you looking up into the sky?  Jesus is now with the Father – but he also returns to be with you.”  The same two men dressed in white appeared to the disciples at the empty tomb on Easter morning.  There they asked: “Why do you seek the Living One among the dead?  He is not here, but has been raised.”  Jesus, the Risen One, is among the living – not the dead.  He is to be found in the present – not the past.  And so too Jesus, the Ascended One, is not to be found up above in some faraway heaven.  Don’t look up; he’s not there. 

So where is Jesus?  The gospel of Matthew has Jesus saying to the disciples: “Behold, I am with you always, every single day, day in and day out.”  In Luke’s gospel it is this realization that allows the disciples to leave the site with great joy.  They return to Jerusalem and to the rest of their lives in great joy: “Jesus is with us always.” 

This feast of the Ascension is trying to teach us that Jesus, the Risen and Ascended One, is kind of like a hybrid.  We talk about cars being hybrids – they run on both gas and electricity.  Well, Jesus works as a kind of hybrid.  He runs on the Father but also runs on us.  In fact the clear emphasis of the gospels and epistles is to show us how Jesus runs on us – how Jesus becomes present in us and through us.  In John’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples they will recognize his presence when they “feed his sheep”, meaning:  they will recognize his presence when they actively see to the needs of others.  It is then they will know, as Jesus puts it, that “I am in you and you are in me.” 

The Ascension gives us our mission as Christians:  ever to search for Jesus’ living presence – his nearness, his nowness – in us and through us.  That search is going to lead us deeper into ourselves and deeper into one another’s lives.  It will make a community of us – a church of us – a parish of us.  Just think of it:  being in a community where we actually search for and find the Living Christ – in the love we have for one another – in the lives we share with one another. 

Where is Jesus?  Where do we find him?  Just think of it:  in an awesome, utterly life-defining way, we are becoming the Jesus we have been searching for.  We are his new, risen presence.  We are his return.

Our task is to live his new presence here and now where we are – in Charlotte.  We are the ones who’ve got to show the people of Charlotte Jesus really lives.  Jesus has really returned.

 

Our Holy Communion

6^th Sunday of Easter
 
Acts 15, 1-2, 22-29 / Rev 21, 10-14, 22-23 / Jn 14, 23-29 

Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us that the church grew in an atmosphere where there was a lot of debate and dissension.  Certain Christians were trying to impose Judaic law on new Gentile converts.  They wanted to impose the practice of circumcision.  A Christian had to be a good Jew.  So, there arose a great controversy led by no less a leader than the apostle Paul.  He spoke publicly against attempts to place unnecessary burdens on fellow Christians.

Disagreements happen within the church.  We know that to be true for ourselves.  There’s debate in our church about the fitness of some to approach communion.  Some in the church urge that those judged to be not Catholic enough should be refused communion. 

In this Easter season we continue to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection.  We celebrate the Lord’s new, risen life – now lived through us and among us.  So I think it would be good for us to recall what the gospels tell us about Jesus’ practice of communion.  What was his practice of table fellowship?  What kind of communion and community did he practice and want for his disciples?

The gospels tell us Jesus did not dine just with close disciples.  In fact, he ate with people who were vastly different from him.  The gospels show us a Jesus who clearly preferred diversity and who openly called into question the so-called “purity laws” – laws that would prevent him as a good Jew from sitting down at table with people considered sinners and public outcasts.  Simply put, Jesus ate with anybody and everybody.  Jesus ate with the “unfit and unworthy”.  His attitude was inclusive and his practice was to reach out to outsiders to bring them in, bring them closer, to make them be at home. 

We have a question we need to ask ourselves as church.  Should we be doing now in his name the very opposite of what Jesus did?  Our practice of communion cannot be a reward for the spiritually perfect.  We are simply not doing the Eucharist in faithful memory of Jesus when we demand of one another that we all have our acts completely together.  Jesus never did and never does make such a demand.  And if we do, then I assure you not many of us could come up the aisle to communion – including myself. 

We come to Eucharist – we come to communion – to learn how to love one another more – more like Jesus loved.  We need to learn how to fail less at loving like Jesus.  We come to Eucharist – to communion – so that God may fill us with the full force of his love and powerfully love through us.  Then we will begin to look more like the church of Jesus Christ we see in the gospels – for then we will gather to ourselves all the un-reconciled – all the un-noticed – all the un-fit.  And we will be at home.

Pope Francis reminds us:  we are to see ourselves as ministers and mediators of God’s grace – and not its managers.  In the Eucharist – in our communion we become ever more truly who we are:  the Body of Christ given for the life of the world. 

Just imagine it:  a church whose life and way of living actually takes away the sin of the world!  Let us be that church.  Let us so live as church that we take away the world’s sin and divisions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

God's Glory

Fifth Sunday of Easter

 

Acts14, 21-27 / Rev 21, 1-5 / Jn 13, 31-331, 34-35 

I like words.  I like learning about words – looking them up in the dictionary.  In preparing for this liturgy I came across a word that got my attention.  The word is:  brood.  I came across it in a book of prayers from a community of women.  The prayer is a blessing and says:  The blessing of the Holy Spirit who broods over us as a mother over her children be with us now and forever. 

My understanding of brood did not fit into this context.  For me brooding means being worried, being pre-occupied in a bad way with something.  It’s certainly not a blessing.  It’s not a blessing to be worried about something.  So I went to the dictionary and found out the first meaning of brood is:  to give warmth and life.  Another word for brood is hatch – like a hen hatching an egg. 

Then the image in the blessing begins to make sense.  The Holy Spirit broods over us – giving us the warmth of love – giving us new life – hatching God’s life in us.  The Holy Spirit mothers us into being children of God by giving us the desire to love – giving us the desire to nurture, serve and embrace others. 

That image of the Spirit of God brooding over us helps us to understand what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel.  In the gospel he says:  “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”  Glory is another word we need to understand better.  The Hebrew word for “glory” is kabod.  Literally it means “weight”.  The idea or image is that the weight of God’s presence comes to be sensed in a particular situation.  For example, on Mt. Sinai Moses sensed God’s glory – God’s kabod – somehow felt the weight of God’s presence – somehow God leaning into him and his life. 

When Jesus says:  “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him”, he is talking about this kabod – this presence of God – assuming weight and density in him.  And then he says to his disciples:  “Love one another.”  That very same presence – that same glory will take on weight and heft and density in us – when we love one another – as Jesus loves.  Our love for one another is the Glory of God – God’s presence taking on shape and substance in us and through us. 

I think we can understand Jesus here as talking about God’s brooding glory – God mothering Jesus and mothering us into real sons and daughters – God hatching his love-life in us – hatching in us God’s desire to nurture others, to serve others, to embrace others. 

Let us then pray for the blessing:  May the blessing of God’s Spirit who broods over us as a mother over her children be with us now and forever.

PALM SUNDAY

The Passion According to Luke 

The gospel of Luke announces a new world.  Maps give us a clear world where there are clear boundaries.  In this gospel Jesus redraws the human map.  He draws up a new map – a new world – where there are no boundaries – and so, a world where there can be no outsiders.

Jesus overturns our old world – creates a new world – through compassion.  He is the living compassion of God.  He gives flesh and blood shape to God’s own compassion – knowing no boundaries or pre-conditions.  And so – Jesus confounds and confuses us – as he witnesses to a love truly at home with all people – at home with people of every virtue and likewise at home with people of every vice.  Jesus embodies God’s scandalous, outrageous hospitality. 

In the Passion Jesus lives out of God’s compassion to the very end.  In the garden on the Mount of Olives he greets his betrayer by name.  As he had from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus continues to heal – even in the midst of his own danger.  He heals the high priest’s slave whose ear was cut off.  In the courtyard that night Jesus looks intently, caringly at Peter after his three-time denial.  Arriving at the place of execution, his first words are: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  And finally, his love makes a home with death:  “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” 

We will know we are beginning to understand the new world Jesus wants for us when we feel our own world being upset by a world where there are no outsiders – no strangers – a world where there’s just us – just us all.  Jesus’ Passion wants to free us for that world.  It works our liberation when – as we reflect on the Passion – it exposes to honest light our fear – our fear of selfless love.  We fear the call to a love that forgives the betrayal of friends and blesses enemies.  We fear the call to a love that lets itself be struck, stripped and nailed.  We fear – even dread – the call to a love that entrusts itself over to death. 

This story of Jesus’ Passion and Death must become “gospel” – must become “good news” for us.  And for that good news to reach into our hearts we must become quietly reverent before the mystery of God already present and at work within us.  We must let God work deep changes in us.  There is no alternative.  Only God’s Spirit can make us feel at home with selfless love.  Only God’s Spirit can turn our fear into gratitude.  Only God’s Spirit can make the cross of Jesus Christ something in which we glory.

Let this week become holy time for us.  Let us open ourselves in quiet, reverent prayer to God’s transforming Spirit.  Let us learn to honestly pray: “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

 

 

Death and Life

5^th Sunday of Lent

Ez37, 12-14 / Rom 8, 8-11 / Jn 11, 1-45

We’ve come to the fifth Sunday in Lent.  Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week and our entry into Easter.  It’s time to begin our intensive preparation for the celebration of Easter.  Today, all three readings speak of death and life.  They want to prepare us to celebrate Easter.  And we need that preparation.

 

The Church is being a good pastor for us, because – much like the disciples in Jesus’ day – we do tend to miss the point.  We miss the point of Easter because we run from death.  We fear death.  We resent it.  And we question it – why death?  Why should I have to die?  And yet we know each of us must and will die.

The gospel account of the raising of Lazarus intends to take up our question of death.  The story comes at the conclusion of what is called in the gospel of John “the Book of Signs”.  Signs are works done by Jesus which point to the way God is present among us.  They point to the way God is dealing with us now.

In the Lazarus story our questions, our fearful resentment of death find a voice in Mary.  Mary – whose love for Jesus is true and deep – this same loving Mary can also reproach Jesus for his delay in coming to Lazarus.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  We should hear Mary speaking with a certain edge to her voice.  She is crying for her dead brother.  And Jesus joins her in her tears.  In the face of death faith does not despair – yet it is also no stranger to tears.  Death is real and so is the suffering it causes.  It is only right to grieve and cry in death’s presence.

But in the end Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb – out of the grip of death . “Lazarus, come out! …Untie him and let him go.”  This is the sign Jesus works which points to what God does for us.  It is in our dying that the Father destroys death and our fear of it.

What have we to look forward to in death?  Let us not be afraid to reflect on our dying.  As we enter into the process of dying, we know eventually all will be taken from us.  The cosmetics of life we have valued so highly:  the stuff we’ve accumulated – our silly pretensions to importance – our ceaseless busyness – all will be taken away.  And finally, finally we will have only ourselves – relieved of the sham self we have shown to others.  It will be death’s gift to us that we finally come to ourselves honestly – we finally come to our true self – the self born of God and returning to God.  There we will be able to say “yes” – able to say finally, fully and gratefully “yes” to our true self – our eternal self.

In celebrating Easter we will celebrate the feast of the Paschal Mystery.  The Paschal Mystery is the absolute core conviction of Christian faith.  It is our basic take on life.  For us it is the shape of all reality.  Paschal Mystery says that all our dying – all our deaths and diminishments of whatever kind – all our dying is leading us into deeper, fuller, richer life.  Each day, every day and that final day we die – to beget new life.  Each day, every day and that final day we die – into life, into new life.  And all this is God’s doing.  God takes our dying and shapes it into something life-giving – for ourselves and for others.

To our catechumens and candidates – to all of us Jesus puts today the same question he put to Martha:  “Do you believe?”  “Do you believe that everyone who lives and believes in me will never die?”  That question is being put squarely to us today.  Do we believe in Paschal Mystery?  Do we really want Jesus-style resurrection – his new life?  It only comes from our dying.  We call it “everlasting life”, “eternal life”.  We pray for it fervently.  But do we want Jesus-style new life?  It only comes from our dying.

Are we prepared to celebrate Easter?

 

Unlearning Ourselves

2^nd Sunday of Lent

Gen 15: 5-12, 17-18 / Phil 3:17-4:1 / Luke 9:28-36

We have just heard the story of the transfiguration in Luke’s gospel.  It’s a strange story.  Matthew, Mark and Luke all recount the event and they all report the disciples who were with Jesus were confused by it.  They don’t know how to react or what to say.  Luke has them in some kind of a state between sleep and wakefulness. 

So what does it mean for Jesus to be transfigured – to become dazzling?  And what does it mean for this burst of brightness to bring on fear and confusion in the disciples? 

Commentators and scholars tell us the gospel writers are trying to convey an experience the disciples had – an experience in which they gained deep insight into Jesus’ fundamental reality – into Jesus’ true self.  And that movement toward insight into Jesus was frightening for the disciples.  Frightening – because to get to Jesus’ depth and truth – they had to move beyond all they had taken for granted about Jesus. 

Our coming to know another person – as that person truly, deeply is – does require of us profound self-denial.  It requires we give up our favorite expectations and easy projections onto that person.  And when that other person is Jesus, then a particular kind of self-denial is called for.  It requires what biblical and spiritual writers call “unknowing”.  They speak of the necessity of entering into “the cloud of unknowing” – just as we see in today’s story of the transfiguration.  There – in “the cloud of unknowing” – the disciples learn by unlearning – they know by unknowing.  But what does that mean? 

In the cloud the disciples learn – Jesus is my beloved son – in him you see what pleases me – listen and learn from him what it means to be child of God – what it means to be divine – listen and learn from him what I, God, am like.  And that’s a frightening task – for the disciples – and for us.  It requires our unlearning much that we hold dear and sacred – unlearning much that we think holy and godly – unlearning cherished notions of God.  In Jesus we unlearn what it means to have divine power.  In Jesus we see wielding divine power means becoming vulnerable – hurt-able – not punishing – not becoming violent – never lording it over people.  In Jesus we see divine power in turning the other cheek.  In Jesus we see the Image of God in a bruised body hanging from a cross.

Our difficult learning continues in this liturgy.  This liturgy brings us into “the cloud of unknowing”.  It is our school of unlearning where we are summoned to unlearn ourselves.  It calls us to costly self-denial that can be frightening.  The liturgy challenges us to move from being a small “I” to becoming a big “We” – to move into a world where public presence and public belonging replace private aloneness – where messy interdependence trumps cool self-sufficiency.  The liturgy intones “let us” – not “I insist.”

Perhaps most challenging for us is the liturgy’s call that we move into hope – radical Christian hope in what God will bring about in our lives.  The contrary to hope is control – my final reliance on what I can make of myself.  Control’s mantra rigidly repeats: “It all depends on me.”  The substance of our hope – what we hope for – is our own transfiguration into what God will make of us.  We hope for our transfiguration into God – for our holy communion with God as we come to love as He loves.  Our hope is that we be empowered to say to our world: “Take and eat.  Take and drink.  Here I am – for you and for all – for friend and enemy.” 

Our transfiguration requires a self-denial that leads us into accepting our deepest truth: we are the living Body of Christ.  We are what God is making of us.  As Paul told us in our second reading: “He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body…”  In Lent we learn to live in hope.  We learn to join Abraham in looking up at the stars.  Come, Lord Jesus!  Come! 

Unlearning ourselves – a self-denial that leads us into accepting our deepest truth: we are the living Body of Christ.  We are what God makes of us.  As Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians: He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him to bring all things into subjection to himself.  And so we live in hope.  We join Abraham in looking up at the stars.  Come, Lord Jesus!  Maranatha!