Happy
Trinity Sunday! Just for the record I hate
Trinity Sunday –I don’t hate the Trinity—just the observance of Trinity Sunday
in our liturgical calendar –some pope in the 1300’s in his infinite wisdom
thought it a good idea to have a Sunday to celebrate God in three persons--and
it is for purely selfish reasons— because I can never figure out just what to
preach on Trinity Sunday without putting you all to sleep.
Usually
Trinity Sunday is the Sunday that the rector assigns somebody else to preach—if
you have an assistant the assistant preaches or a deacon the deacon preaches—but
I don’t have any of those-- so you are stuck with me.
Anyway—again
it was a tough week trying to figure out what to preach. I decided to ask my kids— at separate times while
driving them around in the car to baseball or dance—why is the trinity relevant
or important? Both looked at me like I
had two heads—didn’t expect to get much help—but you just never know where the
spark might come.
Friday
night I had a dream in which I met the presiding bishop—in the dream we spoke
about our connections to Buffalo and how I had met him many years ago--as
we were talking a crowd was growing around us and in my dream I thought this
was a great evangelistic moment and I
felt like it was a waste of time for him to be speaking with me a priest in the
church---But before I walked away I asked him one last thing—I said any
suggestions on how I might preach the Trinity on Sunday—well he starting to
speak with these nonsensical, theological “Gobble-dee-guk” I couldn’t understand---I
woke up and thought man I’m doomed if the presiding bishop can’t even help.
As
I contemplated what I wanted to say I re-read a Facebook conversation-I had
with my friend Cathy Dempsey Sims the Canon to the Ordinary in Western New York
earlier this week—she had mentioned was working a sermon and I said something
like I could use some of her Trinity mojo.
She then shared with me reflection she had come across from a Lutheran
Pastor named Richard Lischer, Richard is from a farming community in Wisconsin – he had written a reflection while contemplating
a stain glass window of the Trinity.
Lischer
wrote-- ““The fairly typical Trinitarian design of three
interconnecting triangles reminded me of an aerial photograph taken of our
small farming community. Besides the straight and orderly rows of crops in the
fields, another distinct pattern emerged: well-worn paths crisscrossing from
one farmhouse to another. These paths, worn into the ground by generations of
neighbors visiting and helping out in times of need, linked the town, they [the
paths] knit the community together.”
My
friend Cathy then said this, “Lischer’s description of the interconnectedness represented
in those paths explains my experiences of the Trinity.
[She
said] God grooves paths in our lives, coming to us at different times and in
different forms to address a variety of needs.
God,
in three persons, Blessed Trinity, reaches out to us as a strong parental type
when we feel small and childlike. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches
out to us as a forgiving friend in times of loneliness and confusion. God in
three persons, Blessed Trinity reaches out to us as a sustaining force of
inexplicable peace when we are bereft and lost, angry and bitter, hopeless and
helpless. God in three persons, Blessed Trinity, longs to be a palpable
presence in our lives, so God, in God’s infinite wisdom, walks a number of
paths to reach us.”
Dear People may we remember on this Trinity Sunday—the
many ways that God comes to us- may we remember that the Trinity helps us to
see just what God looks like ---sometimes God looks like a loving parent sweeping us into God’s arms and wiping aware our tears or a loving parent providing guidance for how to
live a more life giving life – sometimes
God looks like an good old friend walking with us through valleys of life reminding us that regardless
of what we do or where our lives takes us, God is there and we are loved— and
that sometimes God looks like a wise mentor who fills us with a spirit of peace
when the hurricanes swirl or give us a
divine wisdom or clarity when life gets really complicated or give us a
supernatural strength to face something we could never face on our own.
May
we remember that whatever path we are on—God is with us—God is three persons--
a Trinity.
AMEN
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