Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8 
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

This morning we will welcome Jack Antonios Chamberlain into the community of Jesus’ followers.  Jack’s mother, Juliaette, has worshiped at St. Mary’s for nine or ten years.  When I first came here, nearly eight years ago, she was Juliaette Lamond, and we would see here occasionally at the 8:00 Eucharist.  Her job had taken her to England, but she returned to Kansas City occasionally to check in with her company and when she was here, she came to St. Mary’s.  A year or two later, Juliaette returned from England and made her home in Kansas City.  She brought three people to church with her on Easter Sunday:  her aunt Angie Stanland, who is now our Sr. Warden, her uncle Cy Stanland and her beau Jerry Chamberlain.  Not long after that, Jerry and Juliaette were engaged.  They married a little over five years ago.  I traveled to Virginia to help officiate at their wedding.  Juliaette’s grandmother, whose name was Juliaette Kerhulas, was living in Kansas City by then and worshiping at St. Mary’s.  Her health prevented her from traveling to the wedding.  A month or two after the ceremony in Virginia, Jerry and Juliaette renewed their vows at St. Mary’s with family members, so that Mrs. Kerhulas could have a part in the celebration of their marriage.  By then, Cy and Angie were parishioners.   The following spring, Cy and Angie, Jerry and Juliaette and their family and Kansas City friends gathered here for a memorial service for Mrs. Kerhulas.    

Later that year St. Mary’s had two couples within the parish who were expecting babies.   One of those children was William, Jack’s older brother.  The parish organized a baby shower after the Sunday Eucharist.  Around that same time, Jerry and Juliaette were notified of a job opportunity for him that they could not pass up.  We said goodbye to them in mid-August as they headed for Wisconsin, where William was born only a few weeks after their arrival.  Two years ago Easter, they came back to Kansas City for a visit with six month old William, and we celebrated his baptism.  His brother Jack, whose baptism we celebrate today, was born a little over a year ago.  Last fall Jerry and Juliaette and their boys moved back to Missouri.   Another job opportunity has brought them to Springfield.  Distance keeps us from seeing them as often as we would like, but they are with us today, to celebrate another important moment in their family’s life.

In a few minutes Jack will become the world’s newest Christian with the words “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  It is fitting that we celebrate this central rite of Christian initiation on the feast of Trinity Sunday.

The church’s teaching on the Trinity and its three persons was intended to resolve conflict and unify belief.  It grew out of two of the great councils of the church – meetings that gathered together bishops from all over the world.  One was the council of Nicaea in the year 325 and the other the Council of Constantinople 56 years thereafter.  The two councils affirmed three things: 

§  the essential unity of God

§  the complete humanity and essential divinity of Jesus

§  the essential divinity of the Spirit

          The Trinity – as three distinct and equal persons who cannot be divided from one another – is not mentioned in the Bible, but scripture had an important part in formulating this Christian expression of God.   It comes to us from a time and place where the language and conceptual framework are far removed from anything that ordinary people have been familiar with for hundreds of years.  As a result, there are centuries’ worth of everyday analogies and illustrations of the Trinity.  Among those are an orange – the peel, the fruit and the seeds; an egg – the white, the yolk and the shell; and the famous one attributed to St. Patrick – the shamrock – three leaves growing together in the same plant.  Should you be inclined, google search can find you a hundred more. 

One thing that the Trinity says to us is that God is about relationship.  Within God there are three persons who exist in a perfectly balanced relationship that will never end.  Our relationships are not so perfect, but the Trinity is our ideal.  We Christians who understand God as Trinity exist in community.  No matter where we are, no matter what our manner of life, we are united by our baptism in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  With great joy, we come together today to bring a new member into that community.

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

         

The location of my home often gives me reason to drive through the Plaza at least once a day.  On Saturday evenings in the spring and summer, it’s not uncommon to see a street corner preacher at one of the busier intersections.  There was one last night who I saw down at the west end near the Unity and Christian Science churches when I left to do the grocery shopping.  By the time I got home, he had moved a couple of blocks down the street where the crowd was larger.

          His message was predictable for a street corner preacher – that Christianity is the only way to a relationship with God.  While I was stopped at a red light he worked his way through all of the other religions one might choose and why they were inferior.  Then he started in on the part about what was going to happen if you didn’t have a relationship with God.  I have no personal experience with that variety of Christianity, but I’ve been told the people who offer that message to others – be Christian or suffer eternal torment – truly believe that they are doing the world.  They believe that they are rescuing their friends, neighbors and complete strangers on the Plaza from what could be terrible harm.  I’m willing to acknowledge the depth of their commitment and the sincerity of their belief.  But their message is off the mark.

          On this last Sunday before Pentecost we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension.  The actual feast day was last Thursday.  Churches with weekday services observe it on the actual day and a handful with large congregations may have special services, but for the most part we celebrate what has come to be known as Ascension Sunday.  The gospel stories about Jesus’ ascension are in Luke and Mark.  They are rather vague descriptions of Jesus gathering with his disciples, giving them a charge and a blessing, and withdrawing away from them until he is out of their sight.  Through the years artists have worked with this verbal imagery to bring it into the tangible realm.  We have an ascension window at St. Mary’s – one of the oldest in the building on the lower west wall of the nave.  Its point of view doesn’t include a lot of context.  Other depictions of Jesus’ ascension –paintings or stained glass windows - show the disciples looking upward in fascination at a pair of feet that appear just inside the upper border of the images.   The idea is strange to us.  Whatever we may gain from enjoying its literal interpretation through art, forcing our minds to believe it actually happened that way is superfluous.

          What we can do is try to understand what this story could mean for us as Jesus’ followers, many centuries after the events described in the gospels.  I think we’re on the mark if we understand it as a way in which Jesus entrusts his mission and ministry to his followers.  He remains with us in spirit and by example, but we are now his eyes and ears, his hands and feet, his compassion and advocacy in the world.  That suggests that our role and our mission are something very different than threatening people with eternal torment if they don’t believe the same things we do.

          In the gospels Jesus appears to his disciples on a number of occasions after his resurrection.  In those stories he interacts differently with them from the way he does before his crucifixion.  The post-resurrection appearances are brief and intermittent.  The gospels describe his followers as having difficulty recognizing him.  He is different.  Jesus continues to teach his disciples in these appearances but the teachings are directed more toward what they will need to understand for their own future ministries in his name.  He is no longer among them from moment to moment, showing them how to do the work.  He has left them to pick it up and continue on without him.  The story of that ongoing work continues in Acts of the Apostles – the sequel to Luke’s gospel.

          With these stories, Jesus shows the apostles what resurrection is.  As Jews, they would have understood resurrection as an event that encompasses all of the people of God.  It did not occur precisely as they imagined it would, but they are, indeed a part of it.  In some sense, they and we are to be resurrection.  We are to do all that we can to overcome injustice, draw life from death, and forgive and transform the lives of those who do harm, all with God’s help.  Could that be what Jesus’ Ascension is about?  It wouldn’t be about threats of punishment for believing the wrong thing or fantastic story that we gloss over because we have trouble making sense of it.   It would be Jesus entrusting to us his work and telling us to BE resurrection with the sense of his spirit among us.  Who would we be as community and as individuals if we really believed that to be true?