Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, May 30, 2021, at 8:00 and 10:00 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
The Breaking of an Abstraction!
“[We] acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity.”
(Collect, Trinity Sunday)
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
(Isaiah 6:1-8)
The word “glory” is sprinkled throughout the readings this morning; and at first glance there is perhaps nothing in heaven or on earth less likely to evoke our devotion and awe, much less our admiration of its beauty, than the Trinity.
Because the problem is that the Trinity often comes across as just about the most abstract term in our Christian vocabulary! And abstractions might be good for nuclear physicists and mathematicians; but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on one or even pick up one hitchhiking at night on a local highway. I don’t have migraine headaches. When I have a headache, the term the doctors use communicates something but it isn’t the concrete, particular pain I feel when having such an episode.
At the morning breakfast table, I’m not really eating oatmeal; I’m eating something that looks gray and gooey and has a little fruit mixed in. Words, in fact, are abstractions. When it comes to religion, words like incarnation, redemption, even resurrection can be ideas perhaps better left to the theologians. They don’t move us; we can have trouble living by them.
When I was studying homiletics in seminary, homiletics being a fancy abstract word for preaching, my professor said that we must constantly move down the levels of abstraction till we deal with the most particular and concrete meaning of scripture. Otherwise we will leave our listeners in the dust, or, a better way of putting it, sleeping in their pews.
I get it, and it is always before me to ask: just what the devil does this term mean for me and my life? What experience can I relate it to?
The Trinity is perhaps not the insuperable challenge we can make it. Remember the little child who didn’t have the foggiest idea what the Trinity meant out in her back yard solemnly burying her old, tattered Teddy bear? She intoned, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and into the hole he goes!” This child is humorous and we are tempted to join her in her ignorance.
But let’s reverse gears on this word. We can come to see the Trinity from another point of view. After all, I was asking myself, why in the world does Trinity Sunday come right now in the church year? Is it not perhaps because it is the climax of the Lent and Easter seasons, a kind of summation and pinnacle of everything that has been unfolding in the Christian story, even from Advent and Christian, right up ’til now?
What the Trinity summarizes is this: our creator God, whom we meet surely in moments of awe and gratitude (we’ll return to our experiences of the Trinity in a moment), who plays out life in the form of human beings—and supremely in the person of Jesus bar Joseph—is everywhere, in everything, at every time. Father—awe, gratitude; Son—met in human beings; Holy Spirit—confirmed by the life of love.
So, I’ve gotten over the hard part, the part that preachers all over Christendom fear for every year on this Sunday. Aye, aye, aye: here we go again [hitting forehead], having to think of something deep about the three in one, one in three.
Well, I don’t know about you, but let’s give up deep. Because I am suggesting that this thing that at first blush may appear so abstract, even abstruse, is anything but! I am suggesting that the Trinity is the most concrete, in-your-face thing there is. It is our life right here and now.
Please join me in experiencing this thing called the Trinity.
Right here, right now, if we ask ourselves what is this miracle thing called the life we are living now, are we not dumbstruck? Do we not in this stillness wonder what the devil is this thing called my life? And is this wonderment God the Father? Just words, I know, but we are aghast at the sheer fact of our existence. This is what is behind the child’s question where did God come from? Or what is behind the philosopher’s question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Sheer existence. We never leave it. It is always here. God the Father.
And then I have you to deal with. I mean each of you. And you have me to deal with. There is more than one of us. In fact, at last count there are 7.8 billion people walking the earth. That’s a thousand million times 7, almost times 8. That’s a lot of people to love, since we are charged to love our neighbor. And every single one of those people (including each of us) bears the stamp, the mark, the character of this wonderment, this God, who is our Father. This God calls each of us and each of them sons and daughters; and we should therefore call them beloved friends. Each of these 7.8 billion people carries the twinkle of God’s love, just as Christ did. That was what was so beautiful about Christ: he kept saying this, pointing to this, saying that but for our blindness, this is who each of us star: starlight. God the Son.
Finally, nothing could be more concrete and particular than this simple fact of our existence now and that we are sitting side by side with over 7 billion other people just like us. And finally, we have but one task, namely, to show our kindness and love towards them. Of course, this is a tall order. It involves treating them justly; doing unto them exactly as we would have them do unto us. The history of humankind is the history of just how hard an undertaking this is. But don’t we know it to be the tall order? We sense it; we know it. Love our neighbors as ourselves. God the incarnated sons and daughters.
The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the playing out of this majesty, wonder and awe in the everyday course of our lives. The wind blows where it will. Some days this picture seem occluded. We wonder if God has perhaps abandoned the creation. But no, wonderment has a way of not going anywhere. Kindness, love, mercy, joy, they cannot be extinguished, despite some pretty ugly evidence otherwise.
This permanence (this steadiness) of love is what our Easter and Pentecost seasons are about. “Fear not, for I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.” I dare say if we sit quietly in the lap of the Trinity, we know this. Right here, right now, all is well and all shall be well. I invite you to look deeply into your lives, and see if I’m not right, that all is well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
One night during my stay at Virginia Seminary, training to become a priest, I took my Volkswagen Beatle out to run some errands. In the course of my trip, I turned left not seeing an oncoming car. I was briefly knocked out. The car was demolished. Later that evening I called my father to tell him of the accident. My father had bought the car for me to use during my studies in Europe. I was ashamed, embarrassed and scared to tell him the news about the car.
His reaction was immediate. “Never mind the car,” he said. “How are you, son? Are you all right?”
I have never forgotten this. In fact, this little experience has shaped my understanding of grace. A love that comes unmerited, that cares despite evidence that might justify another response. I was given a template of the Trinity. My God, coming to care for me, incarnated in the person of my father, expressing like a mighty wind the overwhelming embrace and permanence of a God of love.
I experienced the Trinity that night. There is no escaping it. It is not an idea. It is a radiant reality. Turn here, it is here, turn there, it is here.
I daresay each of us experiences the Trinity—and a lot more often than we have any idea!
Amen.