Pentecost XIII a.k.a. Triangle Sunday

Pentecost XII - Triangle Sunday

Community is a blessing.

We couldn’t live without it.

I mean, look around you.

Look at all the people sitting near and further away.

People with whom you have shared so much and still do.

Weddings and funerals, new births, Christmas pageants, Sunday school.

And what about ministry?

Those with whom you have hammered nails and

painted walls at a Habitat for Humanity build.

Those whose hands you have held when hospitalized or bereaved.

The ones you have sat with at a Parish picnics,

the ones who have delivered a casserole to your home when your child was born.

The people you pray with every single Sunday.

Remember everything you have shared?

Community is a blessing indeed.

Getting along with each and every member of our community is hard.

And when I say “community” I mean any community we are a part of:

family, co-workers, neighborhood association, the PTA. You name it.

We love each other (or at least we try), yet we get on each other’s nerves quite often

and that makes it so darned hard to like our neighbor sometimes.

How many times have you heard or said: I love her, bless her heart, I think she’s great, but . . .

Jesus knew that.

Being God incarnate and all that, Jesus had his share of community living.

His family first, shule (or whatever it was called in his time),

the neighborhood kids, the village.

Remember what happened the first time he spoke up at the synagogue in Nazareth?

And then the 12.

Lovely group of people as a whole, but really, sometimes?

We know he just felt like hitting some of them on the head with a stick.

A few times he almost did.

Once, in the heat of the moment he actually called Peter names, remember?

Get behind me, Satan!

That’s why he commanded us to love one another and never said anything about liking.

Jesus was very aware that human relationships are hard.

So he gave us some well defined rules of conduct

for when we rub each other the wrong way,

when we find it hard to deal with each other,

and even when we actually hurt each other bad.

Let’s see:

If you have a problem with another member of the community,

go and talk to them in private.

Don’t go to your BFF, your next-door-neighbor,

your spouse, your supervisor, the chair of the committee.

Go talk to them directly and honestly and say what you have to say with kindness, but firmly.

You know?

My brother, I didn’t like it when you said that.

I felt hurt when you did that. I have a problem with your behavior . . . whatever.

Talk to them in private, don’t make a public scene.

And for God’s sake, stay away from triangles.

You know what relational triangles are, right?

In Italian we say “talking to Peter so that Paul may hear”.

It’s when you have a problem with somebody, Paul,

who maybe thinks he’s the only one who can (let’s say) effectively run the committee

and instead of meeting Paul say at Goldberg’s or at the Flying Biscuit

and having a cup of coffee and a heart to heart with him,

you chose to vent with Peter in the church Parking lot.

Sure you’re just venting, but isn’t there just a tiny little hope in your heart

that Peter will talk to Paul in your stead?

Just a tiny little hope that maybe Peter will talk to a Warden, or to the Rector

and that THEY will do something about Paul?

Now of course I am using highly hypothetical examples.

I am using the community of the Church because I’ve seen it happen there.

Of course I am referring to a different Church, in a galaxy far, far away.

But, my friends, parking lot conversations of that kind

happen at the water cooler in office buildings,

behind closed office doors,

and in the semi-privacy of the den after Thanksgiving family meals.

Jesus knew about triangles and parking-lot conversations.

That’s why he said go and point out the issue when the two of you are alone.

What if it doesn’t work?

What if the brother or sister don’t listen?

OR what if you really don’t feel comfortable talking to them alone?

Jesus knew that sometimes words fail,

sometimes we are overcome by anger or pain.

Sometimes we are afraid we won’t be able to make ourselves clear.

Well, Jesus says: bring a friend.

A mentor. A priest.

Someone who is trustworthy and will not go blabber about it.

Someone who may be able to facilitate the conversation, make it count.

And bring calm and focus if the conversation becomes too heated.

Please note: Jesus didn’t say bring a posse or a bunch of your groupies.

What you are trying to do is NOT to prove a point or to talk your opponent into submission.

You are there to build something. To make something better.

You are there to show love to your neighbor.

Even though right then and there you don’t like him that much.

You are trying to regain that one.

That’s what Jesus says: to regain that one.

To bring that person back into relationship with you.

And, assuming that what he’s doing is possibly also creating a problem for others,

you are trying to bring him back into right relationship with the larger community.

Which is why the third step recommended by Jesus

is to bring the issue in front of the community.

Not because you want the community to blame, shame, or judge.

Not because you expect the community to run her out of town, or to stone her to death.

But because she needs to see that her behavior is not just ruining relationship with you,

but with everybody she allegedly cares for.

You stage an intervention.

And you bring Jesus in. Every step of the way.

Because he promised that when two or three are gathered in his name

he will be there among them.

And he can help.

And if/when it doesn’t work?

If the offender refuses to listen even to the community,

let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

In other words let him be an outcast to you.

Someone who is NOT a member of your community.

Stop worrying about them. You tried, the community tried.

Now it’s between them and Jesus.

Because we are free.

We are free to embrace community life or reject it.

We are free to embrace forgiveness or turn away.

As theologian Rob Bell said:

It is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace, and humanity can be rejected.

From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human,

we are terrifyingly free to do as we please.

We are free to hurt each other with careless words.

We are free to stab each other in the back.

We are free to deny the gifts that our relationships can bring.

We are free to be in community, even though it’s hard work,

or to chose a different, more solitary way.

In the end, we know what Jesus is recommending.

It always goes back to Jesus.

Jesus who blesses our relationships.

Jesus who blesses our communities.

Jesus who knows how hard it is to be together,

to share our gifts, to forgive one another.

And yet, who continues to push us toward community,

enticing us today with his final words:

If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask,

it will be done for you by the Creator.

And if you want to find me, gather together in my name.

That’s where I will be.

God one, God three

When you pray to God, what do you see in your head?

Where does your imagination lead you when you search for God?

When my daughter was little, in Seminary in New York,

a colleague was writing a research paper on the spiritual development of children.

As part of her work she asked the children of seminarians to draw a picture of God.

They all came up with different images. Light, fire, wind.

My daughter was 4 and she drew a being that was half man and  half woman.

When asked about it she said that God is not really a boy or really a girl and that was it.

When you pray to God, whom do you pray to?

What is the source of your image of God?

Poetic imagination, art, tradition?

God is the ultimate mystery.

The first cause that brought all life into existence cannot be defined or described,

because although we all experience God, nobody has ever touched, smelled, really seen God.

And as much as we try we really don’t have enough words, the right words.

God, the ineffable.

God is honored under many names throughout scripture and within the tradition of our faith -

Elohim, Yahweh, El Shaddai to name just the most frequent.

And through the history of human relationship with our Creator,

we have come up with plenty of metaphors, similes, descriptions

of a God that is beyond our naming:

judge, midwife, gardener, rock, fortress, comforting mother (yes, Isa 66:13),

good shepherd, lion, she-bear.

In Resurrection, Rowan Williams - former ABC - writes:

Jesus language about God is not monolithic but is diverse and colorful,

as can be seen in the imaginative parables he spun out.

A woman looking for a lost coin, a shepherd looking for the lost sheep,

a bakerwoman kneading dough...the birth experience that delivers persons into new life,

an employer offending workers by his generosity.

God mysterious and ineffable becomes human to overcome the chasm between us.

God untouchable and indescribable becomes one of us,

so that we may touch, see, experience through our limited human senses

what would be otherwise beyond our comprehension.

We have many names for Jesus too:

the Messiah, the Christ,

the Word of God, God incarnate, Son of David, Son of man.

And we have metaphors: gate or door, water, brother, savior, redeemer,

nursing mother (for St. Augustine and Dame Julian of Norwich), Logos and Suffering servant.

Of the Incarnation, Karl Barth wrote:

“Here the hidden, the eternal and incomprehensible God has taken visible form.

Here the Almighty is mighty in a quite definite, particular, earthly happening.

Here the Creator has become creature and therefore objective reality”

That God chose a specific age and a specific place for the Incarnation

and as a consequence a specific gender,

has been for centuries a stumbling block on the spiritual journey of many.

In spite of the fact that we all know that Jesus was a Jewish man from a land in Western Asia,

between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan River,

representations of him as a pretty blond with blue eyes abound.

And of course the fact that he was male

has lead theologians to assert that God is revealed as male,

and therefore exclusively masculine imagery and pronouns for God are appropriate.

And it has been used for centuries as the primary reason why women shouldn't be ordained.

I won’t belabor the point since I believe you all know where I stand on the matter.

The point is that once God made the choice of giving up divine attributes to become creature,

the scandal of particularity was unavoidable.

But that is our problem, not God’s.

God became incarnate as a Middle Eastern, Jewish male

of what we now define as the first century,

limiting God-self in a very real way,

because God so loved the world that God wanted to be known in a way that was real to us.

And that is all that matters.

And when God-in-Christ had done what he had come to do,

he still loved us too much to leave us behind, lost and alone.

He did not abandon us to our own feeble devices.

He promised: “ I am with you always, to the end of the age."

And God-the-Holy Spirit came to us.

Wind, Ruach, agent of Creation, source and nurturer of life,

the Holy Spirit speaks to us in the voice of the prophets

who are willing to make themselves vessels of God’s words.

The ancient ones, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Amos and the contemporary ones:

Joan Chittister, Desmond Tutu, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero, just to name a few.

The Holy Spirit also guides us when we gather in the community of the faithful to prayerfully

-that’s the operative word - prayerfully make decisions for the good of the whole.

By the way, in my prayer life the Spirit has a more feminine nature

so I always use the feminine pronoun to talk about - well - HER.

If this offends your sensibilities I am sorry, but that’s my spiritual life and not yours.

You are free to address Her as whatever you want,

just remember that the third person of the Trinity is still a person

and not a specter, a phantom, or a fairy

and as the fifth article of religion states  (page 868 in the BCP):

the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son,

is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son,

very and eternal God.

So, when you pray to God, what do you see in your head?

When you pray to God, whom do you pray to?

The one Jesus calls Abba?

The Incarnate God, with the dirty feet and the soft voice?

The whimsical Holy Spirit who indicts and heals in the same breath?

Maybe all of them, God in three persons, blessed Trinity,

or each and everyone of them at different times in your life, depending on your need.

Today we celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

It is a very good day to reflect on the image of God we carry

in our minds and in our hearts.

What does it say about us, about our spiritual journey,

and what impact that image has on our everyday life?

In 1670, philosopher Blaise Pascal published Pensee,

a defense of the Christian faith, in which he wrote:

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person,

and it can never be filled by any created thing.

It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.

Each and every human heart is missing a piece.

The hole in my heart may be slightly differently shaped

than the one in yours, but the desire to fill that hole

with the love that creates, redeems, and gives meaning to all life

is the same for all of us.

That desire is what unites us and brings us here today

because whatever image of God you carry in your mind,

whatever shape the hole in your heart is,

it is still in the one God that we all live, and move, and have our being.

Amen

Leading . . . from behind

Pentecost, the celebration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the first followers of Jesus, has traditionally been considered “the birthday of the Church”. Today, just like on that day long ago, the community of the faithful comes together is a special space to rejoice in the power of the Spirit

This is indeed a special day, and we will celebrate the presence of the Spirit among us by baptizing some new Christians. Yet, every Sunday is the day of the Lord and every Sunday we are called to come together in a special place to speak to God in prayer and to “hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people” in Scripture, in music, and in the shared liturgical actions.

At the heart of our common identity is the sharing of the Eucharistic meal: we come to the altar to be nourished and empowered for our ministry in the world. We receive the Body and Blood of Jesus not because we deserve it, but because we need it to accomplish the work that Jesus has given us to do. The point is made especially clear in Eucharistic Prayer C, in which we ask: Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. It is from the same altar that we are to be sent into the world: we are apostles, we are “the sent ones” and Jesus “pushes us” out of the building and into the mission field from the same place where He welcomes and nourishes us that we may have the strength and the courage we need for the work that lies ahead. This is the message embodied by the deacon or priest who dismisses the congregation from the altar. The same liturgical action also has the clergy embody Christ the Good Shepherd by “leading from behind”. The good shepherd knows that sheep don’t follow a leader like others are prone to do. The good shepherd may set a safe course, but in order to make sure that the sheep stay together on the path, he/she needs to remain behind the flock to make sure that everyone is unharmed. In this way he/she can leave the flock to attend to the one that is hurt or lost. Hence the dismissal from the altar “go to love and serve, I will be right behind you to ensure the safety of the community”. It is a powerful message and an honor for the one who is delivering it every Sunday morning.