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.

Liturgy, Formation, and now . . . mission

This is the last part of a series. You can find part I, II, and III on our website.

Liturgy, Formation, Mission. The three most important components of our Episcopal identity.

This week, Mission is at the forefront of my mind as we commission the team that will visit our partners in mission in Mtoto, Kenya. It happens often that when we talk about Mission, people think about pioneers schlepping bags of Bibles to some remote corner of the world, but for us the word has a much wider meaning. It comes from the Latin verb missio/mittere, which means to send. All Christians are called to mission because all Christians are sent by Jesus who said: go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. (Matt.28:19-20a) We may respond to Jesus’ command in different ways, living out our mission among different communities, yet we are all sent: to offices, schools, hospitals, and shelters, to the centers of power, and to remote villages in Africa - the whole world is our mission field; we are sent to friends and neighbors, to the poor and forgotten, to the wealthy and to those in authority, with the charge of showing them all how to become more like Jesus. We do that by building loving relationships with them and by serving them in whatever way is needed. St. Francis of Assisi famously said “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words” and we take his words at heart by feeding, sheltering, teaching and mentoring, advising and advocating, providing, and caring for all our brothers and sisters in Christ. By the grace of God we are all given gifts for the common good and empowered for the work ahead of us. No one is exempt, everyone is sent. And we are sent together, in pairs and in groups so that we can support one another and hold each other accountable. And, of course, we are never left to our own human devices, because the very One who sent us promised: And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt. 28:20b)