The Proper of the Day: Pentecost XIV

This Sunday is the Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost. It's also Labor Day Sunday, and probably every parish has programmed "Come, Labor On" as the final hymn today. In addition to that particular hoary tradition, we read today from the prophet Jeremiah, who wants to know why God's people would change to gods "who are no gods," and have "changed their glory, for something that does not profit." I was intrigued by the image of forsaking God, the "fountain of living water, and d[igging] out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that hold no water." I had a vision of cracked baptismal fonts that would not hold the water poured into them.

We continued today with a portion from the Letter to the Hebrews as well. Today we hear some practical advice for living, including the admonition to show hospitality, and to "not neglect to do good, and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God." Although I do not believe that works can earn salvation, I do think it's good to be reminded, as does the Letter of James, that faith without works as an outgrowth of the faith (and never in place of that faith) is something to strive for and examine oneself about.

The Gospel continues Jesus' travel to Jerusalem. He's having dinner at a Pharisee's house, and has all sorts of observations and advice about Christian gatherings and not making oneself bigger than one is. The preacher where I attended today (Trinity Parish, Saugerties, NY) made the point that every time there's a meal in the Gospels, it's a code for the Eucharist. I'm not sure that's always the case, but it did make me pause, and wonder how today's Gospel does affect our understanding (nor not) of Eucharistic hospitality and practice.

I have no conclusions yet, just wonderings. I mean, in most parishes we either have an Altar rail or do stations, so the actual distribution of Communion itself is egalitarian. But what about where we sit, and where visitors sit, and all that? There's an old story about St. Swithun's of a particular Sunday at the beginning of September. The rector was in the pulpit, expounding on the Scriptures. It was today's Gospel, as a matter of fact, which falls around the Sunday before school begins for most schools. A died-black-haired, black-tee-shirt and jeans, scruffy sneakers, much bejeweled and inked student came in the back of the church, and looking around, sees no seats. It's Homecoming Sunday and the church is full to the brim. So the student, in good student fashion, isn't fazed in the least. He walks down the center aisle and sits down right in front of the first row, on the floor, in front of the pulpit. He's a student, after all, and this is what students do. Well, this causes a stir, but the preachers keeps on. Who doesn't want an anttentive audience? A bit later the congregation stirs a bit. From the back, very slowly, because he is quite aged, comes Mr. Malcolm. Mr, Malcolm has been the chief usher of the parish for as long as anyone can remember. Longer than at least the last four or five rectors, even! He is very dignified in his freshly-pressed suit and carnation. Mr. Malcolm makes his way slowly down the side aisle. The congregation begins to mutter. What will he do? It's inconceivable for that goth kid to do what he did. Mr. Malcolm is perfectly in his rights to ask him to leave. And he's the chief usher, after all. Whatever happens, we'll all see!

So Mr. Malcolm continue up the side aisle. People aren't paying much attention to the sermon at this point; they're all consumed about what Mr. Malcolm will do. Finally he gets to the aisle in front of the pulpit and moves toward the student. He touches him on the shoulder, and you could hear the collective gasp of breath from the congregation. He says something to the student, inaudible to most of the congregation. Very slowly, with great dignity, Mr, Malcolm leans on the student's shoulder, and and very carefully eases himself down onto the carpeted floor next to the student. He crosses his legs, oh so slowly, and looks up at the pulpit so he can see the Rector.

The Rector choked back a sob and said, "You will never see the Gospel enacted in such a way again, and I can never add anything to what you have just seen." And he left the pulpit, wnet to his chair, and sat.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people!

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: Pentecost XI

Today is the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, and on this day we listened to excerpts from the prophet Isaiah, the letter to the Hebrews, and from the Gospel of Luke. The Isaiah lesson is part of a small 2-week interlude, as week after next we begin several lessons from Jeremiah. Hebrews is news this week but we will be visiting that letter as well over the next few weeks. The lesson from Luke is a continuation of last week's lesson, and in it Luke continues to talk about our relationship with money but also turns toward an almost Advent-esque set of advice about being ready for the final coming of the Realm of God. Fr. Jerry urged us in his sermon to be ready and to be wary of the things on our lives that are taking the rightful place of God. I'm not quite sure why the Isaiah lesson is stuck in there in between amos and Jeremiah, but there it is.

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: Pentecost X

This evening begins The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, with readings from Hosea, Colossians, and Luke. The Gospel is the Parable of the Rich Farmer, who pulls down his barns to build bigger ones, intending to live on easy street for awhile. But God has other plans for him, and all the farmer's own planning ends up for nought. In the words of Jesus, "so it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your
Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without
your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Here's my sermon for today, As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

May only God’s words be spoken, and only God’s words be heard. Amen.

I saw in the newspaper yesterday that the financial markets have been getting quite roiled up, because of the all people defaulting on their home mortgages. It turns out that some people whose credit was less then stellar got some pretty good deals two or three years ago. You know, the adjustable rate kind. Now, their interest rates have risen because of those rates have indeed adjusted, and adjusted upward. So what started as an easy monthly payment to make has become something in some cases much more difficult. Defaults and foreclosures are on the rise, and the ripples are being felt all through the economy.

It’s not just nationally either. Right here in Bayonne, we find ourselves getting squeezed by higher property and income taxes, even though our incomes haven’t risen by nearly the same amount. We’re certainly facing it in our parish ministry, the Windmill Alliance. Costs for things like electricity, insurance, and gas continue to rise, and our payment from our major granters, such as the State of New Jersey, have not kept pace. Perhaps some of you have felt the pinch too, directly or indirectly. Times don’t seem to be very easy for many of us, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

It’s not so different now than it was in the day of Jesus. In fact, it was probably worse. In the United States there is, at least for the moment, a middle class, but in Judea where Jesus was living and preaching there wasn’t one really. You either were rich or poor. And poor could be pretty poor. And there weren’t very many rich people around. In fact, Scripture consistently reports that it was mostly the poor who followed Jesus around to hear what he had to teach and to witness the amazing things he did. Very often his teachings seemed directly on point, immediately applicable to the ordinary lives of the ordinary people of the time. And just as applicable to you and to me. But today’s story seems different. This isn’t a story about the poor. It’s a story about a rich farmer. In fact, I’d venture to guess the vast majority of the people listening to the parable would not have gotten it, or certainly wouldn’t have thought that it applied to them. A rich farmer? Ha! All the farmers I know are living hand to mouth. A good crop? Hasn’t happened around here in years. What’s big J talking about anyway? Maybe he’s been hanging with the scribes and Pharisees too much. Yeah. He couldn’t possibly talking about me. I can hear folks in the crowd thinking just like that.

And maybe that’s a thought that crossed your mind as you heard the Gospel being read, too. I have to tell you, though, I’ve been troubled by this passage all week. Two lines keep coming to mind: first, Jesus introduces the parable: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” And at the end, Jesus says, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” It’s pretty similar to something from the letter to the Colossians that we heard earlier: ^“Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).” Did you catch the word “greed” twice? I did. Try this on: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, which is idolatry.”

Greed is idolatry. Yikes. What’s this about?

Idolatry is, as you might remember, the worship of false images, things that aren’t God. Remember the Golden Calf? That was an idol, an image. It wasn’t God. One reason it was prohibited to make an image of God in the Ten Commandments was because it’s too easy for us humans, because we’re tactile and use our physical senses, to transfer our worship of an invisible God to a visible something else. But more broadly, idolatry is really anything that takes the place of God in our lives. It doesn’t have to be a statue or something like that. It can be something else, like a person or a place or even an idea. What Jesus is reminding us here, I think, is not that wanting stuff is necessarily sinful. We all want stuff and we want to be comfortable. My wants include decent internet access and my stereo. Yours might be something completely different. My sense is Jesus isn’t talking about those things. My stereo is not going to get in the way of God in my life. What Jesus is alluding to here are the attitudes that take hold of our lives that take our energy and attention away from God. These are the deeply held beliefs and habits of action that turn us away from God, or somehow interfere with our relationship with God. Remember that God loves each of us, you and me, unconditionally. We try to love God back unconditionally as well. Our first response to God’s love is to acknowledge it and then secondly to do something about it. But anything that takes us away from recognizing God first in our lives becomes an idol. Anything that we find we want more than God is greed, which as the author Colossians tells us, is idolatry.

Let me give you by way of confession a very personal example. I stand before you convicted of idolatry. I can see it in my own life. It’s not possessions as in stuff that are my idols. Moving from a big house in Indianapolis into a very small room at General Seminary cured me of that. I had to give a lot of stuff up. I got it all back when I moved to Bayonne, but I found myself not needing much of it anymore and found I could give much of it to Highways. I hope when you have stuff you no longer want or need you will consider that too. But throughout my time at seminary, although I didn’t have a lot of stuff, there was something else I never gave up. I never gave up my own idol, which was financial security. You see, I have been very blessed in my life in so many ways, and one of the most significant for me is that I have always pretty much been secure financially. I’ve never really had to worry about my housing or food or clothes or insurance. I’ve worked hard for it and it’s very very important to me. There isn’t anything I won’t do, to improve, or at least maintain, my ability to keep a roof over my head, food on the table, and all the rest, more than simply waiting for the next paycheck. In fact, I realize that I will do almost anything legal to ensure I don’t lose the financial security I’ve been able to build up. I don’t need to go into all the details, but let me – with some degree of shame – give you just one: I have never in my life been without health insurance. And in fact, I know in my heart of hearts I will do almost anything legal to ensure I keep it. That, my sisters ands brothers, is idolatry, pure and simple. Because the truth is I’m not sure I would work so hard to keep my relationship with God as I would to keep my relationship with health insurance. For me, that’s an idol in my life, because I essentially treat it as more important to me than God, and that, it seems to me, is what Jesus is warning us about.

My friends, I hope you don’t thinking I’m bragging. That’s not my intent at all. That’s not at all what I’m trying to get at Many of you have shared with me your own situations, and I am well aware that they are in many cases far more difficult than anything I have had to face in my own life. In my reflecting on this Gospel in my life, I realized that, although as a priest I’ve dedicated my life to the proclamation of God’s everflowing love in Jesus, I’m not immune. I’m no paragon of perfection. I have an idol – for me it’s financial security – right in my own life. That is the barn that I want to tear down and make even bigger. That is the thing that I now know I have to struggle with in my spiritual journey with Christ. I try to follow Christ daily, but I have this big heavy chest that I’m carrying that is in weighing me down in ways I am probably not even aware of yet, slowing me down and distracting me from following Jesus as closely as I otherwise could.

Now that I am aware of my idol, what can I do? I think the key her is Jesus own words: , “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” It’s being rich towards God that is the way to leave one’s own personal idols behind. First, I’m going to confess my idolatry. I did it publicly to you just now, and I will offer it up with all those things that trouble us when we make our community confession in just a few minutes. And I’m going to listen with new ears to the words that Fr. Jerry will declare in response, that our sins – even greed, which is idolatry – are forgiven in the power of Jesus. Then I’m going to join with Jerry and all of you in the great thanksgiving of the Eucharist for everything God is doing in my life and your life, where God comes among us again in the Body and Blood of Jesus, becoming one in us as we are already in him. And then I’m going to try to take to heart the words we will pray after Communion and go out and do the work God has given me to do, to be a faithful witness of all Jesus is doing in my life and in the whole world. This week, now that I’m aware of it, I’m going to try to reflect on what idolatry means in my life and how I can move toward really having God first in my life. And I’m going to look at my own patterns of giving and stewardship, to see how I can better be be rich toward God rather than storing up treasures for myself. I don’t have any answers for that part yet. Feel free to ask me in the weeks and months ahead how I’m doing. And if you have any constructive wisdom, I hope you’ll share it with me.

My friends, I still have no idea exactly why Jesus chose to tell the parable of the Rich Foolish Farmer to a crowd of people who perhaps had little idea of what he was talking about, instead of to some of the rich folks we already know Jesus also spent time with. I’m just glad I was able to hear something in it that affects me. I’m not proud of what I’ve learned about myself, but I stand in full confidence that God’s love for me is not diminished one iota by my self-discovery. So I join with the author of Colossians, who encourages me to strip off my old self with its practices and day by day cloth myself with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of my creator, God the Almighty. May it be so for all of us.

In the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: Pentecost IX

Today is the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. We move today from the prophet Amos to the prophet Hosea, who likes to use symbolic actions and names to illustrate the Word of God to the people. Check out "have a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom." We also continue reading from Colossians. In the Revised Common Lectionary, which we use at Trinity and is mandatory beginning this Advent, the interesting portion was optional today. We are exhorted to not let anyone condemn us in matters of food or drink or religious festivals because of Christ's victory over the powers and principalities of the universe, and not, as we might expect from someone from the Pauline school, because of our freedom in Christ, although that's at work here too. It's worth a read, especially when you consider that the Book of Common Prayer calls for a slew of just such festivals, both Principal as well as Major and Lesser. And following up on what service means in the Parable of the Good Samaritan two Sundays ago, and putting into proper context service grounded in the Word in the vignette of Martha, Mary, and Jesus last week, we now learn one way to concretely ground our service in the Word in the very words of the Lord's Prayer.


(Above: Gillis van Coninxloo: Mountain Landscape with River Valley and the Prophet Hosea)

And of course, as we always do, we thank God for all God has done in Christ we when celebrate God's very presence among us in the Holy Communion. It was poignant to pray the Lord's Prayer today, and then to go out to live that prayer in our daily lives. Thanks be to God!

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

RFSJ

Another Good Summary of Anglican Thought

Last week I posted an interview with Terry Mattingly, who offered a good basic overview of Anglican Christianity and the current divisions. Here's another, coming from a more catholic perspective, that I also find I resonate with. An example:

For example, in terms of Real Presence in the Eucharist you’ll find me somewhere between Transubstantiation and Ubiquitous Presence (the more proper understanding for the mischaracterization of Lutheran Eucharistic teaching often under the terms “consubstantiation” or “impanation”). But I know of those of a more Reformed bent who cannot accept either the change component of the former, nor the suffused presence of the latter, but rather the finite Resurrected Body is made present to us by the Holy Spirit and the Verba. And I know enough about Patristic teaching to know that all three of these have seeds in the Fathers. I prefer to leave the mechanics largely unexamined, perhaps sometimes out of sheer laziness and other times simply because the “how” is not something we can adequately explain in the media we have as finite creatures.

Read it all. Hat tip to Tobias Haller for linking to it.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: Pentecost VIII

Today we read from the prophet Amos, who had some pointed things to say to the capitalists of his day, from Colossians, that ode to the cosmic Christ, and from the Gospel of St. Luke and the familiar and yet maddening story of Mary and Martha.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

RFSJ

The Proper of Yesterday: Pentecost VII

Yesterday was the Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, and in this Year of Luke we heard the very well-known Parable of the Good Samaritan. I was filling in at All Saints' Hoboken. Here was my sermon. I welcome your comments and feedback, as always!

May only God’s words be spoken, and only God’s words be heard. Amen.

I recently had an experience that was rather troubling to me. You may recognize similar encounters in your own lives. I was coming home from an evening in the City. It was perhaps 11 PM or so. As I was unlocking the door to my apartment, a man dressed in slacks, a nice shirt, and a tie came up to the porch. He startled me a bit when he spoke to me. He told me that his car had broken down in the next block and he was trying to get some money to take the Light Rail and PATH back to Newark where he lived. I was in my collar, and he asked if I was a priest. I said yes, and he went on to tell me he was Catholic, had gone to St. Peters’ Prep in high school and asked if I could help him out.

Now remember it was 11 o clock at night and my key was literally in the door. I was not in the most comfortable of situations. I did something that was perhaps foolish – I got out my wallet and pulled out a bill - a five, I think – and handed it to him, telling him the light rail was down the block. He walked quickly off, and I got inside and locked the door as fast as I could. I just wanted him to go away as quickly as I could get him to do so. I was relieved when he went off in the direction of the light rail.

Now I can imagine what some of you are thinking. Was I nuts? How could I possibly have done that? How could I have believed his story? It’s almost exactly like the ones the you hear downtown. You know, I need bus fare to get to Philadelphia or Boston or Memphis or wherever. Or my family was burned out of our home. Could you help? I admit I was very skeptical about my friend’s story. I could have said I’m sorry I have nothing for you and sent him on his way. Of course, I was in my collar after all. That’s did make things a little different, at least from my point of view. I felt like I had to do something.

Why was that? Why did I think it was important for me to do something in this situation? Well, it’s because I am informed in my thinking by today’s Gospel, the very well known, perhaps even famous, Parable of the Good Samaritan. Many of use have heard it countless times. A lawyer asks Jesus about how to inherit eternal life. They have a theological discussion, and the lawyer actually has the right answer from Jesus’ perspective. The lawyer, being a good lawyer, then asks what’s actually a very reasonable question: Well, who is my neighbor then, that God commands me to love so much? Jesus tells the story of how a man was robbed and left for dead on the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho, which was a good day’s journey away. A priest passes by and ignores the dieing man, and then a Levite, who also looks the other way. A Samaritan comes along, and he rescues the poor victim, and goes out of his way to take care of him, even spending two day’s wages to make sure the man would get decent treatment at the hotel. And then Jesus turn’s the lawyer’s question around: He doesn’t ask if the man who was robbed was a neighbor, he asks who was a neighbor to the man? And the lawyer answers that it is the Samaraitan who is the neighbor. Jesus then gave the famous command: “Go and do likewise.”

Jesus is saying to his listeners then and to us today that the important question is not who our neighbors are but how we act toward them. He de-emphasizes the object of the love we are to show and instead emphasizes how we are to show it. By turning the question around, Jesus seems to be saying that it’s more important to deal with one’s inner motivations then in quibbling who should receive the love we’re commanded to show. What’s important is being a neighbor, and in the context of the parable, being a neighbor to one in need.

My sense is that this is pretty important. Jesus hung out with all sorts of folks considered undesirable in his day, as I’m sure you know. Especially in Luke’s Gospel, women, Samaritans, Romans, slaves, all seem to get special notice in teaching and in action. In short, every person and group that traditional Jewish culture of the day – or sometimes even Jewish law – said was outside the pale were the kinds of people Jesus pointed to as enjoying God’s favor just as much as the Chosen People of Israel did. And notice that Jesus spent no time commenting on how dumb the robbery victim was for taking the road alone. His hearers would already have known it was dangerous. Jesus himself took that road on the way to Jerusalem, passing through Jericho on the way. Jesus very particularly critiziced the priest and the Levite who did not stop to help. Remember, though, that on one level it was perfectly understandable why the first two passers-by didn’t stop. Their work, their vocations, their very reasons for being, called them to be ritually pure so they could serve in the Temple without offending God. Even to touch a dead person was to make a priest of a Levite ritually impure and unable to serve for perhaps a week or more. So given the victim’s injuries, one might have cut the priest and the Levite some slack. But Jesus didn’t. In fact, he picked one of the most hated ethnic groups he could have to show the contrast between all three of them. Samaritans were considered barely better than Romans by Jews. Samaritans and Jews didn’t mix, and Jews considered the Samaritan beliefs in the Torah only and that it’s OK to worship Yahweh on Mt. Gerazim and not only in Jerusalem to be essentially heresy. So for Jesus to show up a Jewish priest and a Levite with a Samaritan would have been startling for his listeners. And to top it off, Jesus has the Samaritan go overboard in generosity – showing mercy, as the Scripture has it. And so the lawyer is commanded to go and do likewise – be like the Samaritan and bend over backwards in generosity.

And of course we, who are followers of Jesus and want to imitate him, want to go and do likewise too. But it doesn’t seem so easy in 2007. Maybe it wasn’t so easy in Jesus’ day either. We have to dig into the parable to get the nuances of who was who and why they might have acted like they did. But the command and the sentiment seem clear. Go and Do likewise. No need to investigate the worthiness of the recipient of your giving. No need to check and see if he or she really needs it. Jesus did not have the Samaritan teach the victim how to be more aware of one’s surroundings in dangerous situations or to give him judo or tae –kwon-do lessons. Maybe that came later. What the Samaritan did first and foremost - which Jesus clearly commends here - is take care of the man’s immediate needs for medical attention, safety, and lodging. The rest of it can come later.

In the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says this: ^“Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again” (Luke 6:30) And again: ^“give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Luke 6:38) Here is a specific teaching that says very straightforwardly to give to anyone who asks. Don’t ask questions, Jesus seems to be saying, don’t worry about if the person is worthy or not. Just do it. And in Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells the crowd and us not to worry about stuff, because God already knows we need them. Rather, he says, “Instead, strive for God’s  kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”

And that, my sisters and brothers, is a tall order. If we give like that, pretty soon we’ll be out of resources ourselves, right. The poor will still be poor and the scam artists will be rich and won’t give anything back when we ask for it, because they sure aren’t going to follow the Gospel. So what, is Jesus crazy or what?

I could stand here and contextualize away and maybe suggest that the context of the Sermon on the Plain was about being radically open in spirit and didn’t necessarily mean to just dissipate one’s resources in giving. I could point out that the Samaritan, as good as he was, didn’t check the robbery victim into the Westin Hotel and give him an unlimited credit card. He did what he could, as far as we can tell. And all of that would be true and would be reasonable conclusions to draw. At the same time, the tone of the Parable here, coupled with the stuff from the Sermon on the Plain and the later teaching on worry, does lean in an unmistakable direction of giving generously, even radically. The whole Gospel of Luke does, actually. Luke’s Gospel is the social Gospel in many ways, because in it Jesus is constantly showing an awareness, an openness, a mindset toward those less fortunate in his society. And it seems to me that’s what we can take from today’s parable too. One’s giving starts from the heart and is habit forming. When one actively cultivates a habit, an awareness, an openness to the other, that’s actually living out the Good News that God loves all people. If God loves me, then I can turn around and do that too. So Jesus encourages us to be neighbors for the other by helping out, by giving of what he have, perhaps even radically. It doesn’t necessarily mean we have to go bankrupt ourselves. It doesn’t mean that we ought not be wise with our resources as we live in to that new mindset. It does mean that a steady habit of giving will transform each and every one of us just as much as, even more so, than those we give to.

So that’s why I gave money to someone who may well have not needed it. I didn’t do it for him, although I do hope he really did have a broken-down car. But I did it more for me. I’m trying to cultivate a mindset of giving and openness to the other, in the same way that Jesus gave so much for me and for each of us. It isn’t easy at times – I’m only human, after all. But actively working towards my own transformation – a continuous conversion to the mind of Christ that today’s parable lays out for us – will allow me to do my own little part to make God’s economy real today. So I hope that man used the money well. If he did, great. If he didn’t, there’s not much I can do. But I’m going to try to keep giving to whomever asks. I’m going to try to be the neighbor that God calls me to be.

In the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.

RFSJ

Shenanigans at St. Thomas?

St. Thomas Fifth Avenue is the premier Anglo-music parish in the US. Its Choir of Men and Boys is world-renowned and with good reason. The rector there was formally accused of some misdoings last fall. The Diocese of New York investigated and found nothing wrong. However, The Advocate has got some good background. An excerpt:

In December 2006, nine gay Episcopalians filed a complaint against the rector of New York City’s St. Thomas Church alleging that he made derogatory comments about a fellow clergyman’s homosexuality. It was one of 16 charges leveled at the Reverend Andrew Mead, leader of the prominent Episcopal congregation at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 53rd Street whose wealthy, influential parishioners include Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and Standard Oil heiress Minnie Mortimer—who married Oscar-winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan at the church in May. Among the other accusations in the complaint: that Mead paid for cat litter for his own cats and “large quantities of alcohol” out of St. Thomas’s kitchen budget; and that the rector, while dressed as Santa Claus, forced female employees to sit on his lap to receive presents at a staff Christmas party.

The complaint, signed by 12 people altogether, was investigated by the New York diocese’s governing committee this spring and ultimately dismissed, the matter declared formally closed at St. Thomas’s 11 a.m. Sunday service on May 20. For the gay complainants, it was a “crushing defeat,” in the words of one, Bruce Gilardi—and the final straw in a series of questionable events at St. Thomas since Mead arrived over a decade ago. “If the church feels it can sweep us under the rug,” says Gilardi, an entrepreneur who had attended the church regularly since moving to New York in 2000, “then that’s an indication that this isn’t a place for me anymore.”

Read it all, and pray for the church.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: Pentecost V

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Trinity Parish uses the Revised Common Lectionary and the Scriptures for today are here.

Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I offered the following reflection on the excerpt from the letter to the Galatians:

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be always acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

These past few weeks we’ve heard a lot in the news about freedom. The Supreme Court just this week decided that it was not an infringement of a student’s freedom to punish a student who put up a sign saying “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a public rally that was school sponsored. Recently the CIA released some of its Family Jewels, documenting how in the 1960s and 1970s it had systematically tried to deny freedom to all sorts of people the US government didn’t like at the time. We are debating what freedoms that immigrants, illegal and otherwise, may have in the country. There’s a continuing controversy here in Bayonne about whether requiring student uniforms in the public schools is an appropriate infringement of freedom or not. The rights and freedoms of enemy combatants that we have captured in the course of the war on terror are on our minds, especially after the bomb scares in London this weekend. And of course I can’t not mention Paris Hilton: she regained her freedom when she was released from jail recently.

All of those examples of what we usually think of as freedom are one kind of freedom, political freedom. The dictionary defines freedom as:

1.	the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint:

2.	exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

3.	the power to determine action without restraint.

4.	political or national independence.

And that’s usually what we think of, especially during this time of year when we celebrate the independence of our country from England on this coming Wednesday, the 4^th of July, Independence Day. We fought a war over our right, here in what would become the United States, to decide our own affairs without interference form England or anyone else. Throughout the 231 years of our independence, we’ve gone to war several times to protect or regain freedom on behalf of those who have lost it. We think it’s so important an ideal that we are willing to risk lives and money when we think freedom is threatened, especially our own. And I think we as a nation can be proud that we enjoy the freedoms of speech, the press, religion, and the other political rights guaranteed to US citizens in the Constitution. We have much to be thankful of, although there are many even today who seem bent on abridging our own freedoms.

But regardless of the state of our political discourse, regardless of how you or I might agree or not on the issues of immigration, school uniforms, taxes, free speech and all the rest, as Christians, you and I also enjoy another kind of freedom entirely. That’s the freedom that Jesus Christ won for each of us in his life, death, and resurrection. It’s both a freedom from and a freedom to. At its basic level, what Jesus did was free us from fear. See, in the usual state of affairs, we as human beings get afraid. We’re afraid we’re not good enough. We’re afraid no one likes us. We’re afraid no one loves us. We’re afraid God doesn’t love us. And that fear then lay on each of us like a wet and freezing cold blanket that stops us from being who God wants us to be. If I think I’m not good enough, I probably won’t try to reach forward and try things that maybe I’m perfectly capable of doing but don’t think I’m worthy enough to go for. And if I’m afraid that I’m not loved by other people, I will stop loving and appreciating my own self as well. That can into a downward spiral, compounding in on itself into disease, depression, or even merely quiet and daily despair over the state of my own life. Perhaps some of you know folks who are in that vicious cycle of self-hatred. I’ve been there at times. Perhaps you have too.

This is what St. Paul means when he says in today’s excerpt from the letter to the Galatians when he says, “For Freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In the death and resurrection of Jesus, he says to us, God is here, and God is with you, and God loves you. Each and every one of you. You and You and You. And so you can let go of the fear that froze you in its wet cold grip. You are freed from that fear by God’s love. You don’t have to be a slave, in Paul’s word’s, to self-hatred, to fear.

That freedom is the priceless gift that God gave us in Christ Jesus. It’s worth far more than all of the political freedoms we have. If today I were arrested and put into prison, I know that I am still free from the fear that I am worthless, that I am unloved, that no one, not even God cares for me. Because God does care and love me, and everyone of you too. I am loved by God, and as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, nothing can separate me from the love of God. No matter what! That goes for everyone!

And that freedom is powerful and absolute. No court can take it away. It can never be abridged. It’s granted by God in Jesus and we know it by the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So the question is, what to do with it? Remember the dictionary definition: “the power to determine action without restraint.” That certainly seems to apply here. That’s the second freedom that that as Christians have. We have granted freedom from, and we have been granted freedom to – to what? To do whatever we want? After all, God loves me, no matter what, right? So that means I can do whatever I want to do in my life and it will all by OK, right?

Nope, not at all. That idea is one that Paul addresses in several of his letters, not just this one to the Galatians. It turns out that lots of the early Christians thought the same thing, the Corinthians especially. And so Paul points out to both them and us that our freedom to is actually the limiting one, oddly enough. We are freed from fear and even death, true. And we are freed to be who God created us to be. Paul suggests that the best way to do that is to “use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” So we are freed by Jesus from fear and to be who God wants each of to be. And then we’re supposed to voluntarily give up that freedom to be slaves? To each other? That sounds weird. And to the ears of the Galatians, that was positively scandalous.

But that’s just it. If God loves me and wants to be in a restored relationship with me, then God wants the same thing for each of us. And God asks us to use our freedoms – our unrestrained power to determine action without restraint – to choose to be in restored relationships with those around us too. Our brothers and sisters, co-workers, parents, students, teachers, friends, everyone. If I am freed from fear, I don’t have to worry is someone is or is not going to respond to the relationship I offer someone. Remember, I already know that nothing can separate me from the love of God. So without fear of rjection, without fear of alienation, I can go ahead and work on restoring the relationships in my own life that are broken, just like how God, in Jesus, is constantly restoring my relationship to God. My relationship with God is constantly breaking – I can’t help it, because I am a human being. And God in God’s love is constantly fixing it, so that it’s whole and right again.

So now re-read that long list that we heard just a few minutes ago – the so-called works of the flesh: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.” It’s a mistake if we hear this passage and think of the flesh as our bodies and the Spirit as our souls. In reality, what Paul is referring to when he talks about the works of the flesh is that power of sin and separation in the world today. It’s more than a metaphor or a figure of speech. This list is a description of what happens when people are afraid – when they have not understood they are freed from fear in Jesus Christ. And that other list? That’s what the world looks like when we are freed to be who we are created to be: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” These fruits of the Spirit are also more than a metaphor or a figure of speech. They describe what being in restored relationship with God and each other and the world and our own selves actually looks like. We are freed to be who we are created to be, and what God creates us to be is in whole relationships. And that’s what those look like.

My sisters and brothers, is isn’t as if God does not want us to have a good time. God does. I am aware that many of our sisters and brothers in other faith traditions do say that. But remember the wedding at Cana. Jesus made more wine so they could continue the celebration. There is a time and place for having a good time, of course, and just because we are freed from fear does not mean we are freed from the laws of mature – we can still over-indulge in any number of ways. When we do that, of course, we still have to face the consequences of living in a broken relationship with our own selves, because that’s the consequence of too much anything. And we have to face that too. But today’s passage from Galatians is not a laundry list of does and don’ts. We have freedom from and freedom to because of the impossible love of Jesus for each of us. We have freedom from fear and sin and even death. We have freedom to be as God has created us to be. If you see something from that first list in your own life, perhaps it’s an indicator of a broken or bending relationship that you might not have been aware of. When you see something from the second list, you can be sure that it’s happening in relationships that you are in that healthy and sound and as God desires.

On this 4^th of July week, we as nation remember the political freedoms we have fought for and won. As you go to the fireworks or to the shore or are having a barbeque or whatever it is you are going to do, remember, too, that we have, in Jesus, far more valuable freedoms that Jesus fought for and won for us. We are freed from fear, and we are free to be who created us to be.

In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: The Third Sunday After Pentecost

Here's my sermon for today. I welcome your feedback and comments:

Trinity Parish in Bergen Point

Pentecost III RCL 2007

I Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a; Ps 5:1-8; Gal 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3

R.F. Solon, Jr.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our rock and Redeemer. Amen.

Last Friday evening, I stumbled across the Daytime Emmys, and I watched for about ten minutes when I realized I had no idea who actors were and what the shows were about. So I switched back to the Mets-Yankees game. The Mets won that one, by the way.

But there’s a certain glamour about Hollywood and TV and being an actor or director. I saw it on the Emmys show and of course we see it at the Oscars and every night on Entertainment Tonight if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s hard to escape in this culture. We may not know the names of our politicans, but we sure know our celebrities. We’re on a first-name only basis with them. Even if you don’t watch much TV, you see screaming reports of the latest from Bennifer, or Mel, or Barbara, or Tom. And of course, it seems like we’ve been obsessing over Paris for weeks now.

Wouldn’t it be fun to be a celebrity? You‘re famous. Everyone’s watching you! You’re on the news a lot, just for doing ordinary things like going to the store. What a trip that must be. And the movies that have made celebrities who they are! Some of them are now classics. The Wizard of Oz. Gone with the Wind. Jaws. The Godfather. Casablanca. We can quote lines from them and we watch them over and over again. Movies and the actors that make them are a part of the consciousness of our nation, and have been since the first silents appeared a hundred years ago now.

Did you notice that those classic movies are all based on classic novels first? Nearly all the best-loved movies on the all-time list of the Internet Movie Database are adapted from books or novels. Seems to me that Hollywood has missed an obvious example, though. And that’s the fabulous story from this morning’s reading from Hebrew Scripture. It’s a gripping tale of treachery and intrigue. There’s innocent Naboth, who only wants to preserve his ancestral property. And weak-willed King Ahab, who sulks like a spoiled brat when he doesn’t get his way. There’s rightoues Elijah, who declares in very gruesome terms what will happen to Ahab. And then of course there’s Jezebel. Scheming Jezebel. The foreign wife of Ahab, she’s the one who frames Naboth on trumped-up and completely false charges and has him legally executed. If you’ve ever wondered where the term “Jezebel” came from, now you know. And it’s all so Ahab can have a comfy vegetable garden next to his summer palace. I mean, a producer should be drooling over this plot line. It’s got chicanery, and violence, and betrayal, and suspense. This could be great! It’s a blockbuster, for sure.

When it comes to casting our new film, there are all kinds of roles to fill. Who would you like to play? As I wonder about the cast of characters, I find myself drawn again and again to the unnamed people of Jezreel whom Jezebel ropes into having Naboth framed. She tells them to call a public assembly and make Naboth the presider, and then to get some stooges to accuse him of treason and heresy. Under Israelite law, a capital crime needed at least two witnesses, so there were enough to have Naboth whacked, legally at that. With Naboth out of the way, it was an easy thing for Ahab to claim the property he wanted.

But what about those people in the assembly, the ringleaders? And the other members of the assembly? Did they know what was going on? Did they realize that they were pawns in a game of royal scheming? What did they first think when they got the email from the Royal Palace? I mean, it was probably pretty obvious what was going on. Naboth’s vineyard was next door to the Palace, after all. Possibly lots of people knew about the conversation between Ahab and Naboth. How many people did Jezebel have to get to before she found some to do her nefarious will? A lot? Only a few? And if there were a lot of people who wouldn’t initially go along, then there were also a lot of people who attended that assembly, who knew exactly what was going to happen, even if they didn’t actively participate.

I think there’s a lot of that in 2007 too. What with the information explosion from the Internet, we all can see what’s going in the world, and right here in Bayonne too. We all know the latest news of our favorite actors and actresses. We celebrate the joys of our loved ones in this season of commencements. We hear stories of the latest drugs to cure diseases we never knew we had. And we are instantly aware of more deaths of our soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. We see the pictures of the ongoing starvation in Darfur. We read the lurid details of the latest wilding in Jersey City and the latest burglaries right here in Bayonne. Sometimes what we read and hear is uplifting, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s a great joy to pick up the paper or check the newsfeeds, and sometimes I dread it and simply can’t read further. I’d much rather much rather check the baseball standings than read the editorial pages.

And it’s easy to do that too, to escape, or simply ignore what’s going on. With the explosion of information has come also the explosion of entertainment. There are ever more cable channels to peruse, new blockbuster movies to watch, new tunes to download to our Ipods, new celebrities to gawk at. I can spend hours fussing with my fantasy baseball teams – I have three of them now! It’s very easy to be bystanders in this world today. It’s easy to know what’s going on, and like those people at Naboth’s assembly, to simply watch impassively as yet another innocent person is victimized, oppressed, or even killed.

And with all that stuff going on, it’s also very hard sometimes to recognize the good that goes on as well. It’s so easy to accentuate the negative, we forget that there are those who are not merely bystanders, but are doing active things to make the world a better place, to take a stand against cruelty, injustice ore mere indifference. I think we here at Trinity Parish can today take joy in the fact that we are not bystanders. Not today, at least. Today we kick off our capital campaign, Miracle on 5^th Street. Today we take a stand and we say, we are going to continue to work for a better world right here in Bayonne. We’re going to expand our facilities right here at the corner of 5^th and Broadway so we can offer better and larger programs for the developmentally disabled and the autistic adults of Bayonne and Hudson County. And we’re going to eventually move our phenomenal Highways program from its current location at Hobart and Linnett right here as well. We’ll be able to offer more space for our shops and more space to meet with those who need our help. Getting to Highways will be more convenient as well, because it will now be on the bus lines. And we’ll have a new parish hall too, outfitted with cool AV equipment and a new kitchen. All of it will be done with the best energy-efficient and sustainable techniques we can, so we can show the community not only our commitment to those less fortunate, but also to our environment and the generations who will come after us as well.

My sisters and brothers, all of us are part of this great project. All of us will have something to contribute to the Miracle on 5^th Street, whether it’s our time, our talents, or our treasures or even some combination of all three. As Executive Director of our Windmill Alliance, I want to publicly acknowledge everyone who has helped put the Miracle on 5^th Street event together. You show us what it means not to be bystanders.

Every Sunday we come together to give thanks to God for what God has done for us. God reached out first to us and, as our Gospel says, forgives each and every one of us if the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unlike the woman at the dinner party who was able to show her gratitude directly to Jesus, we can’t do that. He isn’t here in the same way. Jesus is here among in a real way in the Holy Communion we are about to share in just a few minutes, and we praise God for that. And God is delighted that we do so, because it was God in Jesus who asked us to remember him when we eat and drink. But that isn’t quite enough. That isn’t all God asks us to do. God asks ask to pay God’s love forward, because we can’t love God any more than God already loves each of us. God invites us to not be bystanders in the world around us, but to be part of the world around us, demonstrating God’s love in the world and not letting the world forget. We here at Trinity Parish do that every Sunday when we come together to hear God’s Word and experience that same Word in the bread and the cup. And we do that every other day of the week, too. We do that as a community by the work we do in the ministries of the Windmill Alliance. And we do that in the individual ways we pay forward God’s love to those we live and work with in our own day-to-day lives.

That’s why the Miracle on 5^th Street is so special. It’s special because it shows Bayonne that this community of faith, in thanksgiving to God for the Good News in Jesus, isn’t going to be mere bystanders of that Good News. We’re not standing passively by, watching the world around us. We’re not just enjoying the celebrities who are entertainment for us. No, we’re living out that Good News, that Gospel, not only on Sundays but every day. We do it now, and today we’re publicly committing that we intend to continue doing it. We can enjoy reading all about Bennifer and Mel and Tom and Brad - that’s fine and fun to do. I can continue to diddle with my fantasy baseball teams. There is a place in life for all of that. But there is far more to life than the latest dispatch about Paris. We today celebrate the abundance of life that the Miracle on 5^th Street represents. My hope and prayer is that we begin today will touch lives throughout Bayonne and that this parish will always be a place of more than mere bystanders.

Watching life is good. Having life, and having it abundantly, is better. That’s what God wants, and that’s what God promises. We join n that great work today.

Amen.

How About an Anglican Compact Instead?

Mark Harris at Preludium has drafted an Anglican Compact which, in my mind, far better reflects Anglican polity and provincial autonomy than does the Draft Covenant. As someone already noted, the key word here is a compact among rather than a covenant between. I do think a more explicit reference to the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, or its components, would be nice, but all in all this is much better. Mark is on the Executive Council, now meeting this week. Perhaps this could be the beginning of an explicit counter-proposal on our part. After all, it's always better to suggest an alternative than to simply reject something placed on the table.

Read it all.

RFSJ

The Proper of the Day: St. Barnabas, Apostle

Today we celebrate the Major Feast of St. Barnabas, Apostle and martyr. He is not one of the original Twelve, but is given the status of Apostle because of his encouragement of St. Paul in Paul's ministry. Barnabas is also the one who sold a field a gave the proceeds to the community, making him (in my mind) a patron of stewardship campaigns!

Officially, Barnabas is patron against hailstorms, patron of peacemakers, and of Cyprus, Anticoch, and Marino in Italy.

Grant, O God, that we may follow the example of your faithful servant Barnabas, who, seeking not his own renown but the well-being of your Church, gave generously of his life and substance for the relief of the poor and the spread of the Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

RFSJ

For The Bible Tells Me So

Now at Sundance, and scheduled to open in the fall nationwide. It's an exploration of family and sexual orientation through the lens of religion and specifically the religious right. Here is the film's website, and here's an interview with the director and Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire:




RFSJ

The Good and the Less Good

The Very Good News: my good friend Chris Bishop is now the Rev. Chris Bishop! He and six others were ordained to the diaconate today at the Philadelphia Cathedral. It was a wonderful service. At the last minute. Chris asked my to serve as one of his presenters,. I was honored to say yes. Pictures will follow.

The Also Good News: Day 8 for the RFSJuniors at #2. Today I'm only two points (90.5 to 88.5) away from nearly perpetual 1st place AllOutBulls, and 13 points ahead of the #3 Go Dodgers.

The Less (Maybe) Good News: I got up early to go to Philly today and did not check my roster. I have two starters (Hudson and Marquis) starting today, and I kept then accidentally benched. However, they are starting against each other! So their performance, if bad, won't accrue to me. Currently, at the bottom of the 2nd, it's 4-3, Atlanta over Chicago. Maybe they'll both get creamed with ERs and get it out of their system. Sad, isn't it, that I'm actually hoping my own pitchers do poorly? Update: Marquis lasted 1.2 IP with 2 ERs and a 10.80 ERA, Hudson 2,0 IP with 5 ERs and a whopping 22.50 ERA - none of which accrued to me. Whew!

RFSJ

Another Link

I just discovered that Ormande Plater has a blog. Deacon Plater is a deacon in the Episcopal Church and has done much to bring back the diaconate to its rightful place as one of the orders of ordained ministry. His most recent entry is on reconciliation, something we all should live into more. Check it out.

RFSJ

The Season After Pentecost....

Well, we now move into the long period of the season after Pentecost in the church calendar. It isn't really the "Season Of Pentecost," because we don't continually review and celebrate what happened on the Day of Pentecost. I don't much like saying the "season after Pentecost," although that is how the Sundays are named in the BCP. I guess I prefer the old title of Trinitytide, which is the "green" season between Trinity Sunday and the First Sunday of Advent.

So, welcome to Trinitytide!

RFSJ

Trinity Sunday

Today is the First Sunday After Pentecost, or Trinity Sunday, when the Church celebrates the mystery of the Holy Trinity after successively observing the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. At our parish, Trinity Parish in Bergen Point, it's not only our Patronal Feast (the liturgical day on the church calendar corresponding to the name of the parish), but also the occasion of our annual parish meeting. Some might suggest the Church inflicts Trinity Sunday on the unsuspecting faithful; it's considered a hard occasion to preach. I'm not sure why. Here's my sermon, slightly edited - see what you think:

Trinity Parish in Bergen Point

Trinity Sunday 2007 RCL

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Canticle 13; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

R. F. Solon, Jr.

In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity! Amen.

Take out your Tidings, the worship bulletin for today, and turn to the prayer list page. You should find on it the old logo or seal of our own Trinity Parish in Bergen Point. [See above - RFSJ] Depending on your eyesight – and mine isn’t very good – you might be able to make out some of the detail. In the exact center is a circle that has the Latin word Deus – it means God. Around the center circle are three other circles. One shows a hand cupped around some tiny little people. If you look closely at a scan of the logo on a computer, you can seeing them praying! That gentle hand is the Almighty Creator. Over on the right of the center circle is a little icon of Jesus Christ, holding a Lamb on his shoulders and wearing a red and white halo. And below the center circle is a bird – a dove – descending from above with seven stars. That’s the Holy Spirit, and the seven stars included in the image are, I’m pretty sure, the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit that we celebrated just last Sunday at Pentecost.

There’s more to the entire logo as well. Connecting each of three outer icons is a bar that says “non est,” which is Latin again for “is not.” So the whole logo tells us that The Almighty non est the Son and the Holy Spirit non est the Father and the Almighty non est the Spirit. But there’s even more. Running from each of the outer icons to the center circle is a bar, and in that bar it says, “est.” In other words, the Almighty est Deus, the Almighty is God. The Son est Deus – the Son is God. The Spirit est Deus. The Spirit is God. What this ancient symbol of the Trinity, the Patron of this parish church, tells us is that God is One in Three and Three in One. The Undivided Trinity. What a paradox! How can three – Trinity – be One? How can one be Three and still be One?

I could perhaps end right here and now and simply throw up my hands and say, well it’s a Mystery! On to the Creed! Of course, that wouldn't solve much either, because the Creed itself has three sections, each corresponding to, you guessed it, one of the Persons of the Trinity. So that’s no help.

So what is this Trinity? What is this that we invoke at the beginning of our worship? We say “Blessed by God, Father, son, and Holy Spirit.” We pray "through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God." And at the end we often hear something like, “The Blessing of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier be with you and those whom you love.” What’s all this about?

There has been so much written about the Trinity. The doctrine itself is embedded in all three Creeds that we confess at various times. Ask me about the third one at coffee this morning. But for all the words written, all the treatises published, and even all the excommunications cast, it seems to me it’s pretty simple to understand.

We know Jesus by many names but one that is supremely powerful is what John’s gospel calls him, the Word with a capital W. Think about "word" for a moment. The beginning of John’s gospel says this in Chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The evangelist is speaking of Jesus. The very first thing that this Gospel says about Jesus has to do with the relationship between Jesus and the Almighty. In fact, I’d venture to say that the entire theme of the gospel of John is about how Jesus the Son of God is so closely connected to God the Almighty, whom he calls Father. And the Word was God. Jesus est Deus! And of course the Almighty est Deus too.

But what about the Holy Spirit? The first reading from Proverbs is a glorious poem from the lips of Wisdom. Wisdom is, of course, the first of those sevenfold gifts of the Spirit, and was with God at the very beginning of creation. Wisdom says, “When he established the heavens, I was there. When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the human race.” And St. Paul, in the passage today from his letter to the Romans, speaks of God and Jesus Christ and the love of God that has been poured into us through the Holy Spirit. So the Spirit exists and has a relationship with the Creator but is clearly non est the Almighty. And yet the Spirit est Deus!

In other words, God is Love, or better yet the Lover from whom the whole universe burst forth in the force of that Love. But even before the universe began, the Lover had the Beloved, because Love, like a spoken word, must come out and be separate from that which loves. And it is Love itself that envelops the Lover and the Beloved and binds them together in the never ending and ever-deepening relationship of one to another. The Trinity simply is our expression of the God that is Love, the eternal Beloved who always existed, and the Spirit of Love itself. And when you think about it, you can’t really say what’s the beginning, which came first. You can’t have a Lover without Love. You can’t have Love without a Lover. And having a Beloved means there is One who Loves. It’s all about relationship, about being in relationship and wanting to be in relationship.

And our logo of Trinity Parish represents that fundamental aspect of relationship of God as well. Look at the logo again. There is a single circle running around the entire logo that contains all of this and indicates who we are as well. We – Trinity Parish in Bergen Point - are in essence enveloped by that same Lover, Beloved, and Love that binds them. Because it binds us together too. We who are members of Trinity Parish are part of the great circle of Lover, Beloved and Love. We who are the body of Christ here in Bergen Point become one with Christ and so feel the power of that all-encompassing Love of the Beloved. We, you and I, are drawn into the never-ending dance among the Three Persons of the undivided Trinity, the dance of life itself that existed before time and space, and will exist long after both time and space have ceased to be.

And we can take the Trinity as a model for our own lives as well. We know, because we have felt and continue to feel it, that the Three-in-One is always with each of us, loving us with that total love that forgives absolutely everything, no matter what. In our baptism we are incorporated into the network of the Trinity. That network of love will never break and we will never be cast out of it. It will never be offline to us! But sometimes, the love we try to model to others isn’t always enough. We try to imitate it, but we still get angry, frustrated, upset with each other. We sin, sometimes horribly, against one another, the earth, ourselves. Although our relationship in the network of the Trinity is forever, our own relationships with one another sometimes are not. We try to love and sometimes, perhaps often, we fail. You may have experiences, or are experiencing, something like that in your own life. I know I have. But let me tell you, you may find, as I have, in the back of my mind and my heart, that God stills me and still loves you, and that the brokenness of our lives and our relationships too is drawn into that network of Love that is the Three-in-One. That has been a great comfort and even joy. The Good News after all, isn’t complicated. It’s pretty straightforward. There doesn’t have to be much mystery about it. Lover. Beloved. The Love between them. We’re part of it, permanently. That’s it!

On this day we not only celebrate the Mystery of Unity in Trinity, but we also give thanks to God the Three-in-One, our Patron, for the founding and continued prosperity of our own Parish, named in honor of that same Mystery. As we eat and drink together at the Holy Table in the quintessential act of relationship, let us also give thanks for this parish church, founded in 1859 and now in its third structure. Today after our celebration we will take counsel together for the future of our parish at our annual parish meeting. We have much to talk about. We will, in just a few months, break ground for the additions to the parish complex. We will, on June 17, celebrate in a public way what we have done so far with our own ministry of relationships, the Windmill Alliance. We are discerning other relationships we may wish to enter into with other congregations and service institutions. We will elect a new slate of Vestry members to take their place in the leadership of our parish. And we will eat and drink some more, in that quintessential act of relationship among us. May we who bear the name of Trinity Parish in Bergen Point, and who have the Trinity itself inscribed in our logo, always honor our Patron by continuing to invite all people into relationship with God who is Lover, Beloved, and the Love that draws all together.

Amen.

RFSJ

(PS - Sorry about the inconsistent formatting - very frustrating!)