I didn’t attend my 40th high school reunion last summer, but several
of my old friends did. I say
"old" friends, meaning not only long time friends, but as evidenced
by the photos I received, some of them are looking pretty old. Some long hair
hippie heads have gone bald, some muscular chests have slumped well below the
equator, and time has increased the creases on their faces. Of course, I
haven't changed at all while all my friends were getting old.
Apparently, one of the big topics of conversation at the reunion was my
upcoming ordination. To say that some
people were surprised would not begin to do justice to their comments. As I have already shared of you, people were
more shocked that I was going to seminary than they would have been to discover
I had become a stripper. It’s not
that I was that much of a “wild child” in high school…I was
more of a “flower child” … what can I say, it was the late
sixties. I would like to you think that
I embraced that era because of my raised social consciousness, but truth be
told … I liked the flowey skirts.
In chatting about the reunion, it was also interesting for me to hear what had
become of everyone, and that no one's life had turned out exactly as planned. Mine certainly didn’t! When I look at
my life in the flow of time, many, many years past the flowey
skirts … it seems a little overwhelming.
Lots of experiences in life overwhelm us. Stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon
or fly over the
Look at your own life … all of your years taken at once. What does it
mean? How much of it has been under your control and how much has been beyond
what you had planned? Where has God been at work in it? Did you realize it at
the time? How close is God to you today? I ask you these questions because this
is my job. My job is to get you to uplink to the God of the universe …
along with the psalmist …to humble you before the majesty of God …
and to lift you to the love of God.
You and I throw this word "God" around as if we all knew exactly what
it means, and we often forget that the One of whom we speak is right here with
us...still speaking to us. I suppose
that's disrespectful by itself. Have you ever had anyone speak about you in the
third person as if you weren't standing there? If we think about it, maybe we shouldn't even
use the word "God" at all.
Maybe, like the ancient Jews, we should not even pronounce it out of
reverence and awe. After all, our lips aren't worthy of the word because of the
reality for which it stands. At least if we remembered whom we invoke each time
we speak it, perhaps we would use it more carefully.
"I still have many things to say to you," Jesus tells the disciples in
the upper room the night before he is crucified, "but you cannot bear them
now." Does he say this because they cannot deal with the terror he is
about to endure, or because … if for a moment… they got a glimpse
of the full majesty of the God he came to reveal it would reduce them to ashes?
But Jesus also promises the Spirit of Truth will come to finish the revelation
he began, and what the Spirit reveals will be Jesus himself and the One Jesus
calls the "Father."
In this brief breath of our lives we experience God. We are spiritual
creatures, every one of us. For some it is a vague sense of connection to
something beyond themselves, but they cannot name it … they do not see
themselves in any way guided by or bound by it … and they will scarcely
bother with it. For others it is a projection of what they would want the Deity
to be if they could make the Deity do what they want … what Paul Tillich
called "the Cosmic Bellhop" … God as their own almighty
personal valet. For still others it is a rigid definition of who God is and who
God isn't … and they will not turn away from their mental construct of
God because they think it would be unfaithful. But if they already know
“who God is and who God isn’t” then God can teach them
nothing new. I find truth somewhere among these. What we know of God, we know
imperfectly, from a human point of view.
The story of the Bible is that God keeps surprising us in ways we do not
expect, so we shouldn't presume we know all there is to know about God. The
story of God in the Bible is that God refuses to be controlled. The God of the
Exodus refuses to be reduced. The God in Jesus refuses to be manipulated. The
God poured out as Spirit refuses to be contained. This God is dangerous to our
plans and will not cater to our whims. But the story of the Bible is also that
God is mindful of us and bends down to us to care for us.
We cannot search out God, but God has searched us out. We cannot control God,
but God has guided us. "What are human beings that you are mindful of
them, mortals that you care for them?" It does not belong to our powers to
define God, but God has disclosed God's self to us in three ways. We celebrate those three ways this day as we
celebrate Trinity Sunday. First, we experience God as transcendent … the eternal Creator vastly
beyond our comprehension. When we forget this majestic sovereignty, our God
becomes too personal and narcissistic, even too small to handle our problems.
God is more than a tribal totem or a household servant.
Second, we experience God as incarnate, in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, God
with a human face, whom we can hear and understand and obey. When we forget this
available Christ, our God becomes impersonal and remote, uninvolved in our
ordinary lives. God is more than the Force within creation.
And third, we experience God as the invisible Spirit, God with us now in sudden
and surprising ways, God within us …God at work in our own stories
… God still speaking to us. When we forget this immediate God, our God
becomes all idea … head-trip and history with no real impact on our
lives.
These three God-experiences we have are so consistent that we realize they are
one and the same, and we call this self-disclosed God the "Trinity."
I realize the doctrine of the Trinity is heady stuff for a Sunday morning, hard
to explain and even harder to relate to our day to day lives. Words like
"doctrine," "Trinity," "theology" seem tedious
and academic, the stuffy trivialities of preachers and seminary professors. But
it is important because, you see, our theology shapes us. We imitate the God we
worship. Sometimes we make God over in our image … we conform God to our
likeness, and God is our self-projection written large. For instance, look at
the pictures of Jesus in your Bible and see if he isn't as white as a Swedish
librarian. Not only is that bogus historically, but it leaves many people out,
though most white folk naturally don't notice it. Of course, every race and
every tribe has considered God one of their own kind.
That's why the Bible insists we are made, all of us, in the image of God, and
not the other way round. And we are not to make images of God because God
defines who God is, not us. And we are not to worship our images of God because
they will surely misshape us.
The other night I watched a television program on strange religious practices
around the world. They showed a group of people in the
According to Jurgen Moltmann,
this three-in-one God also shows us God as "a community of equals."
If God is a Trinity of being, then we will see that equality, relationship, and
love are built into the very nature of being. As Will Willimon
puts it, "We are created for communion and mutuality, not for division and
competition. The world was created as a place of cooperation, interaction, and
community." If we believe in a trinitarian God
of relationship, we become more relational.
All of this being said, what matters most is that we tiny gnats … riding
our speck of dust through the vast spaces and endless times of the universe
… have experienced God … because God has
condescended to care about us. God, the almighty … larger than space and
older than time … cares about us and calls us into relationship …
into the company of God's friends … into life. Think about that today.
No, don’t think about it … feel it … like the psalmist
… in the pit of your stomach. Here you are at this moment in your life
and the same Jesus who came two thousand years ago remembers you at our
communion table as surely as you remember him. The same God who created the
whole universe looks down upon you in this moment with unfathomable care. The
same Spirit who came upon Peter and John and the other disciples at Pentecost
is here among us and inside you here and now today. You are not alone. Even if
you have fallen down on your job … even if time has been unkind to you
… even if your life has slipped by quickly while you were making other
plans … God is with you … God cares about you. And who are you,
that God should have you in mind and in heart? I'm talking "God"
here. God! - with you. Doesn't that make you catch
your breath … at least a little bit? It’s just amazing …
amazing grace! Amen.
May we pray?
Forgive us God, when we presume to tell you who you are and what you're
supposed to do and whom you like and dislike because we like or dislike them.
Forgive us for speaking about you so often as if you were not here. Forgive us
for trying to manipulate you into doing what we want while excising
"obedience" and "faithfulness" from our personal
vocabulary. Help us to remember who we are and put us in our place. Humble us,
but remind us again that you remember us with an immense love. Thank you, God.
Thank you. In the name of the Creator, and the Christ, and the Comforter, we
give you all glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.
Rev. Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa