Monday, June 12, 2017
Trinity
Sermon
for the Feast of the Most Holy and Life-giving Trinity
Year A June 11 , 2017
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
+In the
Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
St. Helena, from the Roman garrison town of York in what is
now England, was a Christian, and she was also the mother of St. Constantine, Peer of Apostles,
who ended the persecution of the Church in the Roman Empire. Early in the
fourth century, she made a famous tour of the Holy Land, where she was shown
the traditional sites of the Nativity and the Resurrection. Under her
influence, her son built great churches there to accommodate increasing numbers
of pilgrims. The basilicas can be visited to this day in Bethlehem and
Jerusalem.
At the urging of Constantine’s
mother-in-law, a third great church was built in southern Judæa, near the
ancient city of Hebron, at the place remembered as the home of Abraham and
Sarah, in a grove of oak trees called Mamre. According to Genesis, it was there that Abraham welcomed three mysterious
Visitors. The text calls them “men”, but Abraham addresses them sometimes in
the singular and sometimes in the plural. Sarah prepared a lavish banquet for
them, after which the Visitor promised that within a year’s time she would have
a son. Sarah was ninety years old, and so she laughed at the news. And the
Mysterious Visitor joked back that she would call her son, Isaac, which means
“he laughs.”
Constantine built the third basilica at
Mamre in honor of the Trinity. By the fourth century, Christians had a
well-established pattern of searching the Hebrew Scriptures for veiled hints
about Jesus. Abraham and Sarah’s guests were interpreted to refer, prophetically,
to the Mystery of the Identity of Jesus as the Son of God from all eternity.
Jesus revealed to humanity something we could never invent on our own: One God,
three Persons. It took a long time to work out the theological formulation, and
it was not complete even in Constantine’s time, but this was all based on
Jesus’ shocking habit of referring to God as “My Father,”
Until Jesus, there is no record of
anyone, anywhere, addressing God in that way. The Gospel also records that He
commissioned His Apostles to baptize people of all races and cultures in the
Name of the “Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” There are, indeed,
passages in the Hebrew Scriptures quoting God as addressing David as “my son,”
but David does not turn around and call God “my Father.” In the Psalms, the
meaning is symbolic. Symbolic and prophetic,
in the view of the early Church, because God’s honorary “son”, David, would be
the ancestor of the One who would
call God “My Father,” because He would be — in fact — God’s Son.
So, Constantine built shrines in honor
of the three great Mysteries revealed in Jesus Christ: the Incarnation, the
Resurrection, and the Trinity. It is poetically appropriate, perhaps, that the
Basilica of the Trinity did not survive the later Arab invasions, since the
Nativity and Resurrection can be placed in time and space, but the Trinity
cannot be so located. The basilica at Mamre commemorated a cryptic event in
Scripture, later interpreted to refer to the Mystery of the Trinity. The
Nativity and Resurrection were visible. The Trinity is not. It is only by
looking back and rereading the Hebrew Scriptures in the Light of the revelation
of Jesus Christ, that we can detect a reference to the Trinity.
Christians also find a Trinitarian hint
in the very first chapter of Genesis,
when God created heaven and earth. We read that the Spirit of God moved over
the abyss, and then that God spoke the Word of creation: Let there be light. So, it is possible to see the Three Divine
Persons in that account of creation. It is important to notice that all three
participate in the creative act. Since we are talking about something that we
can never really understand, it is all too easy to err by simplifying the
Mystery into something that we can understand. These simplifications for the
sake of comprehension actually close off the Mystery. They are called heresies.
One of the first heresies was the idea
that Father, Son and Holy Spirit simply referred to three activities of the one
God, toward creation: the Father creates, the Son redeems, and the Holy Spirit
sanctifies. In fact, we do tend to
associate these three Divine activities with the three Divine Persons in this
way. The heresy is to think that “Father, Son and Spirit” are nothing other
than names for these activities. If that were true, then the Trinity could not
be thought of as being before the beginning of time and creation. And yet
Scripture also teaches us that the Son was with the Father from before all
eternity. So, “Creator” does not name
the First Person, nor does “Redeemer” name the Second, nor “Sanctifier” the
Third. “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” refer to relations between the Three
living in perfect harmony outside time and space, all Three participating in
every act of God.
One reason to be aware of this heresy,
called “modalism”, is that it tends to obscure the Reality that one contemporary
Orthodox theologian has called “Being as Communion.” Before creation, God is
not simple, undifferentiated Unity: from before all eternity, God is a Society of
Perfect Love. If one is looking for a scriptural warrant, it can be found in John’s
epistles, where we read that “God is
Love." Love is God’s essence, as our own Bishop Gore taught us a century
ago. But if love is God’s essence then God’s love did not begin with the act of
creation. God’s love is active from all eternity, outside time and space.
Love, however, is an act between
persons. Indeed one could go so far as to say that the definition of a person
is one capable of love. We know this from our own, human experience, which is a
reflection of Divine Reality. God is personal, and you can’t be a person by
yourself!
Sadly, our human reflection is dim, the
image marred, and the love imperfect. Human love is limited, and marred by the
alienation tradition calls sin. In
God, there is no such alienation: the love among the Three Divine Persons is
infinite and perfect. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be separated from
one another, but neither can they be confused with one another: they remain
entirely distinct, yet inseparable in the Community of Love.
The great Russian icon of the Most Holy
and Life-giving Trinity seeks to express this Mystery. The golden wings behind the
figures symbolize divinity, and they touch each other. I
think they represent the Unity of the Divine Essence of Love. The icon also
expresses the mutual love of the Three Persons by seating them around Abraham
and Sarah’s table, upon which stands a cup, a shared cup — a symbol of
community, communion, and sacrifice. The original icon depicts a tiny
sacrificial lamb within the cup, recalling the Gospel’s metaphor of cup as sacrifice. The shared Life of Divine Love is a Life of self-giving.
Self-giving is an aspect of the
essential Being of the One God. The icon expresses it in its deeper structure:
the inner lines of the two outer figures replicate the shape of the chalice in
the middle, as if to say the very essence of God is self-giving, that is life-giving Love.
A final Mystery can be seen in the
perspective of the icon, which is reversed. Look at the dais upon which the
three figures sit and then consider the riddle, “How many are gathered around
the table?” Well, the obvious answer is three, but the reversal of perspective
means that the focal point of the picture is not somewhere deep within it but
rather outside it. The focal point is, in fact, where whoever is looking at the
icon is standing. That means that instead of three, there is an indefinite
number gathered around the table. All who will open their hearts are invited
into to the Communion of the Three Divine Persons, into the interpersonal Love and
Life of the Holy Trinity.
HOLY,
HOLY, HOLY
IS
THE LORD GOD OF HOSTS,
WHO
WAS AND IS AND IS
AND
IS TO COME.
AMEN
Pentecost
Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost
Year A June 4 , 2017
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
In the last days it will
be, God declares,
that I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh…
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Pentecost in Judaism was the feast of the first-fruits of
the harvest — the winter wheat. By the time of Jesus, it had also become the
feast of the giving of the Law on Sinai. Law is a supernatural gift to God’s
chosen people, a gift that makes them holy, set apart from other nations, a
gift that nourishes their consciousness as the winter wheat of the original
feast nourishes their bodies. The law, therefore, is not something antithetical
to the Spirit, but rather a gift of the Spirit. As we say in our Creed, the
Spirit “spoke through the prophets,” which means, first and foremost, through
Moses, through whom God gave the Law.
So, we must not think of the
Christian identification of Pentecost with the Spirit as a correction or a contradiction,
but as an enlargement, an extension, a fulfillment. As of old, the Spirit
inscribed the Law on the stone tablets of Sinai, for Moses to carry down to the
people, so now the Spirit inscribes the Law on the hearts of humanity, as God
promised through the Holy Prophet Ezekiel. Spirit and law are not in opposition
at all. When we speak of the distinction between the spirit of the law and the
letter of the law, we are talking about something else. The inscription on the
stone, the letter of the Law, does not give life, but that which produces the
Law does: that is the Spirit, Whom in the Creed We Call “the Lord, the Giver of
life.” The letter of the law cannot save us, it cannot bring us to the fullness
of God’s intention for humanity. The underlying Spirit of the law, of which the
letter is an expression for a particular place and time, comes into the world in
an unprecedented way on Pentecost.
The Spirit does not replace
the law; it fulfills it, expands it, and renders it intelligible and
life-giving to all flesh. Thus, all the various nationalities assembled in
Jerusalem hear the Apostles in their own languages. These people are not
pagans, they are Jews of the Diaspora — people who had arranged to come to
Jerusalem from all parts of the Empire, to celebrate the feast. And many of
them, we are told, were proselytes, that is pagans who were not Jews by birth,
who had converted to Judaism. They knew the law. Probably many of them could
read it in the original Hebrew. But now,
they were amazed to hear the Apostles proclaiming it in their own languages. In
other words, the Spirit extends the Covenant, of which the Law is the outward
sign, to all flesh.
The Law, which was
originally given to set one people apart from all the rest, the Law which had
been the marker of that people as chosen above all other nations, this
same Law now enlightens all nations, universally. The Spirit is the extension
of the gift of the Law to all flesh. The life-giving nourishment of Pentecost
now appears as a gift not given exclusively to the Chosen People, but to all
flesh. The Chosen People are chosen not to dominate other peoples, but to act
as God’s instrument to enlighten and liberate them.
I was reading the story of
Saul and Samuel this week, and one detail jumped out at me in this context: “at
that time the Ark went forth with the Israelites into battle.” The Ark, where the stone tablets of the Law were kept, was
carried into battle against the Philistines, and others. The Law was the sign
of God’s favor to Israel, as opposed to everybody else. At least, that is how
it seemed to the people at the time, about 1000 years before Christ. They
thought what it meant was that their nation was chosen by God to rule everybody
else.
Occasionally, however, the
Ark was captured by the enemy, which naturally produced great consternation
amongst the Israelites! God had to intervene by causing all kinds of misfortune
to these enemies until they sent the Ark back! This may have been an early clue
that more was going on here than the ancient Hebrews understood.
Gradually, the consciousness
grew that this Ark — the symbol of the Presence of God in human society — God With Us, Emmanuel — was not the possession of Israel: on the contrary,
Israel was the instrument of God. The Ark represented Israel’s identity:
Israel’s heart and soul, what made Israel Israel. The ancient Hebrews understood that very
well. What they learned gradually was that the Ark was not merely the sign of
God’s Covenant with a particular people, but the sign of God’s purpose for
Israel as a Light to enlighten the Gentiles. The holiness the Ark represented
was to extend to all flesh.
The literal commandments,
inscribed in stone by the finger of God, and enshrined in the Ark, were to be
inscribed anew on the hearts of all people: as the Holy Prophet Ezekiel had
foretold, the hearts of stone would become hearts of flesh, upon which God’s
righteousness would be written. The first-fruits celebrated on the Feast of
Pentecost, would nourish not only the people of Israel, but people of every
race and nation.
As foretold by the Hoy
Prophet Joel, the Spirit of God is poured out upon all flesh. The sign will
be the new wheat of Pentecost celebrated in Jerusalem, made into bread
transformed by the Spirit. This transfigured Bread will be the sign of the New
Covenant as the tablets of stone are the sign of the Old. By this Bread, all
races and nations of humanity come into the Covenant and become the instrument
of the Spirit’s transformation of Creation.
ALLELUIA
THE SPIRIT OF GOD
FILLS THE WORLD
ALLELUIA
VII Easter
Sermon
for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
Year A May 28 , 2017
|
|
Holy
Trinity & St. Anskar
Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up toward heaven?
This Jesus, who has been
taken up from you into heaven,
will come in the same way
as you saw him go into heaven.
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The angels’ comment
following their derisive question seems to be a non-sequitur. If He is going to return in the same way He left, then why NOT
look into heaven? Where else SHOULD we be looking? Unless what they saw was not
really Jesus floating up into the sky, but something else, which they couldn’t
describe precisely. So they talked about clouds, and being “taken up”.
Maybe it was something like
what happened in Emmaus, when having broken bread with the two disciples, He
“vanished from their sight”.
In both instances the
disciples’ reaction was surprising. Cleopas and his companion went right back
to Jerusalem, with a kind of confidence and joy.
And Luke says that after the Ascension, the disciples “returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the
temple blessing God.” But why weren’t they sad? The Lord had disappeared. Why
were they joyful? It must have had to do with what they had seen, which they
could not describe in words, but in images that made sense to the three-storied
model of the world that they shared.
Giving free rein to
imagination, maybe in our day we would say something like this. “While He was
blessing them, He seemed to grow radiant until He just dissolved in brightness.
But He didn’t seem to be gone, even though we couldn’t see Him anymore.” If it
were something like that, then it would make no sense to stare into the sky,
and it would explain the joy. They must have felt that the Lord was still with
them.
Our picture of the world
may be not entirely unfriendly to this sort of thing. After all, we think of
the visible world as bundles of energy ~ of light, speaking poetically. So maybe visions like the
Transfiguration and Ascension ~ and whatever happened when the empty tomb was emptied, and in
the subsequent appearances ~ all had to do with a new organization of the
particular bundles of energy that had previously been known as Jesus. But then,
this kind of speculation is probably just another way of “gazing up into
heaven”. Appropriate enough ~ for a few minutes ~ but not what we are called to
do indefinitely.
Like the Apostles, we are
called to live in the world, in time, but also in joy and anticipation, and to
spend our lives blessing God. We are NOT called to know the Day and the Hour of
His return and the Restoration of the Kingdom. Any attempt to fix the date is
impious. And when He does, return, it will be “in the same way as [we] saw Him
go.” That is, we will recognize Him in a completely new and inexpressible way,
as present in the world, filling it, and permeating every ounce of matter and
every atom and subatomic particle unto the perfection of the cosmic recreation
He has already begun, and the Transfiguration of creation which we taste
already here and now at the Table in the Temple where we are continually
rejoicing and blessing God.
ALLELUIA!
CHRIST
IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD,
TRAMPLING
DOWN DEATH BY DEATH,
AND GIVING
LIFE TO THOSE IN THE GRAVE!
ALLELUIA!
VI Easter
VI Easter
May 21, 2017
Holy Trinity & St.
Anskar
If you love me, you will keep my
commandments
+In the Name of God,
the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Now, commandments are given only by God. Jesus does not call his precepts “my Fathers
commandments.” Jesus does not claim the
role of a prophet, God’s mouthpiece: Jesus claims the authority of God in His
own right. Not “Thus saith the Lord,” but "Whoever has seen Me has seen
the Father.” Just after the part of the Discourse we heard today, Jesus says
Anyone who loves Me will
keep my commandments. My Father will love them, and We will come to them and
make Our home with them.
I often repeat that to you. It is an amazing saying.
Among all the stunning upsets of conventional reality found in the Gospel, this
is right up there at the top: the Father comes to us. The Unmoved Mover, the
Creator of all, the Ancient of Days outside and above all that is, visible and
invisible, dwelling in light inaccessible, before time and forever, gets up, as
it were, and moves to take up residence with US! The Father’s House Is the
world made fit for Him to dwell in, not so that we may leave the world and
escape to that House, but so that the Father’s House may come into the world —
that the cosmos may become the House of Many Mansions.
How are we to reconcile the
inclusivity of the Many Mansions with the exclusive-sounding declaration that
no one comes to the Father except through Jesus? That’s not too hard, really.
It all depends on what coming to the
Father means. I once had a friend who was a parish secretary. He had a
little sign made for his desktop that said
Joseph Spires, Parish Secretary
No Man Cometh Unto the Father but by Me
Okay. That’s funny because of the pun on Father. The word has more than one
meaning. Likewise to come to the Father
may not mean what is obvious to us: to come to God. In the very same passage, which we heard last week, Jesus
refers to God: “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” But then He refers to My Father. We understand that God and
Father are synonyms. Jesus could
have said “No one comes to God except
through Me.” But He didn’t: He said “No
one comes to the Father except
through Me.” That may simply mean that
no one could come to acknowledge God as Jesus’ Father, except by acknowledging
Jesus as His Son — which is kind of obvious. In order for God to be Jesus’s Father, there must be a Son.
Jews and Muslims don’t call God Father.
Nobody ever did until Jesus taught us to. That doesn’t mean that Jews like
Abraham Joshua Heschel or Hindus like Mahatma Gandhi, or Muslims like Rumi, or
all those sages and prophets outside Israel, who taught humanity to hope and
who are acknowledged as messengers of God by our own Catechism, have no
relationship to God, that they are deceived. Far from it! Who can say that they
are not among those who keep the Son’s commandments, even though they don’t
think of it that way?
In the next passage, Jesus
summarizes His commandments:
‘This
is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to
lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
Those who love one another, who devote their lives to the
poor and oppressed, will be loved by the Father of Jesus. Whether or not they
know God as His Father, Jesus promises that the Father and the Son will come to
them, and make Their home with them. The
only difference between them and the disciples to
whom He is talking is that the disciples know what is going on.
I do not
call you servants any longer,
because the servant does not know
what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made
known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
The implication is that the Father has plenty of
servants, who do not know what He is doing, but nevertheless obey his
commandments – obeying what the Son has commanded, even though they be unaware
of their own obedience.
These servants, who obey God
even though they do not call God Father,
are not outside salvation. In another place, Jesus tells us that they will be
surprised, when they come to their judgment and learn that they have been
serving Jesus all along. “When did we do that?" they ask, and the King
responds that they did it when they had mercy on “the least of my brothers and
sisters,” that is upon any other human being. They do not have to know anything
about Jesus or His commandments in order to hear the glorious words: “well done
my good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your Lord!”
Those who do know — whom
Jesus calls “friends" — are no longer “servants,” and they enter the
fullness of eternal life now. They know Jesus as the Son of the Father: they
keep His commandments, and they know they are doing so. That is eternal life:
as last week’s Collect puts it, Jesus is the One “whom truly to know is eternal
life.” The fullness of eternal life includes the experience of Jesus as the Son
of the Father. That doesn’t mean that those who lack this knowledge are
excluded, just that they haven’t yet been let in on the secret. That is why the
King calls them “faithful servants”
at the Last Judgment, just before He invites them into eternal life sharing the
joy of the friends of the Lord.
Salvation understood as a healthy relationship to God includes all the servants
of God, who do not know Him, as well as all the friends who do.
The fullness of eternal life
includes knowledge. Knowledge is one of those good things that
pass our understanding, of which the Collect speaks, which the Father has
prepared for those who love Him. In this life, human beings are given various
levels of knowledge; but those who keep His commandments, as He tells us, are
those who love Him. And in loving Him by keeping His commandments, they come to
know Him, because the Father and the Son will love them and come to them and
make Their home with them.
Alleluia!
Christ is risen from the
dead,
trampling down death by
death,
And giving life to all in
the tombs.
Alleluia!
