"Closer I am to fine" Sermon for Trinity Sunday 2019

Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday 2019

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger

Romans 5:1-5; Psalm 8 

Apricots (mish mish) for sale at Damascus Gate
Sunday 16 Jun 2019

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Who is God? Who am I?

What is God doing here?

What am I doing here?

These questions are often on the hearts and minds of people who spend time in the Holy Land. Whether you’re here for a week, or a year, or much longer—and whether you admit it or not—most folks come to this place looking for answers, or at the very least for some kind of spiritual experience.

And this is completely normal. Where else would you go to seek clarity about God, or about yourself? It makes perfect sense to think that time spent walking and praying in the land where Jesus Christ, God-made-flesh, was born, was crucified, and was raised from the dead, would result in some special insight into the way God works in the world and in our lives.

But…if you’ve spent any time here at all, you know that most people leave this place with more questions than answers.

I can’t count the number of pilgrims I’ve had in my office, tears in their eyes, describing how they came with great hopes for a once-in-a-lifetime Holy Land experience, only to be bitterly disappointed—by the tour company, by the weather, by the political situation, or by the realization that this land we call holy is just as unholy as the one they came from.

A few weeks ago, we welcomed a large group from the United States here to Redeemer, and one of the guests had some special words for me after the service. He said, “Carrie, I met you last summer at our church assembly in Massachusetts. Maybe you remember me—I asked you a very simple question about Israel and Palestine and you gave me a very complex answer…”

“Right…” I said.

“Well” he continued, “I’ve been here for three days, and now I understand why you answered that way. This place is complicated!”

Amen!

This place is indeed complicated—politically, religiously, geographically, historically.

And it is also very simple. This city, this place, this land, is like any other—it’s filled with people who, in spite of their differences, simply want to live and to love, to work and to pray, to create a future for their children, and to sleep well at the end of the day.

Now, in the same way, God can seem very complicated—maybe especially here in Jerusalem, and especially on Holy Trinity Sunday. Because this day is set aside in the church year to reflect on God’s three-in-oneness and one-in-threeness, I could spend the next 12 to 15 minutes telling you how God is like a three-leaf clover, like three forms of water, or like different parts of an apple. I could talk about Modalism and Arianism, Docetism and Adoptionism and various other heresies, impressing you with all I learned in seminary about who God isn’t and how God doesn’t work. I could have us all recite the ancient Athanasian Creed out of the hymnal, which takes about 5 minutes to say, is only ever used on Holy Trinity Sunday, and which one of my clergy friends admits she “hates with the fire of a thousand suns.”

I could make God very, very complicated this morning.

Or, I could tell you about sitting in my garden on Thursday evening,

writing a Trinity sermon while the sun was setting,

The smell of jasmine filling the air,

The kitten chasing her tail at my feet,

A glass of bourbon within reach.

And I could tell you how, mysteriously, these words of the psalmist:

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them?” (Psalm 8)

Started to mingle with the lyrics from the playlist on my phone:

“The less I seek the source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine”

And how suddenly, in that beautiful moment of being alive,

God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

God the three-in-one and one-in-three,

God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,

became both very, very near,

and very, very simple.  

Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff once wrote:

“Reason is not the only way into the heart of the Trinity. There is also the imagination. Through it we grasp better the existential meaning that the Blessed Trinity has for our life. It is through our imagination that we realize that the human person, the family, community, society, church, and cosmos are signs, symbols, and sacraments of the Trinity.”  (Holy Trinity, Perfect Community, Boff, p.114)

…the human person, the family, community, society, church, and cosmos are signs, symbols, and sacraments of the Trinity…

My Holy Trinity sermon did not get finished that evening in the garden.

In fact, words failed me completely after a moment, so I just closed my computer and called it a day.

But that’s ok.

That’s ok, because really a loving God doesn’t want or need to be explained.

God certainly doesn’t want or need to be “church-splained” which is what we preachers sadly so often do from the pulpit on Trinity Sunday.

God wants to be lived, and to be loved.

God wants to be experienced.

And so it seems to me the best way to celebrate the Holy Trinity—on Holy Trinity Sunday, or on another other day of the year—is to sing “Holy, holy, holy”,

To breathe the morning air,

To write a poem,

To run as fast as our legs can take us,

To hug the ones we love,

To let the tears flow,

To bake a cake,

To laugh until our bellies ache,

To share a meal,

To use our imaginations,

To use the bodies God gave us.

And perhaps the best way to get to know the Trinity,

Is not to read the best books of theology,

Or to look for the perfect words or the cleverest analogies to explain God,

But to get to know other people,

And to pour out our whole selves in love for God’s creation,

Just as God’s love for us has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit.

Dear Jeni and Colin, Courtney and Genna, Katie and Calla, Hannah, Phifer, and Eli,

Today we gather not only to celebrate the Trinitarian God, but to celebrate, bless and send you all on your way. The ELCJHL, and the ELCA, give thanks for the year of service the Young Adults in Global Mission have offered, and for the four years of mission service Jeni and Colin have given here in the Holy Land. During your time here, you have come to know and love the people of this land—and therefore, you have come to know and love God in new ways.

One of the things I can tell you is that when you return to the United States, there will be folks who expect you to have special knowledge not only about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but about God. They’ll want to know what it was like to “walk where Jesus walked.” They will probably ask you to pray at every family gathering from now until you’re 80 years old. Be forewarned.

This can be a lot of pressure! Because, well, as you know—it’s complicated.

This place is complicated. Your feelings about your time here, and about leaving here, are no doubt complicated.

Your feelings about God, as you leave here, may also be complicated.

So hear again some wise words from Leonardo Boff:

“The Blessed Trinity is a sacramental mystery. In other words, it is something that appears in many signs, that can always be more known, yet our effort to know never ends.” (p. 115)

Our effort to know God never ends.

In other words—Holy Trinity Sunday is not the period at the end of the sentence about God, the day when everyone in church walks saying “Aha! I’ve got it now! Thanks for explaining God to me, Pastor!” Rather, the hope is that all of us who are gathered here today will leave having had an experience of God’s oneness, of God’s nearness, of God’s mystery, our imaginations primed to notice God’s unfolding story in our lives through Jesus, crucified and risen and through the gift of the Spirit into our hearts.

And in the same way, dear Jeni and Colin, dear YAGM, know that this is not the period at the end of your story with the Holy Land, either, or with the friends you have come to know and to love here.

You may not know what to say about it yet. Words may fail you.

That’s ok.

Today, maybe all you can do is sing, and give thanks, and dream about what the next sentences in life and in your walk of faith will be.

Maybe all any of us can do, on any day, is the same:

Maybe all we ever can do is give thanks to the One who is the Lord our Lord, whose name is majestic in all the earth, and whose glory is chanted above the heavens (Psalm 8),

Who has loved us all the way to the cross,

Who has defeated death through the empty tomb,

Whose ways often seem more than we can ever know or understand—

And who nevertheless shows up for us in the simplest and most surprising of ways:

through community,

through friendship,

through song,

through bread and wine shared around the table,

and, I would even say, through apricots,

which, like God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

like peace,

like joy,

like new love,

seem to show up just when we thought they never would,

just when the world seems too complicated,

just when we need their simplicity and sweetness the most.

Let us pray:

May God the Father bless us;
may Christ take care of us;
the Holy Ghost enlighten us all the days of our life.
The Lord be our defender and keeper of body and soul,
both now and for ever, to the ages of ages. Amen.

(Æthelwold c 908-984)