Holy Trinity Sermon 2020


Sermon for Sunday 7 June 2020
Holy Trinity Sunday


The Rev. Carrie Ballenger

Genesis1:1-2:4a

"A God's eye view"

The chapel at Anafora, outside Cairo, Egypt


Late last week I sat in a large black exam chair and pressed my face into the machine that would measure my eyesight for a new pair of glasses. As letters and numbers and images appeared, the optician asked me, “Can you read the smallest line? What about the one above it? Do you see one hot air balloon, or two? Which can you see better: this one, or this one? #1 or #2? Now is it clear?”

And then, without skipping a beat, he asked me:

“And what about Corona? Is it from God? Is He punishing us? Is this the end of the world?”

(Note to self: This is what you get for telling people what you do for a living!)

“I’m sorry” I replied, sitting back in the chair now to look the doctor in the eye. “That’s not so clear.”

Genesis chapter 1, verse 31:

God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.

I must say, I’ve never thought of this reading from Genesis as particularly challenging or difficult. While it’s true that some Christians regard this 2,500-year old creation story as science, and that can be challenging to address, in general, I’ve always thought the main point of this ancient poem is pretty clear:

In the beginning was God, and then there was God and everything else.

God made the light and the dark. God made the earth and the seas. God made plants and trees, sea monsters and cats and even mosquitos, and then God made us in God’s own image.

And it was good! God saw everything that God had made, and what God declared it to be very, very, good.

But somehow, this very familiar passage of Scripture speaks to me differently at this moment in time. Things aren’t so clear to me today.

Because right now, when I look at the world, it’s hard to see the good.

It’s hard to see the good in the midst of a global pandemic.
It’s hard to see the good when the truth of racial injustice in my country has been laid bare, and centuries of pain inflicted by humans on other humans can no longer be ignored.
It’s hard to see the good when, closer to home, annexation of the West Bank looms just around the corner, and a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict seems further away than ever before.

Scripture says “God saw all that God had made, and indeed it was very good!” But these days, I wonder if maybe God needs a new pair of glasses. Things don’t look so good to me right now. My fellow humans don’t look so good to me right now.

Then again, maybe I’m looking at things from the wrong point of view.

When I was in Egypt last spring, I stayed at a retreat center called Anafora, just about an hour from Cairo. It was a beautiful and holy place, with a very unusual worship space. The chapel was built in the round, formed out of the dust of the earth, and instead of pews it was filled with colorful rag carpets so worshipers could sit and pray on the floor. Small round windows circled the room, bathing us in natural light.
At the front of the sanctuary were two massive painted icons – one of Jesus and one of Mary—and an oddly-shaped tree stump which served as an altar.

And just above that strange altar was a massive skylight—in the shape of an eye.

That eye really freaked me out.

To me, it called to mind a God who is always watching, “Sting-style”—every breath you take, every move you make.

Or maybe Santa-style: “He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”  

I thought of a favorite book and now television series, Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid's Tale”. In Gilead, the women in red cloaks greet one another with “Under his eye.”

NOPE. Nope. Nope.

I was not into that all-seeing eye window at all! I thought it was creepy.


But near the end of my week at the retreat center, one of the religious sisters joined us in the chapel to explain its architecture. The eye window, she said, is not intended as a symbol of an all-seeing, spying God. Rather, it serves as a reminder for us to always see ourselves—and others—the way God sees us: as beloved children, beautiful creations, each of us worthy of love and respect.

Well, I still thought the eye was creepy! But I liked that idea, of trying to have a “God’s eye view” of the world.

On a podcast recently I heard an interview with Anne McClain, an American astronaut who recently returned from a 6-month mission on the International Space Station. The interviewer asked if she was scared when she did her space walks. And did she feel far away from Earth, far from home?

“No,” she replied. “I actually felt very close to Earth. And I wish everyone could see our planet from that point of view. No borders, no nations, just one beautiful earth. I think there would be a lot fewer wars.”

Certainly, this is one way to think of a “God’s eye view” – a common one, in fact. God has a view from above, like that eye window in the chapel roof. God has a view from afar, like an astronaut would have from space. From this far-off vantage point, perhaps it’s a little easier to understand how God could see everything God made, and pronounce it all to be good—maybe God can’t see the mess we’ve made of things!

But you know, today is Holy Trinity Sunday. And therefore it occurs to me that because we understand God to be one-in-three and three-in-one, then a “God’s eye view” of the world could never be from just one angle. Certainly a God’s eye view is not exclusively the big picture view from a long time ago and far away.

In the beginning was God.

And also: in the manger is God.
At the table with sinners is God.
On the road with disciples is God.
On the cross was God!

And from here, among us, Our Lord Jesus sees us clearly—our sins, our struggles, our pains, our sorrows. He sees how we hurt one another. He sees all this—all that God has made—and with arms outstretched, he looks upon us with love, mercy, and forgiveness.

This is also a God’s eye view.

For more than a week, my friend Kirsten (a Lutheran pastor in Minneapolis) has opened her church to become a center for first aid, food and supplies for those protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of police. Many thousands of people have come to the church for water, for rest, for support.

And I am reminded that because we proclaim a Triune God, we know that this is also a God’s eye view.

The Holy Spirit is there in Minneapolis, among the piles of diapers and toilet paper and water bottles. The Spirit of God is there with the volunteers working day and night to provide a safe haven. The Spirit of God is there, looking upon the police and protesters alike, all these creatures She herself breathed into being, and in spite of the smoke, in spite of the crowds, in spite of the tear gas, God’s view is unobstructed. It is clear. God sees us as we were on the day of creation. She sees GOODNESS.

I keep going back to that eye-shaped window in the ceiling of that chapel in Egypt. And I wonder what it looks like for followers of Jesus, children of a Triune God, to take a God’s eye view of the world.

In spite of Coronavirus realities, I don’t think taking a God’s eye view means standing back, keeping a safe distance so that borders disappear, human differences blur, and so that we can literally overlook human sin and suffering. After all, this is not what God has done. This is not who God is.

God loves all of creation, every human being, extravagantly, radically, without boundary or border.

But God does not love us generically. God loves us specifically.

We do not have an All Lives Matter God. We have a Black Lives Matter God. A Palestinian Lives Matter God. A Trans Lives Matter God.

We know this, because we the Creator has come near to us, born in human form, in order to see things from our point of view—and specifically, from the view of all the suffering and oppressed.

God came near, and then God went a little crazy, sending the Spirit out into every corner of the Earth, where She is even now busy comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable and always expanding our default and familiar points of view.

What all this means to me is this: 
although we may never get the chance to go to space and see our planet from an astronaut’s perspective, we can certainly get a God’s eye view of the world, and of our neighbors, when we take up the cross and follow Jesus, standing in solidarity with all those who suffer and are oppressed.

And anytime we live out our baptismal callings, guided by the Spirit received in baptism—
living among God’s faithful people, hearing the Word of God and sharing in the Lord’s supper, proclaiming the good news of God in Christ in word and deed, serving all people, following the example of Jesus, and striving for justice and peace in all the earth—
then we also are gifted a God’s eye view of the world and (if we’re open to it) of ourselves.

Dear siblings in Christ, it’s true that the world is a mess. Some days it may be hard to see the good – in people, in politics, in the church, in the future.

What I hope you hear on this Holy Trinity Sunday, however, is that the Creator of the universe has come radically near, has emptied God's self on the cross, and then has gone to the ends of the earth, in order to SEE YOU BETTER.

Yes, God sees you clearly. God sees all that God has made! And indeed, God has declared you and everything in the world good--not because of anything you've done or not done, but because a good God is the foundation of the world, of humanity, of you.

In the beginning, goodness.
On the cross, goodness.
In the streets, at the checkpoints, at the table, in your hearts, goodness.

And lo, I will be with you always, to the end of the age, says God in Christ Jesus.
Amen.

Let us pray:
O God, where hearts are fearful and constricted, grant courage and hope. Where anxiety is infectious and widening, grant peace and reassurance. Where impossibilities close every door and window, grant imagination and resistance. Where distrust twists our thinking, grant healing and illumination. Where spirits are daunted and weakened, grant soaring wings and strengthened dreams. All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

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