Holy Trinity Sermon 2020
Sermon for
Sunday 7 June 2020
Holy Trinity Sunday
The Rev.
Carrie Ballenger
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| 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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