“Getting to
Three: Via (Come!), Veritas (See!), Vita (It is Good!)”
As further proof of the pervasive,
persistent, even preemptive powers of Pentecost, an AP story in the paper
this week begins, “If winning is everything, British anthropologists have
some advice: Wear red! “Their survey of four sports at the 2004 Olympic
Games in Athens shows competitors were more likely to win their contests if
they wore red uniforms or body armor.” The story goes on to say red is
associated with aggression in many animals, scarlet markings signal male
dominance. Red may intimidate subconsciously through implicit messages of
vigor and danger! The story concludes, “When people get angry, their faces
turn red. It’s also a reason stop signs are red. So are most Ferraris!”
Not sure when God consciously made
colors, perhaps not until the rainbow after the flood. The creation cycle
of stories runs through the first eleven chapters of Genesis, ending with
Babel and creation of the infinite colors, cultures, nations and tongues of
us! The God of both Genesis 1 and 11 clearly means something other than
only “multiply” in this charge to us to be fully human. God does not simply
want greater numbers of “us,” whoever “we” are. God wants diversity of
species themselves and diversity within our species. God wants complexity
of the whole universe – We are still discovering species! Still learning
the age of the earth! – and complexity of our species and each one of us.
Think of all we are yet to discover about
ourselves – about our sexuality, our spirituality, our relationality. The
only real frontiers left to us are between and among one another. And
surely this same God means something other than “dominion” as “domination” –
whether attempts to dominate earth herself (How do we dominate a tsunami?)
or attempts to dominate other species or one another within this species.
Surely there is to “dominion” here some meaning of “response-ability,”
answerability and accountability for our attitudes and our actions towards
earth, as the one species fully capable of messing it all up!
Today we celebrate Trinity! Father, Son
and Holy Spirit! Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer of Life! “Wherever two or
three are gathered!” Two’s company, three’s politics. Let’s play
identify the sources: Faith, hope and love! Life, liberty, and the pursuit
of the almighty dollar! “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in
all things charity!” Via, verite, vita! The way, the truth, and the
life! Veni, vidi, vici! God comes, God sees, God proclaims, “It is
good!” The Spirit is about getting us to three, giving us an option, an
alternative, the “new thing” God always is doing. Not just “compromise”
between existing options (though we could use a little of that in the Senate
right now!) but God’s own new “alternative.”
It is said a triangular base is the
strongest. Each of us is made up of mind, and body, and the spirit that
brings out the best in both. Even the Spirit, in Wesleyan heritage, comes
in three “graces” – prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying – also known as
sustaining and even perfecting! Latin American base community meetings
follow the format see, judge, act. Worship revolves around confession,
word, offering. Church membership asks for time, talent, treasure.
Among our “Words for Meditation” this
morning we see our church “Articles of Religion” provide, “In the unity of
this Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and
eternity.” We also see Tertullian’s “image of the Trinity as a plant, with
the Father the deep root, the Son as the shoot that breaks forth into the
world, the Spirit as that which spreads beauty and fragrance, ‘fructifying
the earth with flower and fruit.’” It is good to be among fellow
fructifiers!
If we look at our own brochure in the
pews, we find, “Like a tree, planted by the Truckee, we are: / -- rooted in
the waters of a deep history . . . / -- spreading branches that reach out to
nourish the entire community . . . / -- bearing abundant fruits of shelter,
sustenance and healing . . . “Come celebrate with us the diversity and
wholeness of our congregation, our community, our nation and our world. We
commit to a life of joy and justice, peace and plenty for all!”
Trinity helps us grasp the infinite
creativity of our God. Not only is God not done with us yet, God is not
even done with God yet! God’s very self, as person, as people, even now
learns and grows, changes and expands. God will not quit till God gets us
right! Jews find this God so awesome and so mysterious as not even to dare
to name “God” at all. Moslems not only have ninety-nine names for God
already, they are always searching for that perfect hundredth name!
Something about God lies always just beyond grasping of any kind.
Brian Wren writes in a hymn for our time,
“God of many names, gathered into one, in your glory come and meet us,
moving, endlessly becoming.” Mechtild of Magdeburg praises God, “O burning
Mountain, O chosen Sun, / O perfect Moon, O fathomless Well, / O
unattainable Height, O clearness beyond measure, / O Wisdom without end, O
mercy without limit, / O strength beyond resistance, O Crown beyond all
majesty; / The humblest thing you created sings your praise!”
Naming God for ourselves, based upon
scripture, tradition, reason, experience bringing new insights each day, is
a precious gift of the Spirit to each of us. In worship we try to practice
inclusive language. But that does not mean God is neutered and spayed.
Even as we name “God,” God eludes us. God is always both “now” and “not
yet,” both “here” and “not there,” both “found” and “sought for.” Not only
is God God of the many becoming as one. God is also God of the one is
becoming as many! Let thousands of flowers bloom! The power and presence
of this God’s creation are not only once and forever but new again every
day, even every last moment of every day. We are a living people, of a
living faith in a living God, whose living word and living works in a living
Christ call us to give living witness and living service to a living Spirit
to the living ends of a living Earth! God and everything, always moving,
endlessly becoming.
In some ways it hurts that Kansas gets
the Kvasnickas again when they move back there this summer. But then,
Kansas needs the Kvasnickas! Kansas needs reminding that God is not done
with anyone, anything yet. “Creationism” in the fullest and richest sense,
creation-centered spiritual life and practice, is alive and well and at work
in our lives everyday. Bill and Connie, may be commission you to Kansas as
evangelists of God’s own evolutionary creativity?
Are we as a species fully created, fully
evolved? Look at us! Look around us at what we are doing to one another!
To our children! To our earth! We had better hope to God we are not fully
created, fully evolved. We had better hope we have a long way to go, and
God is still going before us, to show us the way, as well as still coming
behind us, to clean up the mess. Hearing this Genesis story anew and light
of all we know – Remember the t-shirt: Jesus comes to take away our sins,
not our minds! – it amazes us that these poets and psalmists so many
centuries ago got the essential story of earth’s and of our createdness so
right!
This infinite, cosmic, and ceaseless
creativity of our God lives, I believe (I confess that I believe), in the
“authority” – “all authority in heaven and on earth” – Jesus here says at
the end of the first gospel has been given to him. We know from John’s
gospel this is an authority of the Holy Spirit Jesus breathes upon us in our
fear the night of the resurrection. It is an authority of forgiveness, the
greatest of all powers on earth, and a desperately political one!
Politicians, among all the rest of us, find it impossible to repent of past
decision and action and to trust in the grace of God to do a new thing -- to
take even the mess we have made of our lives, and like the perennial potter
restart, reshape, recreate us, until, at last, God gets us right, as we do
our lives and our life together. Impossibility? That is God’s specialty!
Even in us! “Receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus enjoins and empowers us. “If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins
of any, they are retained.” Talk about power on earth.
We who dare to receive and accept the
offer, the gift and the grace of this authority, are left with no choice but
to “Go therefore,” as Jesus here commands, “and make disciples of all
nations!” Not only of all single persons, not only of all whole peoples,
but even of all the systems and structures of organized violence and war!
God’s impossibility starts with us. Our charge is universal but it is not
imperial. We are to share God’s power with others, not to take our own
power over them, even in God’s name. We are to “make disciples,” which
starts by becoming and being disciples ourselves, not only once but again,
and again, and again – as God gives the createdness of each day and the
recreatedness of who we are in each day. With so much to learn and grow, to
change and expand in ourselves, we need all the help we can get from every
“other” we meet. Too often “making disciples” has meant, when missionaries
arrive (and they are, even now, in Iraq, in Afghanistan)), they have the
Bible and native peoples have the land. When they leave, the peoples have
the Bible and the missionaries have the land! The oil! Whatever is of
commercial value there.
We in the so-called global “West,”
basically of European origins, are all more or less “scientific” in our
thinking that “truth” must be grounded in “fact.” At least we used to think
“wisdom” was grounded in “knowledge” which could be verified and certified
as in a laboratory. Today we don’t seek out “knowledge” so much as we are
bombarded with “information” – “infomercials,” “infonews” – we take at face
value, picking and choosing what suits our basic positions and interests in
life. We are tempted to treat the Bible the very same way, as testable
knowledge, as selectable information. But the Bible is wise beyond all our
years of trying to make it suit us. The Bible and all ancient scriptures
defy our every compulsion to classify and to commodify them. No way the
Bible can be made cost-effective. The Bible will cost us beyond calculation
every last gift and grace of our lives.
God never quits creating! God never
stops making all things new. God never stops working on that source of
hope, that wisdom, that courage, that Holy Spirit in us – making us new in
God’s image each day! Re-imaging, re-imagining us, that we may imagine, in
turn -- in vision and not in violence, in dream and not in doom – such new
ways of being and doing as ways without weapons, ways without wars. God is
not done with us. God is not done with the image of us yet. God is not
done with the “image in nation,” the healing of all the nations of us yet.
We can adapt the Hasidic proverb to say that not only before every person,
-- of every condition, ever color, every class, creed, gender, tongue,
preference, and orientation -- but also before every people, and even before
every nation, there go forth ten thousand angels proclaiming,” Make way for
the image of God!” Make way for the image of God. Amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
