 In the name of God our father, Jesus our brother and the Holy Spirit our guide and companion. “Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.” So wrote Karl Rahner, German Jesuit and major influence of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council, in his 1999 classic study The Trinity. This is still true twenty plus years later. My friend, Julie, after reading in the parish newsletter of my preaching today, was moved to say that it was good that I was going to clear up the three persons in one God. I must sadly disappoint her and possibly some of you. The mystery of three persons in one God is exactly that, a mystery. That does not mean that there is nothing to be learned from that mystery, however. Five or six years ago I set out on a mission to understand the Trinity. As I stand before you I am a little more enlightened but far from understanding all that is the Trinity. I have learned a number of things that I think are helpful in living peacefully in the crazy times we are experiencing. I hope to impart some of the that discovery with you. Let me set out by saying that my best guides through my investigation were Fr. Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell and Cynthia Bourgeault. Rohr and Morrell are infinity more understandable than Bourgeault but she is way out front in the complexities of the Trinity. I first heard Fr. Rohr and Rev. Bourgeault speak about the Trinity in a taped seminar they presented in New Mexico. My spiritual director at the time loaned me the tapes to listen to on vacation. Those tapes are out of print but I highly recommend the books written by Rohr with Morrell and by Bourgeault on the Trinity. The Trinity is well founded in scripture. Abraham and Sarah are visited by God in the personages of three angels. Jesus makes reference to his Father in heaven and that he is the Human One, the Son of God. Jesus also makes many references to the Holy Spirit who will be with us to the end of the world. Paul in his letter to the Romans that we heard read this morning makes reference to Father, Abba, and Spirit in describing the Son’s Jesus’, lessons to those who would follow him. Let me read to you that same passage from Common English Bible: “So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it isn’t an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness. If you live on the basis of selfishness you are going to die. But if you put to death the actions of the body with the Spirit, you will live. All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. You didn’t receive a spirt of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry ‘Abba, Father.’ The same Spirit agrees with our spirit that we are God’s children. But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him” Sounds a lot different without all that fleshy business doesn’t it? “Obligation to ourselves” and “selfishness” strike home a lot harder than “debtors to the flesh”. And note that the Spirit leads us to cry Abba to the Father and we become joint heirs with Christ. I think Paul and Jesus clearly expect us to understand that there are three persons in God. Now how that works is not within the skills of this simple Christian standing before you. That it works is something I would like to address. We say authoritatively that God is love. Think about that for a second. Love is a relationship word. Heather and Molly in their last couple of sermons have talked about the relational directives Jesus imparted to his followers in John’s Gospel regarding his final instruction to them. Even if I say I love my pet rock which does not appear to be able to love me back, I need the two of us, me and my pet rock, to have a love relationship. So if God is one person, how can God be Love? God, as love, should be two persons and if two why not three. Russian monk and Iconographer Andrei Rublev created an icon of the Trinity in the fifteenth century. This is that icon. The original is still on display in the Tretyalov gallery in Moscow. In the icon you see three people sitting at a rectangular table. The faces appear to be essentially the same and they all face generally toward the center of the table and each other. Each has a different color robe or sash. The figure on the left with the gold sash is said to be the Father. Rohr and Morrell explain that gold is the color of “perfection, fullness, wholeness, and the ultimate Source.” The figure in the center with the blue sash is said to be the Son. Rohr and Morrell say that Rublev used blue as “both sea and sky mirroring one another — and therefore God in Christ taking on the world, taking on humanity.” The figure to 4 the right with the green sash is said to be the Spirit. Rublev, as cited by Rohr and Morrell, used green for the Spirit because it has “a quality of divine aliveness that makes everything blossom and bloom in endless shades of green.” The fourth side of the table is vacant and is closest to the viewer. The wine goblet that appears the figure representing the Son is blessing, is closest to the empty side of the table. The right hand of the figure representing the Spirit appears to be pointing to the vacant side of the table. There is a rectangle in the vacant seat at the table. Let’s depart from Rublev for a second. Kenosis is a Greek word that is interpreted as self-emptying. We find this word in Paul’s letter to the Philippians Chapter 2 verses 5-11 where Paul says that Christ in the form of God emptied himself to become human. Fr. Rohr carries this idea further in one of his daily reflection. “Kenosis, or self-emptying, is revealed in the Trinity. The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century saw that God the Father, who is Love, completely empties God’s self into the Son; the Son empties into the Spirit; and the Spirit empties into the Father. Incarnation flows from this kenosis that is inherent to God’s nature.” Self-emptying is a tough word for those of us who live in the twenty first century. We are our own independent person. We don’t empty to anyone. But I think we do. I do in my relationship with my wife Charlie. I let her know all that is in me. My hopes, my fears, my sadness, my triumphs, my defeats . . . all that I am I give to her. I do the same to lesser degree to my closest and dearest friends. So while we may not empty ourselves to many we do understand the concept. With that in mind, consider Fr. Rohr’s words and Rublev’s image. God called Father empties his love into Jesus the son who empties his love into the Spirit who empties all that love into the Father. And on it goes. God, who is love, pours out love into a flow that circles all three persons of the Trinity. That is the picture I hope you see and hear in Rublev’s icon and this little fountain I have here with me. One vessel empties into the next and all three are full and flowing. Now comes the cool part of the Rublev icon. Do you see this little box? For those of you who cannot see it there is a little rectangle here in the front of the icon where a fourth seat might be. Art Historians have identified what they think is glue in that rectangle. They believe that a mirror was attached to that rectangle so that when a person viewed the icon they would be there at the table with the Trinity and I would suggest in the flow of that love I was just describing to you. And you know what? That spot was not reserved for any one person. It is there for all of us. It does not matter what color your skin is. It does not matter what religion you are. It does not matter how much money you make or where you live. There is a place at the table for you. And if you can see that all of creation has a place at that table, in that flow of love, you can figure out that all of us, even me and my pet rock are brothers and sisters in the sight of the Trinity. The Trinity wants to dine with us. They invite us to join in the flow of God’s love at their table. As you will hear again later in this service, all are invited, no exceptions. Now just in case you think this is a sermon only for Trinity Sunday morning, in our church, right now let me tell you a story. Dennis, Charlie and I have a friend on the streets of Greenfield who I will call Country for this tale. Country has been in the woods in a tent for the nine years I have known him and a whole bunch more. Like decades more. Country likes to drink a lot. He cares about folks who find themselves in the same position he is in so he takes them in for as long as they both can stand it and then they part company always to be friends of some sort. We care about Country and sometimes get him gloves or a jacket in the winter and socks all year round. The thing he values most is our acceptance of who he is no matter how he is. He knows how the rest of the world sees him and he is incredibly grateful for the openness with which we greet and accept him. It is that flow from the circle over here that heads out into the world through Dennis, Charlie and I. A couple of months ago, out of the blue, Country stared over at us at Second Helpings and hollered out “I love you guys. You are like saints to us.” That stopped me dead. In all the years that I have known Country he has alway shown respect but never any show of relationship. That, my friends and fellow believers, is the flow of the Trinity coming back to the table. As you head through your week give some thought to how you can channel the flow of the Trinity into our crazy mixed up world and I pray that you get to see it come rushing back to the circle. Amen  The lectionary does an odd thing in these Easter weeks in the B cycle. You’ll recall that the lectionary, or schedule of lessons we’re assigned to read each Sunday, has three rotations. In the “A” year we mostly hear the gospel as Matthew tells it, with his emphasis on Jesus’ parables; in the “B” cycle – which we’re in this year – we mostly hear Mark’s version, a more fast-moving, action-oriented gospel; and then in the “C” year, we hear how Luke understands the gospel story, with his interest in Jesus’ outreach to society’s outsiders.
There’s no cycle for John. It’s quite a different account from the other three. John covers both less and more: it includes fewer stories of Jesus’ ministry – the healings, general teaching, and everyday encounters with people who came to see and hear him – but goes to much greater detail in those stories he does include in his narrative. It is only John who gives us some of the key accounts that give us insight into Jesus’ mission and ministry, including the wedding at Cana, the raising of Lazarus, the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus reveals his identity at the well, and the “doubting Thomas” incident we hear on the second Sunday of Easter every year. When the framers of the lectionary set it up, they spliced these unique passages from John into the Matthew, Mark, and Luke cycles so that we could benefit from hearing them even though – for whatever reason – John didn’t get a cycle year of its own. Which brings me back to my observation of the peculiarity of the lectionary’s structure in this “B” year’s Easter season. Instead of continuing with accounts of what was happening for the disciples in the time between the resurrection, the ascension and Pentecost, as would seem logical, the “B cycle” takes us back to hear Jesus’ words to the disciples at the Last Supper. Last Sunday, today, and next Sunday we hear excerpts from what is known as the “Farewell Discourses”, material that is unique to John’s gospel. As Heather suggested in her sermon last week, it is important to hear these passages in context, specifically, that they represent what John wants us to understand to be the final words that Jesus shared with his friends in the last hours before his arrest. Heather summarized it this way: “In the verses that precede our lesson, Jesus modeled for his disciples what it means to love one another by washing their feet. Now he is advising the disciples to abide, and in the verses that come immediately after our lesson, to love.” The repeated theme throughout the “Farewell Discourses”, as Heather pointed out, is relationship. Jesus emphasizes the relationships between himself and the disciples, a relationship that mirrors the relationship between himself and the Creator, his source and grounding, whom he referred to as “Father”. Jesus offered the metaphor that “I am the vine, and you are the branches”, conveying not only that the bonds between himself and his friends could not be broken, but that whole and complete life is not possible if one is cut off from the source that gives us life and enables us to “bear fruit”. These words of reassurance were undoubtedly intended to provide comfort for the disciples, an image to remember and hold onto in the days following his death and his eventual departure, when the loss of his physical presence could well feel like loss of the relationship. His words undoubtedly provided the same comfort and reassurance to the early Church community for whom John’s gospel was written, about 60 or 70 years later, as they suffered under persecutions by the Roman Empire. In the part of the passage that we have heard this morning, Jesus goes beyond emphasizing the relationship between the Father, himself, and the disciples: he reminds his friends of the love that is at the center of the relationship, and urges them to sustain it: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” and “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” As Heather pointed out last week, throughout these farewell passages Jesus repeatedly entreats his friends to “abide” in him, and in his love, just as he abides in them, and, of course, in us. He uses the word “abide” eleven times in the eleven verses of this extended text. Even though we don’t use the word much ourselves, these days, we know what “abide” means. We know it means to dwell, to stay, to shelter, to inhabit a particular context or environment. “Abide” suggests calm, a restful place to dwell – we’d never say someone “abides” in prison, for example, or in a war zone. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge points out that dwelling or abiding is a theme throughout the whole Gospel of John. Discussing the opening verses of John, which declare that “the Word became flesh and lived among us”, she observes that the Greek more literally could be translated that the Word dwelt among us as in a tent.* “The Word pitched a tent or “camped out” among us”, she observes, “and showed us the embodiment of God’s love. In Jesus’ life, God’s love walked and talked among the people of first-century Galilee and Judea.”* And it is in God’s love that Jesus calls us to find our shelter, and then, to express that love to one another. “Abide in my love,” he says. “Make my love the house, the tent, the shelter in which you dwell and move around in,” he seems to say.* We all know how critical the place where we abide is. Thinking about our homes, when we have the resources to create a space that not only feels comfortable, but reflects our passions, our priorities, and our histories, we have a home base in which we can live with joy, and from which we can venture out boldly, and to which we can return for refreshment and renewal. On the other side of the coin, we’ve probably all had periods – hopefully brief ones – of living in spaces that were not our own and somehow felt alien or hostile, and we know how difficult it is to feel joy in our living there, or to thrive in our day to day life. We’ve also all lived through a pandemic in which our homes were both shelter and, which, at times felt somewhat suffocating. Jesus invites us to allow God’s love to provide us a safe, nurturing and empowering shelter. We can perhaps imagine Jesus elaborating, “Let my love be the foundation under your feet, let my love permeate the walls that shelter you, and let my love form the roof arching over your head.” And we know what it means to live grounded in Jesus’ love: We can live out of the dwelling of God’s love when we volunteer for Sunday Sandwiches or Second Helpings. We abide in God’s love when we call on a neighbor to check on how she is feeling. We do so when we work to reduce our carbon footprints. When we donate to humanitarian relief organizations that provide aid to those impacted by war. When we write emails to our local and national officials to express our concerns and solicit their action on the justice issues facing our communities and nation. When we abide in God’s love and strive to live as Jesus did, we are not satisfied to remain where we are. We recognize our own need to learn and to understand more deeply. We choose to engage with tough questions and try to bridge divides by listening to perspectives different from our own. The more that we can allow God’s love to be our dwelling place, our foundation and shelter, the more room we have to invite others to shelter there with us. In this season of resurrection, may we abide with Jesus in God’s love. May we find new ways and commit ourselves ever more fully to abiding in the love of the One who first loved us and who shows us how to love one another.
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