June 7, 2020 – Trinity Sunday: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
Now, before we get started here, just a public service announcement – let us NOT do as the epistle from 2 Corinthians implores and greet each other with a “holy kiss.” Just not safe right now folks, okay?
So, any news lately? Lordy, what a week it has been.
Truth be told, it feels like this has been many months of weeks. It wasn’t all bad news – we did hear that some of those out of work from the pandemic were able to return. Yet even that was stomped on by the President himself when he thought that George Floyd, a man murdered by police in a racist act, would be looking down and smiling about the jobs report. Seriously, I kid you not.
That might explain why he thought it was a swell idea to have protesters, and those aiding them, including a priest and seminarian, tear gassed off of the grounds of St. John’s Episcopal Church, to clear them out so he could walk over and stand there holding a bible for a photo op. Yup – that happened this week too. I told you it was a long week.
Now, obviously all good Christians were outraged about this – particularly those who are a part of our Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement, but when you can get the Pope, the Episcopal Church, and Pat Robertson agreeing on something, they better start handing out skates in hell, and watch out for flying pigs!
Within our Episcopal Church we made our voices heard about it too. Why? What was so wrong with what he did? – (a question I have been asked in angry emails and voicemails since my letter to the editor about George Floyd’s murder appeared in the Bergen Record) Where to even begin.
Well, let’s start with the fact that he had the church, Jesus, forcibly removed from the grounds of St. John’s so he could have a picture taken. What’s that? That wasn’t part of the story – it was just those protestors, Jesus wasn’t tear gassed. Well, we know that the church isn’t the building, but the body of Christ. Jesus himself said that how we treat others, we treat him. So, yeah… Jesus, the Christ found in those who speak for the lost, the lonely, the least, and the last, was tear gassed to be pushed aside for this moment.
Not only that, but he brandished a bible like it was a weapon. He didn’t go to the church to offer a prayer for the nation. He didn’t open that bible to quote a favorite passage that might bring us together using the words of our sacred texts. No, he held it aloft (and upside down) and stood there for photos – then left. That was it. Now, had he opened it, he may have really come to understand the truth that lies in that wonderful book – and oh how I wish he would open it, read it, and inwardly digest it. Because maybe he would have gone to the first book, and the first chapter in that book, and heard what we read aloud this morning.
What a game changer that could have been! What life giving truth awaits for anyone who reads it. It was so important, it was the first of the two creation stories to be put into our canon – the first thing you read when you open this most often purchased and least read piece of literature – our sacred text – the Holy Bible. Genesis 1, Chapter 1… “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” And so begins this wonderful story of creation, and creation’s relationship with God.
But it is the verses further down, on the day in which humankind other critters were created, the 6th day, that we hear something so needed, so wonderful, so life giving to this broken world. And it is this “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;…So God created humankind in [God’s] image, in the image of God [they were created]; male and female [God] created them.”
And, so God created them, and as God had after each day of creation, God pronounced that it was good. And, it was! Or at least it could be, but we are not living up to what God envisioned for us, to be sure.
Because we seem to forget that not only were we meant to be vegetarians…yup, read verse 29 again…but that we were created in God’s image – all of us – male & female. As I said last week about this creation story, I can assure you it does not say “God then said, let us make humankind in our image – white, male, straight, and speaking English – and let us create an exclusive place for them to dwell called the United States.” But Lordy, if you look around at some people who call themselves Christian, you might think it did!”
God created all of humanity – every single person on this planet. Think about that. Let that soak into your very bones. Because what this very first chapter in the very first book of our bible is saying, the very bible the President held up for all to see – is that every single person – no matter the color of their skin, what gender they claim, where they were born or live, who they love, what language they speak, what faith they profess or don’t, or who they vote for – all of them – are children of God – our sisters and brothers.
And like all family we won’t always agree with one another, but we are expected to love one another. No, not expected – commanded – by God, by Jesus in his final night before he died for us. It is not only what we are to do, it is who we are, because it is who God is, and we are made in God’s image. Perhaps this is why this text is assigned for today – Trinity Sunday – because on this day, when we celebrate the nature of God, we find that this doctrinal construct offers us a key to understanding ourselves as much as it does God.
But don’t you also get yourself twisted into a Celtic trinitarian knot over it. God could never be limited to something humans could describe anyway. In as much as poetry describes what it is like to be in love, but is not love itself, the doctrine of the Trinity is the Church’s attempt to describe humanity’s experience of God, but it is not God. This we know, and it doesn’t take any degree in theology to understand – God is love, and love is done in relationship, so the essence of God is a relationship of love. That relationship is the eternal dance of God, Christ, and Holy Spirit – the Trinity…and it is a dance in which we are included for all time.
So, don’t get all caught up in the math – 1 in 3 and 3 in 1. But do look in the mirror, because we, who are made in the image of God, are indeed the very reflection of what the Trinity is, and we are called to live a Trinitarian life – the life in which we love God, love our neighbor and love ourselves. And if we do that, if we live into our Trinitarian calling, we will change the world – no doubt about it. And it will indeed be good!
And Lord knows, the world needs us to be our true Trinitarian selves now more than ever, because people are dying from our national pandemic – yes, of COVID-19, but also of a virus just as insidious – racism. Our sisters and brothers – the ones created in the image of God – are dying – not because of who they are, but because of who we are. And the numbers are staggering.
This week I participated in a number of rallies and marches, as many of you did too. While at one near my home in Sussex County, I was blessed to stand with other clergy and read part of a longs list of names of people of color who had been killed, most of them by police. One poignant moment was before the rally, when I stood alongside the road with others holding signs. I held up my page of names. Even as counter-protesters yelled from across the street, a young woman in a car stopped at the light and asked me if that were all the names of people who were killed (she seemed saddened to see so many). I told her that it was just one of six pages of those names. She was visibly moved, and I sensed that some part of her world view changed in that moment. All because someone compiled their names – all because someone insisted their names be said aloud – all because she opened her eyes to see something she had not seen before.
As a trinitarian people, a people of loving relationship rooted in Jesus Christ, we cannot remain silent as our sisters and brothers are killed, for our silence is death for them, and if death for them, it is death for us all. We must open our eyes to see that everyone is made in the image of God, to see the Christ in them, and for them to see it in us through our love. And while we celebrate this doctrine of the Holy Trinity today, let us also consider what part of our tradition needs to be broken open if we are to really enter into this eternal dance of love with our creator. Because if we are ever going to understand this basic idea that everyone is a beloved child of God, then perhaps it is time we recast our faith out of the patriarchal and Euro-centric patterns into which we have entrenched ourselves so deeply that we are suffocating under the weight of it all. The church universal claims the authority of scripture but fails to acknowledge in our traditions and practice the fundamental truth of what we read today in Genesis, and if we are going to ever to fully be who we are born to be – a people united in a bond of love with our Creator and each other – then we must change, before we can ever hope to change the world.
You know, even as the other clergy and I read those names on Friday night, a group of counter-protesters kept trying to drown our voices out – to kill the memory of our slain sisters and brothers with shouts of “All Lives Matter!” I wondered just how many of them would say they are Christian. The thought that likely many of them would, well that broke my heart.
Because even while we know as a people of faith that all lives do matter to God, and therefore must matter to us, we also know that it is a cheap and hollow slogan, and that those who would shout it out with such anger, do not really believe it themselves. Because no one can truly claim “all lives matter” until they first are able to claim that black lives matter. And for Christians that means all lives cannot truly matter in our hearts until the Jesus, the son of God in whose image we all were made – the Jesus that is black or brown or Asian or indigenous – that Jesus matters to us as much as the Jesus that is white in our minds.
Perhaps, as part of that recasting of our faith, we need to re-imagine the Trinity in this way: as a black man, a gay white woman, and an undocumented Hispanic child – for that is no less an image of the Triune God than an old white guy with a beard, a young white guy with a beard, and another guy (yup – we even managed through the centuries to make the divine feminine, found in the Holy Spirit, a man). Because if we could do that, if the art through the centuries had shown us this Trinity, had the church shown us this Trinity through its inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments of the faith – maybe the chant of Black Lives Matter wouldn’t seem hard for so many.
So let me be perfectly clear, to the President, to all who don’t like these protests, to all who shout out “All Lives Matter” – If any of you want to hold up a bible – to you I say it isn’t meant to be held up, but opened up. And if you stand in front of an Episcopal Church, you better know first that we believe that black lives matter, gay lives matter, women’s lives matter, trans lives matter, immigrant and undocumented lives matter, poor lives matter, addicted lives matter, imprisoned lives matter – and if they don’t matter to you, then open up that book and read the first chapter again and again and again until you get it into your heads and heart that the other you hate, neglect, marginalize, abuse, or kill, is a beloved child of God – a part of you as you are a part of them. That same person is Jesus – the Christ who told us that he is in the least, the last, the oppressed, the outcast, and the stranger – and we are called to love and to serve him when we see him. And perhaps just as important, when you look in the mirror, Jesus is staring back at you – would that person recognize him in your eyes…for that matter – do you? We are called into relationship with God and with one another – a relationship of deep and abiding love.
That is what it means to believe in a trinitarian God!
Because God our Creator made us all equally in God’s image.
Because God, the Son, taught us to love as he loved us.
Because God, the Holy Spirit, the divine breath of God who blew across the deep, is within the very breath of every single person.
This life of loving relationship is the essence of our faith as followers of Jesus. We are a part of that eternal Trinity through our baptism, when we were claimed as Christ’s own, and were anointed by the Holy Spirit – when we committed to seeking and serving Christ in ALL persons, loving neighbor as ourselves, and striving for justice and peace among all people – respecting the dignity of EVERY human being.
This is tough stuff. It isn’t easy to love everyone, perhaps most especially those with whom we most vehemently disagree. Maybe that is why Jesus reminds us in the gospel passage from Matthew we heard today that he will be with us “to the end of the age.” Because he knew we would need his help if we were to be his followers, the body of Christ in the world.
Yet the question remains, Jesus, the one who is seen in the eyes of the stranger, the outcast, the sick, and the imprisoned, may be with us…but are we with him?
Until black lives matter as much to us as it does to Jesus – the answer is all too clear.
Amen.
For the audio from the 10:30am service, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here:
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 7, 2020
Trinity Sunday – In A Time Of Separation
1st Reading – Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Canticle 13
2nd Reading – 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Gospel – Matthew 28:16-20
