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Trinity Sunday Sermon Preached first at Spring Lake Village, Santa Rosa and then at St. Peter’s In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, Amen. Years ago when I was in New York and doing supply work, which means that people would call and ask me to take their place occasionally. Usually in January or early February I would get a number of calls for a particularly Sunday in June. It took me several years to realize that that particular Sunday was Trinity Sunday. A lot of preachers don’t want to talk about the Trinity, because it is complex and who knows, it’s a mystery – we don’t understand it. So they try to avoid it, and I did too except I kept getting asked. But today I am excited to talk about it because I have a different understanding I want to share with you. It came to me in the middle of the night, which those who know me from the Wednesday’s service know that it’s often when my ideas come, - I wake up and go, “Oh! Ok!” Trinity Sunday is the only time we have in the year that we celebrate a concept. And it is a concept about what God is like, and it’s Father, it’s Son, and it’s Holy Spirit, and each year people talk about how they relate to each other and all that. I’m seeing it differently now and I want to share it with you. I’m seeing the understanding of the Trinity to be a roadmap for our spiritual journey. From Father to Son to Holy Spirit; from God who is Creator, God who is in a sense distant, out there somewhere. The theological understanding of God if you will, to God who is incarnate god the son, god who is present and active in this world, the “incarnational” understanding. Then to God who is Spirit and to us who are spirit – what I call the mystical understanding. There have been many surveys in this country as well as other parts of the world asking people whether they believe in God. An amazing number, 80 – 90%, say “yes we believe in God”. But then, look around at their behavior and look around at what’s going on and you say, well it’s not having much of an effect, is it? Because believing that there is a God, a theological sense that yes, somewhere there is, somehow there is, a God, is sort of a matter-a-fact sort of thing and for many people that is the level they are on. Yes there is a God, there must be a God because how did we get here, the whole idea of creation, there had to be a prime mover, uncreated Creator all that sort of theological stuff. And the understanding states that God is out there somewhere or that we are afraid enough of what’s going to happen after this life that we better believe in God or else, but still distant. We can be either in awe of creation like when I go to the Grand Canyon or almost anywhere, it can just be a flower, and somehow sense that, yes, there has got to be a God. You look at the vastness of space with numerable stars and you understand or don’t understand how it all is accept that yah, there is a God. But that is a theological thing and that is a distant thing and many of us are still there, but yes there is a god and it hasn’t done for me much but that’s where I came from but it’s there and I just live my life. Hopefully we then progress to the sense of God incarnate. In terms of the Trinity historically that was for us Christians, Jesus, God made man Emanuel, God with us. And we made that understanding, and that developed that he came down from heaven and went back up to heaven sits on the right hand of God. Why not the left hand? But that’s because were predominately right handed. It stays a little bit theological if you get stuck in that, but we are support to evolve into the understanding that God is still present, still active, still in this world related to this world. Really to understand it began in the Old Testament for those of us who are reading the book Abraham, God spoke to Abraham and God spoke to and through Isaiah, to and through the prophets and God spoke to and through Jesus and that involvement, that God cares about this world, cares about us and this planet. It involves us and that’s more incarnational . The sense that it’s not just a distant God who created things, whose like the great watchmaker that created it and got it running and it just started spinning. That there is a God who really cares and is involved in us in our lives and most of us are at that point where we have evolved past the idea that God out there so that God is somehow involved with us. God, as I say, is up to something in each one of us, that our lives are somehow to be a response to God to express God’s compassion and love and justice. That God that created is also a God who cares and wants us to care in how we relate to each other. But I believe that now we are evolving even further to understanding God as Spirit and understanding ourselves as spirit. That God is not just a being out there that cares about us is involved in us and teaches us how to live with each other, but that we participate in Spirit, that we have spirit within us. We may go so far as to say we participate in God. We have a spiritual aspect to ourselves. The way we live is not just as a physical being but as a spiritual being. There are a lot of books being written, a lot of teachings that’s coming to fore these days that’s talking about that. Rupert Sheldrake the biologist who has become involved in studying how we affect the world around us through spirit. That we actually have an affect – that our thoughts, our intention; have an affect on the world around us. He proposes in a book called “Seven Experiments That Could Change The World” that there are tests that you can do to prove this. One of them is a very simple one. It is when someone is not looking at you, stare at them. And almost always that person will turn and look at you. There is something going on in our focusing our attention that the other person senses. It’s not physical energy but it’s something going on. It’s Spirit! That my not seem terribly important, but it’s just an example. But we are learning more about the power of prayer. In our incarnational understanding and our theological understanding prayer was somehow trying to convince God up there to do something. We are now understanding that our spiritual participation in God is that when we hold someone in our heart it has a direct affect on them. It is not ruling out God it is saying God is that energy that exists between us. That we are all interconnected with energy that it is not simply just convincing a deity up there somewhere or out there somewhere but that we have the ability and really the responsibility to participate in God. To become, if you will, God. And that may sound blasphemous but it is not. It’s what God intends that we are to evolve from created beings to being drawn into creativity with the Creator. To become involved in the ongoing life of this planet that how we live how we treat others not just with our action but with our thoughts, hearts, our inner being, our spirit has an affect on the world. Gregg Braden in the book, Isaiah Effect talks about a certain small number of people that can actually affect a much larger group, and there have been studies that have actually proven that. You or a group of us together focusing our intention, focusing our prayer has an affect on the world and that we are spiritual beings. Lauren Artress of the Labyrinth project at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco says, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey but spiritual beings on a human journey.” That our essence is spiritual, and that we are discovering and evolving, hopefully, into this. To discover the power of God that is in us to affect the world around us. We can affect the healing of others and of ourselves by spiritual meditation, focus and prayer. We have a direct connection and effect on the world around us. All of this is part of this new understanding, this evolutionary understanding. Jesus in the Gospel of John in the passage that was read today says, “I haven’t taught you everything because you can’t bare it yet.” Now John, when he wrote that, was thinking, I think, that he now has it and in 100 A.D. he’ll speak for Jesus and I’ll teach you. But I want to take it further. I think Jesus, if he said that, (and if he didn’t, it’s still true) was saying that we don’t understand any more that what we can bare, that our minds can comprehend, but our minds evolve and we grow and we grow in our understanding, and if we lock ourselves into an old understanding of God then we block out that ability to move with this new spirit. It’s not a new spirit but our awareness, which is new. But that Jesus understood and taught that we evolve, that we grow, that the spirit will teach us and work with us and move us along. So for me now the Trinity is no longer a concept about God – a “FATHER, Son and Holy Spirit” concept, ONE and THREE and all that complicated stuff. But rather it is an indication of where am I on my journey? Am I still stuck in theology about God does not having any effect? Am I moving further about how I’m living, how I’m responding to Jesus’ teachings, to God’s instruction or have I evolved to the point where I am beginning to get a sense participation, that the spirit is in me and God is working in me and God is me, if you will. That God expresses in me. That my life affects the world. How I live, how I think, what I do, my spirit affects the world. That is where we are headed, that’s where we are to go, that’s the journey God is calling us to. Amen |
Trinity Sunday Sermon
Preached first at Spring Lake Village, Santa Rosa and then at St. Peter’s
In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, Amen.
Years ago when I was in New York and doing supply work, which means that people would call and ask me to take their place occasionally. Usually in January or early February I would get a number of calls for a particularly Sunday in June. It took me several years to realize that that particular Sunday was Trinity Sunday. A lot of preachers don’t want to talk about the Trinity, because it is complex and who knows, it’s a mystery – we don’t understand it. So they try to avoid it, and I did too except I kept getting asked. But today I am excited to talk about it because I have a different understanding I want to share with you. It came to me in the middle of the night, which those who know me from the Wednesday’s service know that it’s often when my ideas come, - I wake up and go, “Oh, Ok!”
Trinity Sunday is the only time we have in the year that we celebrate a concept. And it is a concept about what God is like, and it’s Father, it’s Son, and it’s Holy Spirit, and each year people talk about how they relate to each other and all that. I’m seeing it differently now and I want to share it with you. I’m seeing the understanding of the Trinity to be a roadmap for our spiritual journey. From Father to Son to Holy Spirit; from God who is Creator, God who is in a sense distant, out there somewhere. The theological understanding of God if you will, to God who is incarnate god the son, god who is present and active in this world, the “incarnational” understanding. Then to God who is Spirit and to us who are spirit – what I call the mystical understanding.
There have been many surveys in this country as well as other parts of the world asking people whether they believe in God. An amazing number, 80 – 90%, say “yes we believe in God”. But then, look around at their behavior and look around at what’s going on and you say, well it’s not having much of an effect, is it? Because believing that there is a God, a theological sense that yes, somewhere there is, somehow there is, a God, is sort of a matter-a-fact sort of thing and for many people that is the level they are on. Yes there is a God, there must be a God because how did we get here, the whole idea of creation, there had to be a prime mover, uncreated Creator all that sort of theological stuff. And the understanding states that God is out there somewhere or that we are afraid enough of what’s going to happen after this life that we better believe in God or else, but still distant.
We can be either in awe of creation like when I go to the Grand Canyon or almost anywhere, it can just be a flower, and somehow sense that, yes, there has got to be a God. You look at the vastness of space with numerable stars and you understand or don’t understand how it all is accept that yah, there is a God. But that is a theological thing and that is a distant thing and many of us are still there, but yes there is a god and it hasn’t done for me much but that’s where I came from but it’s there and I just live my life. Hopefully we then progress to the sense of God incarnate. In terms of the Trinity historically that was for us Christians, Jesus, God made man Emanuel, God with us. And we made that understanding, and that developed that he came down from heaven and went back up to heaven sits on the right hand of God. Why not the left hand? But that’s because were predominately right handed. It stays a little bit theological if you get stuck in that, but we are support to evolve into the understanding that God is still present, still active, still in this world related to this world. Really to understand it began in the Old Testament for those of us who are reading the book Abraham, God spoke to Abraham and God spoke to and through Isaiah, to and through the prophets and God spoke to and through Jesus and that involvement, that God cares about this world, cares about us and this planet. It involves us and that’s more incarnational . The sense that it’s not just a distant God who created things, whose like the great watchmaker that created it and got it running and it just started spinning. That there is a God who really cares and is involved in us in our lives and most of us are at that point where we have evolved past the idea that God out there so that God is somehow involved with us. God, as I say, is up to something in each one of us, that our lives are somehow to be a response to God to express God’s compassion and love and justice. That God that created is also a God who cares and wants us to care in how we relate to each other. But I believe that now we are evolving even further to understanding God as Spirit and understanding ourselves as spirit. That God is not just a being out there that cares about us is involved in us and teaches us how to live with each other, but that we participate in Spirit, that we have spirit within us. We may go so far as to say we participate in God.
We have a spiritual aspect to ourselves. The way we live is not just as a physical being but as a spiritual being. There are a lot of books being written, a lot of teachings that’s coming to fore these days that’s talking about that. Rupert Sheldrake the biologist who has become involved in studying how we affect the world around us through spirit. That we actually have an affect – that our thoughts, our intention; have an affect on the world around us. He proposes in a book called “Seven Experiments That Could Change The World” that there are tests that you can do to prove this. One of them is a very simple one. It is when someone is not looking at you, stare at them. And almost always that person will turn and look at you. There is something going on in our focusing our attention that the other person senses. It’s not physical energy but it’s something going on. It’s Spirit! That my not seem terribly important, but it’s just an example. But we are learning more about the power of prayer. In our incarnational understanding and our theological understanding prayer was somehow trying to convince God up there to do something. We are now understanding that our spiritual participation in God is that when we hold someone in our heart it has a direct affect on them. It is not ruling out God it is saying God is that energy that exists between us. That we are all interconnected with energy that it is not simply just convincing a deity up there somewhere or out there somewhere but that we have the ability and really the responsibility to participate in God. To become, if you will, God. And that may sound blasphemous but it is not. It’s what God intends that we are to evolve from created beings to being drawn into creativity with the Creator. To become involved in the ongoing life of this planet that how we live how we treat others not just with our action but with our thoughts, hearts, our inner being, our spirit has an affect on the world. Gregg Braden in the book, Isaiah Effect talks about a certain small number of people that can actually affect a much larger group, and there have been studies that have actually proven that. You or a group of us together focusing our intention, focusing our prayer has an affect on the world and that we are spiritual beings.
Lauren Artress of the Labyrinth project at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco says, “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey but spiritual beings on a human journey.” That our essence is spiritual, and that we are discovering and evolving, hopefully, into this. To discover the power of God that is in us to affect the world around us. We can affect the healing of others and of ourselves by spiritual meditation, focus and prayer. We have a direct connection and effect on the world around us. All of this is part of this new understanding, this evolutionary understanding. Jesus in the Gospel of John in the passage that was read today says, “I haven’t taught you everything because you can’t bare it yet.” Now John, when he wrote that, was thinking, I think, that he now has it and in 100 A.D. he’ll speak for Jesus and I’ll teach you. But I want to take it further. I think Jesus, if he said that, (and if he didn’t, it’s still true) was saying that we don’t understand any more that what we can bare, that our minds can comprehend, but our minds evolve and we grow and we grow in our understanding, and if we lock ourselves into an old understanding of God then we block out that ability to move with this new spirit. It’s not a new spirit but our awareness, which is new. But that Jesus understood and taught that we evolve, that we grow, that the spirit will teach us and work with us and move us along.
So for me now the Trinity is no longer a concept about God – a “FATHER, Son and Holy Spirit” concept, ONE and THREE and all that complicated stuff. But rather it is an indication of where am I on my journey? Am I still stuck in theology about God does not having any effect? Am I moving further about how I’m living, how I’m responding to Jesus’ teachings, to God’s instruction or have I evolved to the point where I am beginning to get a sense participation, that the spirit is in me and God is working in me and God is me, if you will. That God expresses in me. That my life affects the world. How I live, how I think, what I do, my spirit affects the world. That is where we are headed, that’s where we are to go, that’s the journey God is calling us to. Amen