Sermon by Elliot Conrad:
Welcome to Trinity Sunday, traditionally the day in which neophyte preachers get a chance to take the full measure of their inadequacy. It’s June of 2020, as good a time as any to trip over difficult ideas. When we speak of the Trinity we speak of the depths of Holiness from the depths of ignorance. The Trinity stands between what we know of God and what we can say we know of God. It is not the privacy of God or the loneliness of God in Himself but the undomesticatable eternal appeal of mystery, responsibility, and gentleness. It is not merely a theological puzzle sheltering a deeper truth. It is the opening to the Divine Abyss - the oneness of The God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This God who aims his activity at Us is not a stranger to Himself. Though, He entrusts himself to us as a stranger. The God we know Creates, Speaks, Abides. But also veils Himself in His History with us. But history is the very sound of God’s voice calling us in. In Matthew’s Gospel today we heard the Great Commission. The resurrected Christ sends us out to make disciples, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he assures us he is with us to the end and here with us now in the midst of crisis on crisis on crisis. Why does God seek us and favor in our helplessness? Why are we so maladapted to this? Christ also tells us to teach obedience to his commands: He commands us to be reconciled, to repent, to rejoice, to let our light shine before others. We haven’t come so far along. He commands us to beware of practicing our righteousness before others in order to be seen by them. Great works of justice occur intimately. We are told not to lay up treasure for ourselves on earth, to guard against covetousness. To love our enemies and pray for them. To love our neighbors as ourselves. To stay awake for we do not know on what day our Lord is coming. And he offers us the great and first commandment that we shall love our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind. Jesus there quotes the Shema, the centerpiece of prayer in Judaism. Shema means listen, pay attention, focus. It goes “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your might.” This is among the most beautiful and perfect evocations of the Holy Trinity that we have. God is singular in complexity. St. Augustine was once asked what God was doing before creation. He answered “He was making a Hell for people who ask stupid questions.” If God is with us in history why does so much of what happens in our history affront our destiny with Him? Gregory of Nyssa wrote “Every good thing and everything we name as good depends on the power and purpose which is without beginning.” In Jesus, the infinite humbly enters the world of particulars, and anoints them with infinite value. The Gospel tells us we can RIGHT NOW respond to our own and to other’s infinite value. We can agree. Put things in order. Live in peace. Greet one another. We can have our share of intimacy with the infinite. This is the story of God and His creatures. We aren’t commanded to cling desperately to illusions as to the durability of civil society. History is a series of breakdowns and build ups. We take our Lord as his Word: The world is full of trouble, but He has overcome it. Why is it we insist on our politics to save us? As if God has not seen and heard it all. The truth of the Cross senses the lie in all things. Justice transcends our claims on it. God’s creation is God’s obligation to Himself. His existence is infinite coexistence. Our history is His. In our efforts to belong in the world we forget that we are the beloved belongings of a God that is Father, Son, and Spirit. We fall short of keeping His commandments, we fall short of putting things in order, we fall short of living in peace, we can’t come to terms, we fail in love. This is the story of God and his Creatures. In Christ, the second person of the Trinity, Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim, our life is sealed and washed in regret of itself. This is the joy that reaches us. The Felix Culpa - the happy fault. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Repent and Love freely. Let our hates be known. Our Lord has a face and we wear it. When we stumble and drop our portion of eternity, look to the face, the human face, where the Spirit of Divine Gentleness abides. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.