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CAPITOL HILL SERMONS
“God’s Triple Play”
by Andrew Walton
based on Matthew 28:16-20; Genesis 1:1-2:3
May 18, 2008
Today is Trinity Sunday and as I look out over the congregation this morning I suddenly realize that Trinity Sunday is quite as popular as Christmas and Easter. I wonder why?
Last Monday evening something happened in a baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays that has happened only 14 times in Major League Baseball: an unassisted tripe play. They usually happen the same way - A line drive is caught and the base runners are caught off base.
If you’re a baseball fan you’ve probably send the video numerous times this week. You also know how rare it is. According to one article I read baseball legend Bob Feller, now 89 years old, was at the game and said it was the first one he had seen since little league. He also said that “unassisted triple plays are two things: luck and dumb base running.” (http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNqLbdleoqQJbvTAyKq7k2gFx3xA))
I share this with you today for no particular reason other than that on Trinity Sunday preachers will talk about just about anything having to do with the number three. I have heard, and delivered my share of, too many sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity that get all tied and tangled in numbers. A colleague shared that he had even heard a sermon once that set out to prove and thus justify Trinitarian theology vis a vie mathematical formula. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I missed that one.
A few years ago, I gave up on proof and rational explanation of the Trinity (as well as a few other doctrines of our faith). I think it was about the same time I stopped putting sermon titles in the bulletin, because both are too constricting for me.
The point here is that if we get hung up on the numbers and rational explanation we are missing the point. Instead I take the path many others have taken before me: the path of mystery.
In general, we can approach theological doctrine from a couple of perspectives. First we can hold on to it as answer and explanation and say, “Ok, now that’s settled, that’s the way it is, and that’s what we believe.” Or we can see the see these tried and true teachings as threshold into ever the evolving mystery of God.
The scripture readings we heard this morning are in our Common Lectionary on Trinity Sunday, probably for two reasons. The Matthew passage I think is obvious. In it we have a rare New Testament appearance of what we now know as the Trinitarian formula: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And in Genesis reading there is the phrase, “Let us make humankind in our image…” suggesting there is more than one of God. So if you are looking for proof of the Trinity, that’s about as close as the Bible comes to it.
However, what scripture does offer us is a myriad of images, metaphors, and illusions about the nature of God. And if we are willing to let go of the need for resolving and defining God, we can hear the Bible speak of the multiplicity and mystery of God.
Recently I heard Old Testament scholar and writer Walter Brueggemann say that the human quest for certainty is really a longing for fidelity. In other words, even though our minds search for answers, our hearts, our spirits, are seeking trust.
So I take a somewhat imaginative leap today and suggest that the Holy Trinity of the Christian faith is a threshold into such fidelity and trust. And this is why we hear the creation story today, because it is a story about a relationship of fidelity and trust. As the poem by Rabbi Arthur Waskow printed in our bulletin (at the end of this manuscript) today suggests, creation (including us) is a Divine expression of giving, loving, and needing; in hope of receiving, being loved, and being needed.
A God who is so vulnerable is uncomfortable, if not incomprehensible, to many of us because in our quest of certitude we have created a singular, all knowing, all-powerful, quintessentially confident God who is always in control.
I suggest that Trinitarian language points us toward the God found in scripture who is relational, dependent, and at times ambiguous; yet always faithful. Rabbi Waskow says God was “Lonely…suffering… unfulfilled….” Yet, “…overpowerd by chesed-energy…”
“Chesed” is the Hebrew word that appears more than any other in the Old Testament when talking about God. It is translated numerous ways in our English translations: steadfast love, loving kindness, mercy, faithfulness. What it really means is an act that has no cause. In other words, God loves us for no reason. God’s love is unconditional. And unconditional love is just another way of talking about fidelity and trust.
On the other side of God’s chesed is us - which brings me to what I really think we need to hear from Genesis this morning. God created humankind in God’s image. And therefore, the mystery of the Trinity is our own mystery. We are also multifaceted by nature, we are also “Lonely…suffering…unfulfilled….” Yet, “…overpowerd by chesed-energy…” At the core of who we are is the need for and capacity to live in fidelity - with God, with creation, and with one another.
How would our lives change if we only begin to trust? - Trust God – Trust Creation – Trust one another.
Perhaps our baseball triple play last week is, after all, an entre into the Trinity, but not in the way we suspect. Because humanity has always been too eager to embrace a God who is in complete control, who snags the line drive, steps on the base, tags the runner and trots nonchalantly into the dugout. Our experience tells us that sometimes the ball slips through the infield, or we strike out with the bases loaded. As opposed to an unassisted triple play, we live in the mystery of an “assisted creation” in which all is interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent because such interconnection, and relatedness, and dependence is at the core of the Creator – in whose image we are created.
So when Jesus commands us to “baptize… in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” it is a call to invite the world into mystery – into the mystery of our own God created chesed, knowing that we are vessels of steadfast love, we are vessels of loving kindness, we are vessels of faithfulness, mercy, trust and fidelity. But the call does not go out without a final proclamation of chesed: “…remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." We are called into a life and faith of fidelity not certainty. We are not call to know and understand. We are called to live.
In the mystery of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Genesis 1:1-2:3
1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2the 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. 3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
6And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." …And it was so. 8God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so… 11Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.' And it was so… And God saw that it was good. 13And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
14And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.' And it was so…And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
20And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky." …23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
24And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." And it was so... And God saw that it was good.
26Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;… And it was so. 31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
Matthew 28:16-20
16Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
On Deciding Whether To...
Beresheit/ in the beginning God was lonely, suffering
though everything in the universe was held within.
Unfulfilled, overpowered by chesed-energy
God breathed out, kissed out, sent it all out,
every possibility that ever was and would be.
I imagine God was frightened.
What a terribly momentous step,
even with overflowing love as catalyst and reference point.
What if something went wrong
if the universe made its own choices at breakneck speed
if there was no breathing any of it back in again.
Once it began, this process more powerful than its Creator
with beginning middle end all at once, all possible --
how could there not have been Divine panic?
So in the split second eon after that first outbreath kiss
a proclamation "Let there be light!" and there was
a moment when sight would be unhampered
a snapshot flash of eternity in which to see
before darkness was once again welcomed
the realm of comfort from all the see-ing.
So, too, in the beginning the universe breathed its kiss into me
and with that kiss, possibilities
thousands of them limited only by the chance of time and place.
And the world, spurred on not by love
but by something far more selfish, far more limited intervened
to remind me of the correct response to light and darkness
according to the desires of many faces, many voices.
My panic is undeniably mortal
gripping me during folding laundry or cooking dinner.
As I stand as witness before the creation of my life, well into its 3rd day
I try commanding light out of the confusion
but I lack Divine will and all brilliance is gone
before I have a chance to see into the flash.
I can only comfort myself with the thought
that even God didn't know if the plan would work,
but moved forward into the darkness on faith.
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Director, The Shalom Center (http://www.shalomctr.org/node/282)
201 Fourth Street SE * Washington, DC 20003
202.547.8676 TEL * 202.547.2182 FAX
* www.capitolhillpreschurch.org