Trinity Sunday

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's kingdom now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.

Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you, and also with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, you've given to us your servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of your divine majesty to worship the unity.

Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign one God for ever and ever.

Amen.

Today we pray with Episcopalians, with Anglicans throughout the world, at the invitation of our presiding Bishop Michael Curry, a prayer for the power of the Spirit among the people of God.

God of all power and love, we give thanks for your unfailing presence and the hope you provide in times of uncertainty and loss.

Send your Holy Spirit to enkindle in us your holy fire.

Revive us to live as Christ's body and the world, a people who pray, worship, learn, break bread, share life, heal neighbors, bear good news, seek justice, rest and grow in the Spirit.

Wherever and however we gather, unite us in common prayer and send us in common mission, that we and the whole creation might be restored and renewed through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Reading from Genesis.

While a wind from God was swept over the face of the waters.

And there was light.

And God saw that the light was good.

And God separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light day.

And the darkness and he called light day.

And there was evening and there was morning in the first day.

And God said, Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters.

And let us separate the waters and run up with the waters.

So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome.

And it was so.

God called the dome in the sky.

And there was evening and there was morning.

And God said, Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place.

And let the dry land appear.

And it was so.

God called the dry land earth.

And the waters that were gathered together called seed.

And God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation.

And trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with a seed in it.

And it was so.

The earth brought forth vegetation.

Land yielding seed of every kind.

And trees of every kind bearing fruit with a seed in it.

And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening and there was morning the third day.

And God said, let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night.

And let them be signs and for seasons and for days and years.

And let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.

And it was so God made the two great lights.

The greater light to rule the day.

And the lesser light to rule the night.

And the stars.

God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.

And to separate the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening and there was morning before the day.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.

And let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.

So God created the great sea monsters.

And every living creature that moves of every kind with which the waters swarm.

And every winged bird of every kind.

And God saw that it was good.

God bless them saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas.

And let birds multiply on the earth.

And there was evening and there was morning.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind.

And cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.

And it was so.

God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind.

And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

So God created humankind in his image.

In the image of God, he created them.

God bless them.

And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

God said, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth.

And every tree with seed and its fruit.

You shall have them for food.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life.

And it was so.

God saw everything that he had made.

And indeed, it was very good.

And there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day.

And all their multitude.

And on the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done.

And he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done.

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.

Because on it, God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your name in all the world.

Out of the mouths of infants and children, your majesty is praised above the heavens.

You have set up a stronghold against your adversaries to quell the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is humankind that you should be mindful of them, the children of humankind that you should seek them out?

You have made them but little lower than the angels.

You adorn them with glory and honor.

You give them mastery over the works of your hands, you put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.

O Lord our governor, how exalted is your name in all the world!

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

When they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Today is the one Sunday of the Christian year dedicated to celebrating the mystery of the Trinity, and mystery, I think, is the operative word.

What I want to do is invite some consideration about the Trinity.

And I'm going to give you a sort of a spoiler alert.

One of my favorite German intellectual romantic thinkers, Friedrich Schliegel, said, Because God is transcendent and language isn't, all theology is blasphemy because it puts words on God when God would be unbounded by words.

And so you're probably about to hear some of that.

But I hope that as you consider with me some ways we can stretch into a deeper understanding of what the Trinity might mean, frankly, for God, we might stretch into a deeper understanding of ways we can live more fully into both God's imagination for us and God's imagination for our community, and frankly, live deeper into God.

So, of course, the Trinity doctrine has been around for a long, long time.

If you're interested to know, most theologians would tell you that it doesn't come directly from our scriptures, it came from the practice of people being baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Christians had been doing that for maybe a hundred years before there was any sort of even informal doctrine of the Trinity.

This is something that had been handed down in practice since the theologians inherited this very meaningful practice.

And then they had to figure out what it meant and what it meant for the community of faith.

And ultimately what happened at Nicaea was this affirmation, and this is uh these are the words that come out of the council that is completely paradoxical and perplexing that God is no more one than God is three.

God is no more one than God is three.

And of course, what we've stressed in Christianity is the essential unity of the Trinity.

But if you're like me, um, it's very possible that you grew up where the Trinity is uh these three sort of personalities of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they are so similar, they may as well be one thing.

I remember uh one of my friends who uh was a minister was explaining one day, I I think it might have been in a children's chapel, but it just as well may have been in an adult series, that um the Trinity was like ice cream.

There was chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla.

And of course, if you grew up having the Neapolitan ice cream that I enjoyed in the early 80s, uh, they were different in color, but frankly, they all tasted the same.

And that was how I interacted with the Trinity.

Okay, there's different labels, but essentially they're all the same.

And a lot of times we get this diagram first sort of picked up by St.

Augustine, and usually we get it cut out so that there's just the triangle here, so that mostly what we see when we think about the Trinity theologically is Father, Son, and Spirit, and look, there's their essential unity.

But you know, it occurred to me that there's something really interesting about this diagram, which is there's a whole lot of the father that is not being shared by the Son or the Spirit.

And there's a whole lot of the Son that's not being shared by the Father or the Spirit.

That if we took this diagram uh, I don't even want to say literally, if we took it seriously, the Trinity is about the similarity and the community, but it's also about essential differences.

And so part of me wonders today if we haven't focused so much here on the middle that we've forgotten the middle is only mysterious and miraculous when we have these fringes.

So I wonder, what if the different aspects of the Trinity, what if God the Father cannot stand the music that God the Son most enjoys?

Like, what if God the Son, this is really a stretch, enjoys classical music, but God the Father is a little more into gangster rap?

And what if God the Holy Spirit appreciates things like ska or project music?

If that were the case, then the fact that they're able to get together musically would be, well, wouldn't it, mysterious and miraculous instead of naturally occurring.

I wonder if that sort of model wouldn't invite us into something called unity and mission instead of uniformity and identity.

And I want to suggest to you that part of the reason we get to hear this really long reading from the book of Genesis, you really only hear it otherwise on the Easter Vigil.

Uh, it might be longer than the sermon today, if you're lucky, uh, is because in the first chapter of Genesis, when God goes about making stuff, the most operative verb in Hebrew is not that God makes, it's that God separates things.

So God separates the sky from the water.

God separates the land from the water.

God separates light from darkness.

The way I tell this story to children in chapel is to imagine that in the beginning, and the words are really clear, the earth is a formless void and it's covered with water.

Water is that code speak word in the Bible for chaos, for disorder and disaster, for entropy.

Imagine that you took every crayon in a package of crayola, 128 crayons, and colored over the same piece of paper.

It would be a disaster.

And so what God starts to do is take that mess of undifferentiated matter.

Certainly all the colors are shared, but none of them are allowed to have room to be themselves.

God pulls out water from the mess.

God pulls out sky from the mess.

God pulls out land from the mess.

In the end, God pulls out more than 128 colors and makes room for them to be themselves, knowing that there's something really important about being ourselves and being unified.

At the risk of sounding a little uh overindulgent here, one of the biggest mistakes I often make in my marriage is forgetting that my wife and I think differently.

Even though we often have similar values and come to similar conclusions, we do it in a completely different way.

And when I make the mistake of thinking, aha, we are one couple, therefore we must be doing it the same way.

When I make that mistake of codependency, I don't actually have unity.

I have uniformity, and I lack a sensual appreciation for the difference of my partner that allows meaningful community to exist.

And I hope I'm starting to touch on the theme that is most important for me as I think about what's happening in the world and the reading and, frankly, inside of God this week, which is that the mystery of the Trinity is not something that's just designed to enhance the way we think.

What we've decided as Christian people doctrinally is that the Trinity exists not to help us understand God, but it exists because that is who God is.

And boiling that down, the Trinity is about community being not optional.

Community is essential for who God is.

As a child, I was told God made us because God was lonely.

The doctrine of the Trinity says that's exactly wrong.

God made us to be in community because that's, according to the Trinity, who God already is.

God is already in community.

And I know that there are people who say, I can take community or leave it.

It depends what it does to me.

Theologically, that's not correct.

Theologically, we as human beings, and all the research I've read speaks to this as well.

We as human beings need community.

And I think what's in front of us now is this opportunity to say, what kind of community are we choosing to be parts of?

Communities that resemble tribes in which all of us have the same flavor, or communities, frankly, that allow colors to exist in all of their beauty and wonder and be brought together to make a glorious picture.

If we think the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are like Neapolitan ice cream or like different flavors of vanilla, like Tahitian vanilla or Madagascar vanilla or French vanilla ice cream, I want to suggest we're missing the opportunity to think about God as being radically different and in community.

And I hope that just a little bit of that consideration might expand our hearts and our practice this week.

There is a hard thing, which is, hey, what do happens when people don't want to be in community?

What happens when people say, I hate what you stand for, how do you treat them?

How do you survive that as a community?

And I think to be honest with you, we are all sort of scratching our heads about what do you practically do in those moments of division.

But I want to suggest to you that rather than saying, hey, if you don't want to be a part of us, we won't have you, it seems like what has happening in the Trinity, as I understand it, is that the only thing that gets excommunicated is excommunication.

That is to say, the Trinity seems to offer this possibility in my imagination that any difference of opinion cannot just be tolerated but respected.

The critical piece is whether or not you're cast out or whether or not you choose to not be a part of.

This is really tough because, quite honestly, there are a lot of people that uh would be a lot more convenient for me to cast down.

So I want to tell you a story.

Again, this is gonna probably hinge on the most dangerous part of blasphemy that came from my seminary.

Life.

This actually was the moment in which my career trajectory changed.

You may say, when I'm done, for the worst, I should have kept what I was doing.

But originally I had planned to be a Hebrew Bible professor, and I had taken essentially an entire course load in Hebrew and Hebrew exegetical methods.

And then there was this professor who taught a class called Shame, Guilt, and the Rites of Reconciliation.

He happened to be the director of the Anglican Studies program, which was unbeknownst to me at the time.

I had no call to the Episcopal Church that I knew of at the time.

I took his class and we talked about, if you if you've tuned in at all over the past couple of weeks, some of the most instrumental things in my own personal and spiritual development, which have been things like shame and guilt and how it is that we handle those initially those uncontrolled responses and then those emotions and then those habits that we live into.

And I had originally decided to write a really bland research paper for this professor.

I think it was about something like how in the history of Baptist life, baptism was a way of representing reconciliation.

I wrote it.

It was 25 pages.

It had 124 citations.

The bibliography was three pages long.

I think it would have earned an A.

When I wrote the last paragraph, I looked at it and thought that I respected the teacher too much to turn it in because it wasn't about anything.

And then there occurred this very wild idea to me.

Remember, I'm telling you, this is probably blasphemy, but I hope you'll follow me down the rabbit hole.

Shame, according to the class, is a feeling of failure in the self, a feeling of failure in the self.

Shame is when you don't do something wrong, it means when you are wrong.

Guilt, on the other hand, is a feeling that I made a bad mistake, and it's often related to a fear of punishment.

This is sort of what the class ended teaching out.

And one of the most visible affects that somebody is in shame is that they break eye contact.

So if you've ever noticed this, um, small uh children usually maintain eye contract and told not to, don't stare, don't look.

And I know that there are moments in my life in which I could not make eye contact with people because frankly I didn't feel good enough about who I was in relationship to them.

So I would pretend or I would look to the floor.

I don't know if you've ever noticed those people that stare at your forehead instead of your eyes.

Um this so the class was about being shame prone.

Um that was probably not great introduction, but I ended up writing this paper with two days left before the deadline that said, What happens if shame was operating within the Trinity?

Like what happens if Jesus came to earth and became fully embodied and went around telling people I represent God.

And what happens?

Think just for a moment, if God didn't start to worry and sweat that out.

You know, Jesus famously says on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

And I know New Testament scholars say that that is really about Jesus quoting Psalm 22 and making an impassioned plea for the poor.

If God is everywhere, of course, God cannot turn God's back on God's self.

That can't make sense.

But um, taking this idea about shame and difference, what if God momentarily felt scandalized by Jesus and broke eye contact?

Well, of course, what happened is Jesus died.

And then there was a rupture in the community that was God.

And so, in some ways, a way to understand resurrection is God reconciling the community that was broken when God broke eye contact.

Now, I don't know, friends, if this is exactly how it worked, but I do think there's something really compelling about that way of thinking for what's happening in our nation right now.

I think many of us are trying to figure out how do we keep eye contact and what happens when community is broken.

Part of our story that is so I think important, both uh the Christian story and the mystery, is that it's not over.

It might be harder, it might seem even impossible, but reconciliation, whether uh racial or political or economic, is possible with God.

And what it takes, of course, is God the Father saying, I am not abandoning God the Son to the grave, I will go to hell myself and back to bring back this community that is part of who I am.

And I wonder if that isn't part of our invitation right now, quite honestly, is to go to hell and back where people have been consigned because of powers that are bigger than ourselves, to bring them back into the community that God intends.

And I want to suggest to you that many of us are not knowing what to do in our anxiety and our doubt and our confusion.

And so, of course, what we're doing is trying to think how we can dramatically be involved in some kind of racial justice or reconciliation.

And I do think the dramatic vision, of course, is something to hope for.

But I wonder if we aren't being called right now to do something that might seem a little less dramatic.

Like be faithful every single day in small, small ways.

I don't know that I'm wise here.

I don't know that I am.

Um but I know there are organizations that have been working for racial justice for a long, long time.

This isn't a new need.

And rather than being a flash in the pan to um assuage our own anxiety by thinking of some cockamami way to bring attention to something that's bothering us, I wonder if we don't have an opportunity to assist organizations like the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund, to invest in tutoring students in our local community, in making uh diversity increase at St.

Thomas the Apostles' School.

Uh, I don't want to say those are better.

I just think those are opportunities we often leave off the table because what they take is not just a moment of boldness or adrenaline, they take years of commitment, of being able to go to neighborhoods in which we don't even feel welcome, so that we can say, in fact, we know we are part of your community, and how can we belong, and how can we function in your community as God intends.

This essential unity and difference that I think is such a part of God, and again, I think it's so important for us to imagine uh as the writer of the Shack did.

I don't know if you've read that book, Jesus as a Middle Eastern Jew, the Holy Spirit as a female Asian, and uh God the Father as um a southern black woman.

I don't know that that author is too far off in the need we have right now to put into human terms the most impossible people in your mind to get along with.

And somehow God are those three impossibly ununified different people brought together in community.

And I wonder if we can meditate on that image of Trinity and be transformed by it, not because we have to be uniform, but because God is unified, and we're called to live into that unity, into that mystery, and when it requires us to literally go to hell and bring back those parts of the community that have been put in the place of torment and death and loss.

Happy Trinity Sunday.

And now let us renew and reconsider our faith with the words of the world Methodist Council Social Affirmation.

We believe in God, Creator of the world and of all people, and in Jesus Christ, incarnate among us, who died and rose again, and in the Holy Spirit present with us to guide strengthen and comfort.

We believe God help our unbelief.

We rejoice in every sign of God's kingdom, in the upholding of human dignity and community, in every expression of love, justice, and reconciliation, in each act of self-giving on behalf of others, in the abundance of God that gives and trusted to us that we all may have enough, in all responsible use of the earth's resources.

Glory be to God on high, and on earth being that we confess our sin, individual and collective, by silent reaction, to the violation of human dignity based on race, class, age, sex, nation, or faith, to the exploitation of people because of greed and indifference, to the misuse of power in personal, communal, national and international life, to the search for security by those military and economic forces that threaten human existence, to the abuse of technology which endangers the earth and all life upon it.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy, we commit ourselves individually and as a community to the way of Christ, to take up the cross, to seek abundant life for all humanity, to struggle for peace with justice and freedom, to risk ourselves in faith, hope, and love, praying that God's kingdom may come, that thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

This week, as we pray for the departed, I bid your prayers for Fletcher.

Reading from Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians.

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.

Put things in order.

Listen to my appeal.

Agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints greet you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Pray for the whole state of Christ Church and the world.

Almighty and ever living God, who in thy holy word has taught us to make prayers and supplications and to give thanks for all persons, receive these our prayers which we offer unto thy divine majesty, beseeching thee to inspire continually the universal church with a spirit of truth, unity, and concord.

And grant that all who do confess thy holy name may agree in the truth of thy holy word and live in unity and godly love.

Lord, have compassion.

And the diocesan cycle of prayer, St.

Michael's Lamarck, St.

Thomas the Apostle, Nastalbey, and Trinity Galveston.

Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay our bishops, Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Michael, our presiding bishop, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively word and rightly and duly administer thy holy sacraments.

Christ, have compassion.

We pray for our vestry and our parish.

Source of wisdom guide us, source of strength support us, source of love unify us.

We pray that our community may discern clearly and minister effectively.

Spirit, have compassion.

And to all thy people, give thy heavenly grace, and especially to this congregation here present, that with meek heart and due reverence they may hear and receive thy holy word, truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life.

Lord, have compassion.

We pray for St.

Thomas the Apostle's school, that those who teach and those who learn may rejoice in the knowledge of your truth, that we may teach our children to love whatever is just and true and good, that we may be bearers of your grace to all who come through our doors.

Christ, have compassion.

We beseech thee also to rule the hearts of those who bear the authority of government in this and every land, especially Donald, our president, and Greg, our governor.

We pray for the families of the nations, for all who struggle for peace and justice, that they may act with prudence and vision to plant the signs of thy dominion everywhere.

Strengthen and comfort, we pray you, the members of the armed forces, so guide their leaders that they may be led to wise decisions and right actions for the welfare and peace of the world.

Spirit, have compassion.

Open, O Lord, the eyes of all people to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works, that rejoicing in thy whole creation, may they honor thee with their substance and be faithful stewards of thy body.

Lord, have compassion.

And we humbly beseech thee of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and support all those who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, especially Chris, Widdett, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, and Andrea.

And the congregation is invited now to name their own prayers and celebrations, silently or aloud.

We also bless thy holy name for all thy servants to part of this life in thy faith and fear, teaching thee to grant them continually growth in thy love and service, and to grant us grace to follow the good examples of all thy servants, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.

Christ, have compassion.

Grant these our prayers, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only mediator and advocate.

Amen.

Now the peace of the Lord be always with you, and also with you.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen.

May God who by the Holy Spirit calls those of many languages to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and remain with you forever.

Amen.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Alleluia, alleluia.