Nine years ago on Trinity Sunday, I preached a sermon called “God and Not-God: A Short History.” I’m going to preach a portion of that sermon again this morning before veering off in a different direction. This short history comprehends five truths that God has revealed to us, culminating in the truth of the Holy Trinity. But we need to begin at a more fundamental starting place.
Continue reading “God and Not-God (Updated)”
For this sermon, I’m going to do something a little different this morning. Today is my 42nd birthday, and if you’re even half the size nerd that I am, you know that the number 42 is a special one. In the strange and whimsical science fiction series The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. This answer was determined by the superest supercomputer that ever existed, but when the computer spit out the answer “42” no one could agree as to the content of the question that would result in such an answer. So now they had to figure out the question. The subtext of this very silly premise is that we (1) cannot outsource our own seeking and (2) we must never stop learning and growing.
Continue reading “Forty-Two”
During my sabbatical, I’m not writing new sermons, so on Mondays I am choosing one post from every year of WheretheWind.com to highlight. In 2015, I wrote this sermon for Trinity Sunday, and I really liked it.
Continue reading “Sabbatical Retrospective, Year 2015: The Blueprint”
This is another sermon about hope. I’ve been preaching about hope a lot lately because hope seems to be in short supply these days. I look inside myself and I see my hope candle guttering. It’s still lit – miraculously – but the small flame is floating in a sea of wax. I want to believe that my hope candle will never actually extinguish, that no matter how much or how little wax is left, the wick will always hold a flame. I want to believe that, and I think I do…which is ironic because it seems like I need hope to believe I will always have hope. And maybe that’s how it works. Perhaps hope reignites itself like a mythical phoenix rising from the ashes.
I want to talk about hope on this Trinity Sunday because the Holy Trinity is both the source of our hope and the culmination of our hope.
Continue reading “The Candle Flame of Hope”
I did not understand the concept of ambivalence until my kids were about three years old. (That would have put me at 34 years old if you’re counting.) Before then, I had a vaguely negative idea about ambivalence. If I had used the word in a sentence, I might have used “ambivalent” as a synonym for “uncomfortable” or “aggravated.”
But then, I watched an episode of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood with my kids, and I learned all about ambivalence. Daniel Tiger is the modern day equivalent of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from when I was a child; many of the animated characters are drawn directly from the old show. And even though Mr Rogers himself is not in it, the new show has the same tone and the same dedication to learning about feelings that the original show had. Each episode of Daniel Tiger includes a short, snappy song – like a jingle – that sums up the theme of the episode. What I learned that day watching with my kids is that the concept of ambivalence is neither negative nor positive, and that’s sort of the point. Ambivalence is feeling multiple emotions at the same time.
As Daniel Tiger sings, “Sometimes you feel two feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.”
Continue reading “Ambivalence and the Holy Trinity”
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus says this amazing promise at the end of our Gospel reading this morning. We’ve heard this promise every week since we began worshiping together online at the start of the pandemic. At the end of the service of Morning Prayer, we say a prayer written in the early centuries of the Church by St. John Chrysostom:
“Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them…”
I am so thankful that our Gospel reading inspired John Chrysostom to write this prayer, especially in these days when we cannot be in close physical proximity with each other. The prayer reminds us of the singular truth that Christ connects us one to another. But “I am there among them” is a rather anemic translation. I “am in the midst of them” is better. The original language translates most directly to, “I am there in the middle of them.”
Continue reading “In the Middle of Them”
Today is the day of Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit empowering Jesus’ first followers to spread his loving, liberating, and life-giving message. If you were listening closely to the readings, you might have noticed we actually read two different versions of the sending of the Holy Spirit. In the first one from the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit spirals into the house like a rushing wind from heaven and anoints the disciples with tongues like fire. In this story, we sense the glorious upheaval in the lives of the disciples as these elemental forces – wind, fire – disrupt and invigorate them to embrace their new ministry as Jesus’ witnesses.
In the second story from the Gospel of John, Jesus comes to his disciples on the evening of the resurrection. They lean in close as he breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In this intimate story, Jesus delivers the Comforter, the enlivening companion the disciples need to be about their work.
Continue reading “Disrupt/Comfort”
The Samaritan woman leaves her water jar behind, rushes back to the city, and says to anyone who will listen, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” That’s a pretty astounding statement given the conversation she has just had with Jesus by the well. Many biblical scholars chalk it up to her excitement – the exaggeration is forgivable because of the encounter she just had with the Messiah. Others say that, given her station, she needs to exaggerate in order to be taken seriously. I think both of those ideas miss the point of the story entirely because they start from the premise that the woman is not being a reliable witness, is not simply telling the truth.
Continue reading “Everything I Have Ever Done”
If you look to the back of the church, you’ll notice we have a window missing right now. The good folks at Cathedral Stained Glass in New London are currently restoring our Trinity window, which has deteriorated over the years to the point where it could have shattered during a blustery storm. Today is not the most opportune Sunday of the church year to be lacking the Trinity window. Today is, after all, Trinity Sunday, and in years past I’ve enjoyed directing your attention to the window at the beginning of my sermons on this particular day. I can’t do that today. Instead, I can only direct your attention to the lack of the Trinity window.
But such a lack of the window stirs up some new thoughts; specifically the following question: Who would we be without the mystery and revelation of God as Trinity of Persons and Unity of Being? This question jumps to mind because, in recent years, many faithful Christians have wondered if we really need the encumbrance of the Trinitarian notion of God. Isn’t it just unnecessary baggage weighing down an already weighty topic, they argue. With fewer and fewer people finding God in the Christian church in the United States, wouldn’t it make sense to streamline our beliefs a little bit, make them easier to apprehend? Continue reading “Diversity Without Division, Unity Without Uniformity”
There’s a group of folks at St. Mark’s that meets every Thursday morning for Bible study. The class is called “Genesis to Revelation,” and as its name implies, we set ourselves the goal of reading the entire Bible. We started last autumn and should finish sometime around next winter. It’s a daunting task to read the whole thing, but very worthwhile too. A few weeks ago, we were working our way through a particularly thorny section, and one member of the group said something to me that made the whole group double over in laughter. She said, “Well, I thought I understood this until you started explaining it.”
So with that humorous word of caution in my mind, I turned my attention to Trinity Sunday, traditionally one of the thornier preaching days of the year. Continue reading “God and Not-God: A Short History”
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