Holy Trinity; Holy Ground

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
June 2, 2007; Trinity Sunday, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Romans 5:1-5) -- Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

(John 16:12-15) -- Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

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There is a phrase we use whenever we have one of our farewell liturgies at St. Paul's. When a parishioner is moving, we like to thank them for their ministry here and send them on to their new home with our blessing and affection. The last phrase we use as we bid good bye to our friends is this: "From now on, wherever you go and wherever you are, all of the ground between us will be holy." Many of us have been moved deeply by those words. Let me tell you where that phrase comes from.

In his book Reaching Out, the popular spiritual writer Henri Nouwen tells a story about one of his former students who returned to visit with him. "I have no problems this time, no questions to ask you. I do not need counsel or advice, but I simply want to celebrate some time with you," the student said. Here's how Henri described their visit.

We sat on the ground facing each other and talked a little about what life had been for us in the last year, about our work, our common friends, and about the restlessness of our hearts. Then slowly as the minutes passed by we became silent. Not an embarrassing silence but a silence that could bring us closer together than the many small and big events of the last year. We would hear a few cars pass and the noise of someone who was emptying a trash can somewhere. But that did not hurt. The silence which grew between us was warm, gentle and vibrant. Once in a while we looked at each other with the beginning of a smile pushing away the last remnants of fear and suspicion. It seemed that while the silence grew deeper around us we became more and more aware of a presence embracing both of us. Then he said, "It is good to be here" and I said, "Yes it is good to be together again," and after that we were silent again for a long period. And as a deep peace filled the empty space between us he said hesitantly, "When I look at you it is as if I am in the presence of Christ." I did not feel startled, surprised or in need of protesting, but I could only say, "It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in me." "Yes," he said, "He is indeed in our midst," and then he spoke the words which entered into my soul as the most healing words I had heard in many years, "From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground."
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 45

Nouwen says this student revealed to him "what community really means." I would agree. I would say that they experienced a participation in the life of the Holy Trinity. I've spoken before of the Trinity as a Dance of Love: the outpouring of love from the Father in unreserved affection for the Son, and the Son's complete and full acceptance of the love from the Father, wholly received and wholly returned with a reciprocal love back to the Father. The love between them -- the Being of unifying love that makes them One -- is God the Holy Spirit. It is that Love which creates all that is.

We live in a trinitarian community. Each of us has our distinct being, and yet we are so interrelated and interdependent. When we open our focus just a bit, we can experience that we are all of one being. Whenever we become conscious of that spirit of interrelationship, we are led into the life of the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.

Last week I mentioned a book I am reading by the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. Back in 1989 Dr. Collins had an opportunity to serve in a missionary hospital in Nigeria. He became overwhelmed by the volume of illness and suffering and the lack of resources to treat them. "Tuberculosis, malaria, tetanus, and a wide variety of parasitic diseases all reflected an environment that was completely unregulated and a health care system that was completely broken." He grew more and more discouraged.

One afternoon a young farmer came into the clinic suffering from the accumulation of a large amount of fluid in the pericardial sac around his heart. A symptom of tuberculosis, this fluid was choking him to death.

The only chance to save him was to carry out a highly risky procedure of drawing off the pericardial fluid with a large bore needle placed in his chest. In the developed world, such a procedure would be done only by a highly trained interventional cardiologist, guided by an ultrasound machine, in order to avoid lacerating the heart and causing immediate death.

No ultrasound was available. No other physician present in this small Nigerian hospital had ever undertaken this procedure. The choice was for [him] to attempt a highly risky and invasive needle aspiration or watch the farmer die. [He] explained the situation to the young man, who was now fully aware of his own precarious state. He calmly urged [Dr. Collins] to proceed. With his heart in [his] mouth and a prayer on his lips, [Dr. Collins] inserted a large needle just under [the man's] sternum and aimed for his left shoulder, all the while fearing that [he] might have made the wrong diagnosis, in which case [he] was almost certainly going to kill him.

[He] didn't have to wait long. The rush of dark red fluid in [his] syringe initially made [him] panic that [he] might have entered the heart chamber, but it soon became apparent that this was not normal heart's blood. It was a massive amount of bloody tuberculous effusion from the pericardial sac around the heart.
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, p. 213f

There was a feeling of relief, and then elation. But as Dr. Collins continued to think about the future for this young farmer, he recognized how unlikely it still was that the young man would survive much longer. The likelihood of his continuing the necessary treatment, the presence of so many other pathogens, inadequate nutrition, the dangerous environment... The man's chances were so poor.

Francis Collins writes this:
With those discouraging thoughts in my head, I approached his bedside the next morning, finding him reading his Bible. He looked at me quizzically, and asked whether I had worked at the hospital for a long time. I admitted that I was new, feeling somewhat irritated and embarrassed that it had been so easy for him to figure that out. But then this young Nigerian farmer, just about as different from me in culture, experience, and ancestry as any two humans could be, spoke the words that will for ever be emblazoned in my mind: "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here," he said. "I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me."

Dr. Collins was stunned how clearly this young farmer could see into his heart.
I had plunged a needle close to his heart; he had directly impaled mine. With a few simple words he had put my grandiose dreams of being the great white doctor, healing the African millions, to shame. He was right. We are each called to reach out to others. On rare occasions that can happen on a grand scale. But most of the time it happens in simple acts of kindness of one person to another. Those are the events that really matter. The tears of relief that blurred my vision as I digested his words stemmed from indescribable reassurance -- reassurance that there in that strange place for just that one moment, I was in harmony with God's will, bonded together with this young man in a most unlikely but marvelous way.

Francis Collins and that young Nigerian farmer recognized that they were living together within the life of God, the Holy Trinity. Each of them had poured out themselves to the other, and they experienced the life that unites them -- the very life of God's Holy Spirit. Henri Nouwen and his student recognized that they were living within the life of God, the Holy Trinity. Each of them was still and silent enough to experience and recognize the presence in whom we live and move and have our being.

This is the life that we live in all the time. It is the atmosphere we breathe, the energy of our being, the union of all that is. We can experience the living reality of God whether we are active, like Francis Collins and the farmer, or whether we are still, like Henri Nouwen and the student. At all times and in all places, we are all embraced by a presence that loves us and breathes us into being. We are all one, in God.

What is true for them is true for us. We are here for one reason: we are here for one another. From now on, wherever we go and wherever we are, all the ground between us will be holy ground.

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