Saturday, May 21, 2016

Experiencing the Holy Spirit

Experiencing the Holy Trinity

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
May 22, 2016;  Trinity Sunday, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(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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Our Christian expression of God as Trinity is grounded in the experience of the early disciples, what they knew and experienced about the reality of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit in the communion of their fellowship in the Church after his death and resurrection.

So it is important to know: the doctrine of the Holy Trinity doesn't just come from some elitist theologians thinking abstractly about God in their ivory academic towers, it comes from the experience of fishermen and tanners and cloth makers and slaves who knew what they had experienced and would not back down when theologians told them "but that's impossible."

The first thing these peasants knew was that the Jesus they experienced in flesh and blood was a human being just like them. He ate and drank like them. He got tired and needed rest like them. When his body was nailed to a cross, he bled and died like them.

The second thing these peasants knew was that when they were with Jesus they were with God. Not the God who created heaven and earth from before time and forever. But God in a human life. And here's where they got tenacious. Every time some theologian tried to describe Jesus as something a little less than God – the best human ever; the first of all the created order; someone like God but in a human form—they said, "NO!" Jesus was no second level divinity. No intermediary. When we were with Jesus, we knew—we were with God. But that's impossible, said the theologians. Go figure it out, said the disciples.

In Jesus, God has come to us. Real God. (Eventually they would say "very God from very God.")

And as if to complicate matters, they insisted further that after Jesus' death and resurrection, the Spirit that they experienced in their life and fellowship in the Church was equal to their experience of God and of Jesus. They insisted, the Spirit is God, doing the same work as Jesus they knew as a man. When the Spirit is with us, they said, we know we are in communion with God in Christ. It's all one. But that's impossible, said the theologians. Go figure it out, said the disciples.

The disciples insisted: Because we know Jesus, we know God. Their experience of Jesus was the experience of God. So they adopted Jesus' total confidence in God as a merciful, healing, forgiving presence. They had seen God through Jesus welcome the outcast and stranger, challenge all relations that are abusive or oppressive. They knew that in Jesus God seeks the lost sheep, welcomes both the prodigal and elder son. In his presence the broken became whole, the incoherent became coherent, the lost were found.

They especially treasured the most characteristic thing about Jesus—his radically inclusive table fellowship. At his table the master became servant and slave. He fed multitudes of foreigners as generously as he fed his own people. There was something transforming about their communion around the table. And when Jesus died, they knew him as tangibly present with them in the bread and wine as they had known him in flesh and blood. He was with them in Spirit, and that Spirit created communion among them. Unity in diversity. The many became one. The disciples were certain, Jesus shows us the essential nature of God.

We know through Jesus that God continually pours out infinite love and acceptance to you, to all humanity, to all creation, through Jesus the Son. In our humanity as one with us, Jesus receives infinite love and acceptance from the Other. Then Jesus returns the same infinite love and acceptance through the Spirit. God is love. (1 John 4:8) Lover, beloved, love itself.

It's like a dance. God to us in Jesus, we to God, we to each other in the Spirit.

Here's a way to experience some of what they experienced, a way of experiencing some of the essence of God the Holy Trinity. To join the divine dance of love, simply accept the fact that you are accepted. You are loved. Put your hand into the outstretched hand of Jesus, and let yourself be loved infinitely and accepted by God. Then put your other hand out to all humanity to accept everyone else as you have been accepted. Let all be raised into the divine presence and eternal dance of love. That is a description of Ultimate Reality. As surely as the earth revolves around the sun and every atom spins in relationship to its context, so we are in this eternal dance of infinite love.

The only way you can interrupt the divine flow is to refuse the gift of acceptance, through your own self-judgment or through your rejection of others. Sure, we all live with guilt. But guilt should be only a momentary false step in the dance. We fail, we step wrongly, we feel guilty. But instantly we look into the light of unfailing love, accept once again that we are accepted, and re-enter the dance.

The gift and grace of such missteps is our growth in empathy for every other human being in their own particular selfishness and sin. When we know how much love has forgiven us, then we can forgive and accept others, always leaving the circle of acceptance wide open by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here is a truth. The question of union has already been resolved forever. God is one. And God in Christ has taken all of humanity, including our evil and death itself, into the heart of God through Jesus. Nothing and no one is outside the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross, fully embracing our human condition.

God's intention is the restoration of communion. Universal belonging, universal connection. That's what we call "Heaven." "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Theologian Catherine LaCugna says, "The heart of the Christian life is to be united with the God of Jesus Christ by means of communion with one another."[i]

So dance the dance of the Holy Trinity. It is the dance of equality, mutual love, interdependence, unity in diversity, inclusivity, acceptance and love. Every week we invite all into this wonderful communion. "Whoever you are, or wherever you are in your pilgrimage of faith, you are welcome in this place. You are welcome at God's table." Welcome! Welcome to the dance.


[i] Catherine LaCugna, God for Us, Harper San Francisco, 1993, p. 1

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

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