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May 18, 2008 sermon

Creating, Relating, Brooding
(Creation Story verses from Genesis 1 and John 1; Psalm 8)

Reverend Minister Sally Harris

Holy Trinity, Forever One, whose nature is community;
unbounded dance of love.
Before Your unfathomable mystery
All eloquence of language falters.
So we fall silent and rest content in the knowledge
That we are known, wanted and loved.
May it be so! Amen!

I am reading a novel in little spurts – twenty minutes at a time. Sometimes a half hour. It will take time, but who's in a hurry? It's a kind of narrative that is rich in its writing and it is well worth a lingering read with pondering pauses of hours, if not days. It has a few themes running through it and so on my return to the novel I have to remember which thread I left on and which one I need to pick up. Jane Urquhart is known for her meditative writing that melds history, ideas, events and individuals into a significant whole. Into this particular story, she weaves the works and words of the American artist, Robert Smithson. Smithson was legendary for transporting pieces of glass to a New Jersey site, heaping them into a haphazard shape and naming the work Map of Broken Glass. (Obviously Urquhart’s inspiration for the title of her novel, A Map of Glass.) The purpose of this broken glass became apparent as Smithson patiently waited for the sun to come out so that the structure would leap into the vitality he knew existed when broken glass combined with piercing light. All that labor to see the sun reflected. In one of his interviews Smithson reportedly said that one pebble moving six inches over the period of four million years was enough for him, enough to keep him interested.

I always thought of patience as the ability to do something for a long, long time. Now I wonder if it's the ability to see time in short doses -- to be content with accomplishing small things, one by one by one. Reading a page of a novel over time. Engaging in long-term projects, like organizing office space or expanding the beauty of a garden or visioning our future ministry. Maybe no large task is really a large task. They’re all groups of small ones. Every book is a group of pages. Every day is a set of hours, if not minutes. Every life is a gathering of one year after another.

And I wish I could leave it at that. I wish it was all that basic; as uncomplicated as the creation story sets it out - rhyming off the six days of creation; declaring it all good! Stating life as purely the watching of pebbles move ever so slightly. But we all know life is messier than that; creation is messier than that. It is at times a heap of broken glass – both brilliant and dangerous. Reflecting the light, revealing shattering experiences and demonstrating the risk of being cut by the sharp edges of life. We know life is complex and uncertain. I don’t like messy circumstances, unanswered questions, the limbo of confusing and perplexing situations. I long for simplicity? Simple questions - simple answers. Straightforward and decisive thinking – crisp conclusions. Relationships with clear boundaries and definitions. Words and concepts that when spoken denote clarity for all. Imagine all that could be accomplished if only things and people and God were uncomplicated and easy to understand. But no, that's not how it is. Back in the late 2nd century, a theologian named Tertullian made a complicated God more complicated by writing this:
"All are of one, by unity of substance; while the mystery of dispensation is still guarded which distributes the unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; three, however . . . not in substance but in form; not in power but in appearance, for they are of one substance and one essence and one power..."

It was here that the word 'trinity' was coined. Trinity is not a biblical term. Rather it represents the crystallization of the teachings of the early church. Yes, this one theologian has left us, like all the centuries of the Christian church since his time, struggling with the concept of one God yet three.

Now I say this knowing that most of us probably don't stay up nights trying to figure this out. Yet it is Trinity Sunday and the question before us is: "What do we think of when we hear the name of the triune God?" What does the traditional hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy" mean when it says "God in three persons, blessed Trinity"? What ideas do we associate with the Trinity? The answers will vary greatly, if indeed an answer is attempted at all. Some of us will think of the traditional rituals and symbols of Christian worship, baptism, the Lord's Supper, blessings and benedictions. Others might even think about the passionate disputes of the early church. Some will see in their mind's eye the pictures of Christian art depicting three divine Persons, or two Persons and the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove. Others may view such lofty thoughts about the doctrine of Trinity as purely the domain for theological specialists whose speculations have nothing to do with real life. As one person said: "The Trinity! It reminds me of an old man, a baby and a bird."

A story is told by an old African-American man that some would call crazy, for he spoke to anyone and no one. He shuffled along with one finger held out as though to test the wind's direction. He called the story "One Stick, Two Stick." "This is the way of the African kings," he whispered. And then he began. "An old man is dying, and he calls his people to his side. He gives a short, sturdy stick to each of his many offspring, wives and relatives. "Break the stick," he instructs them. With some effort, they all snap their sticks in half. "This is how it is," he said, "when a soul is alone without anyone. They can easily be broken." The old man next gives each of his kin another stick, and says, "This is how I would like you to live after I pass. Put your sticks together in bundles of twos and threes. Now, break these bundles in half." No one could break the sticks when there were two or more in a bundle. The dying old man smiled. "We are strong when we stand with another soul. When we are with another, we cannot be broken." [From Women Who Run With the Wolves, pg. 120.]

Relationships, community and the concept of Trinity come together for me in this story. The Eastern Church has a wonderful image of God, Jesus and the Spirit, hand-in-hand forming a circle, dancing, and inviting us into the dance of their community. A community of creating, relating and brooding is where we are to find our Christian identity. The beloved mystic and theologian Thomas Merton, in his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, describes the true identity he seeks, as a point untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth… which belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point… of absolute poverty, is the pure glory of God in us.

Is this not the Psalmist proclamation – why O God do you remember us? Why are you mindful of us? It is a psalm where the praise of God is sung by the creation throughout the cosmos. The glory of God spills out beyond the farthest star. The whole of the universe cannot contain it and yet it is in the babbling of infants that God's strength is declared. Our best words; our coos and goos manage somehow to speak of what God can do. Yes even as infants our praise to God is effective. And here in lies the twist. The psalmist turns from the praise to the praisers - from the smallest part of the universe we find ourselves as rulers of the cosmos. Though infants, we are crowned. Small in the cosmos we have responsibility, sharing in the clothes of glory and splendor that we see in God. Made a little less than the divine - the whole of creation is laid at our feet as a tribute - as a gift. How soon, how easily we forget the gift entrusted to us. Made a little less than the divine we often find ourselves feeling the smallest rather than those who are created as partners, co-creators of the realm in which we dwell by the gracious artist we name as God.

Perhaps patience is understanding that life is a series of brevities, each enjoyed or suffered in its time and then each over and done with, layered one upon another upon another in history. We know we will never resolve the mystery of God or the Trinity or heaven or … but each week we take the time to be present to the mystery and sometimes we actually experience the vitality we claim exists when our brokenness is combined with the piercing presence of the mystery we name God. And we again our reminded of the beauty that surrounds us and lies within us. May it be so!

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