Trinity Sunday Year C (Part 1)

Readings for Trinity Sunday (Year C)  Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15. 

‘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.” (John 16:14-15) 

 The strange language of the Gospel of John: the three – Father, Son and Spirit – are interconnected in such a way that if you talk of one, it naturally leads to the others. So today, the Spirit comes and will take what is Jesus’ and declare it to the disciples. So if they have forgotten anything, the Spirit will teach them. But then, immediately, Jesus says that all that the Father has is his. Therefore, if the Spirit declares to the disciples what is Jesus’ then the Spirit will also be declaring what is the Father’s. 

The three are so closely connected that we speak of the union of the three. And before we get bogged down in working out the apparent complexities of the Trinity, let’s catch one of the practical and simple implications of this language. Wherever God is, there is Jesus. So you can trust Jesus. And the gospels tell us that this union is not after the resurrection, but speaks of who Jesus is all the time. So you can trust what he says and what he does. Giving yourself to Jesus is to give yourself to God. The salvation that is won in Jesus is God’s gift to us. 

 And the Spirit. You can trust the Spirit, for the Spirit speaks (of) Jesus, and what Jesus has is the Father’s. To be in the Spirit is to be in the Father and the Son. To receive the Spirit is to receive the freedom of the Son, the freedom of the children of God who cry out ‘Abba’ – a cry of intimacy and love. There is nothing complex about that. It is the simple message of the gospel. Jesus is the salvation of God, and to receive this salvation is to be part of the love the Son receives and gives to the Father. 

 And if we are in Jesus, then our destiny is to be with Jesus, wherever he is. And he is with God. And so our final destiny is, likewise, to be with God. But not just our final destiny. For if we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in God now, then we are in God now. We don’t have to wait. This is the work of the Spirit. Jesus has departed, but the Spirit is given to us, who makes Jesus known and present in us and for us. Our final destiny is true right now. This is part of the meaning of Jesus as the way, the truth and the light. He is not just the destination (the Father, or heaven maybe), but is also the way there. And we are on the way now. We are not alone. (Or as John’s Gospel says, we are not left orphans.) And this is intimately tied to mission. In the NT our inclusion in God results not in a passive enjoyment of our relationship with God, but, in the confidence and strength of it, going out into the world. ("As the Father sent me ..." John 20:21)

Deeper into Sin to be Freed from it.

Walking the way of the cross during Easter is traditional. You can do it in Jerusalem (the via dolorosa), or closer to home you can do it at your local church. We are invited to 'walk' the path of the saviour each time we read the story from Gethsemane to tomb in dramatic form. I like the latter best when we (the congregation) take all the parts other than the role of Jesus. We walk the road from Gethsemane to tomb not out of guilt and as an excuse to self-recriminate. Nor do we grovel as we walk in a religious version of a show-trial. Nor is the journey an occasion of (inner) chastisement leading to catharsis, like some kind of pagan festival. We walk as sinners, sinners who know they need a saviour. It isn't hard to know our need: one only has to look at the newspaper of history, or one's own heart and experience, to see the universality of sin and our need to be saved from it.

People these days recoil from the term 'sinner'. In my experience, they cite either the self-recrimination that has gone with 'sinner' in the past, a self-recrimination aimed at controlling 'the sinner'. Alternatively, some people cite the way 'sinner' has been used to point the finger at others, with 'sinner' in this version of history partnered with judgementalism. 

Ironically, a culture that has given up on 'sin' and 'sinners' is captive to the very consequences it wants to avoid. Denying the universality of sin/human failure - that is, pretending that there is some part of me that is quarantined from the imperfect world I have grown up in - makes those very consequences more likely. In naivete about the world ("Let's all just be kind to one another" or "Why can't people just love each other?"), to extreme narcissism (think identitarian politics), and then onto scapegoating and cultural polarisation (think social media), we have core features of the contemporary cultural landscape.

Instead, Christians walk the via dolorosa as sinners in need of a saviour, and a saviour appropriate for our mutual sinfulness. Walking the via dolorosa as a sinner is, ironically, to get off the see-saw of self-recrimination and criticism of others. Walking the way of the cross with the saviour also brings with it freedom, and should make us more difficult to control through guilt. 

Why is this? Mostly because we are loved, that's the point of the whole Jesus thing. And as beloved, we don't have to hide from our sin. We can receive the salvation of the saviour. We don't have to be in the centre of the universe: we can let God be the centre and receive God's love and forgiveness, renewal and freedom.

 God's way of dealing with human sin is to go deeper into the human predicament by being a victim of sin. And we must go deeper into our sin by acknowledging our need for a saviour. This is the path that yields genuine repentance (not guilt), and we emerge with a new empathy for the human condition, which we share.

Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God.

Create in me a clean heart, O God. (Psalm 51:1) 

[And that is exactly what God has done in Christ.]

God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Rom 5:5) 

In a particularly difficult time in my life I had a dream that I remembered the next morning. In the dream I was in a large gathering, robed, and in the Gospel procession to the middle of the large crowd. The Gospel Book was opened and I was about to read and realised that the wrong reading was open. But I spoke the good news of the gospel (it was John 10, the Good Shepherd) to the crowd, but I read it by heart. 

I was talking to someone recently who told me of an occasion when they forgave someone for something most people might bear a grudge over. It was like it just flowed out of her heart. She didn’t need to coerce herself, fight with herself over what to do. I said it sounded like a flowering of her heart, like she knew the good news by heart and lived it. (It reminded me of my dream.) 

The problem was recognised in the Hebrew Scriptures. We are told that God is not swayed by outward appearance, but looks on the heart. (1Sam 16:7) And what is in the human heart? After the flood, God promises to never again curse the ground because of humankind, for evil dwells in every human heart. (There’s no simple solution to evil, like killing off the bad people to leave the good people.) The problem is the human heart. (Gen 9:21) Jesus teaches this too: it is what comes out of a person, from within, from the heart, that defiles a person. (Mark 7:21-23) What is to be done? The Psalmist cries out to God, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” (51:1) The problem is the human heart, and the solution is for God to cleanse the human heart. The prophet Jeremiah recognises this when he contrasts the old covenant with the new covenant. Instead of the law being written on stone tablets that must be inculcated into the human heart, God will write the law on our hearts, and we will come to know God by heart, and ourselves as God’s people. (Jer 312:31-34. See also Ezek 36:26; Matt 26:27-28; Rom 2:29) Or to put it another way, God will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. (Ezek 11:19-20) 

The transformation of the human heart is accomplished in Jesus. Jesus knows God by heart. God begins the new creation with Jesus. His heart is God's heart, our heart. But it is not as if Jesus just glides through life serenely oblivious to the temptations and despair of life, as though his heart is insulated from real life because it is God’s heart. On the contrary, Jesus has a true heart of real human flesh. His heart makes him more open and vulnerable, and through him, we are opened to this real human heart. His via dolorosa is the way of a human heart. 

In the same way, the rebuilding of our hearts into hearts of flesh does not insulate us from the world. There are many ingredients necessary for the spread of the good news of salvation in Jesus, not least his disciples opening the door of their hearts to their neighbour and inviting them in.

Real Love Waits (Quote)

Only real love waits while we journey through grief. That is the real trustworthiness between people. In all the epics, in all the stories that have lasted through many lifetimes, it is always the same truth: love must wait for wounds to heal. It is this waiting that we must do for each other, not with a sense of mercy, or in judgment, but as if forgiveness were a rendezvous. How many are willing to wait for another in this way? Very few. (Anne Michael)

Happiness (Quotes)

Check out this page for some quotes on happiness. Here are a couple of examples:

"Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a settled cheerfulness, but this, no matter how admirable, has nothing to do with joy, which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape. It transforms it." Sr Wendy Beckett

"If what most people take for granted were really true?if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now?What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear." Thomas Merton

By Faith

Following on from a previous post regarding our relationship to nature, it should be remembered that the biblical affirmation of the goodness (not perfection) of nature is a statement of faith. Without that faith perspective any objective view of nature should include its savagery, and sheer cyclical pointlessness. To do otherwise is to ignore (or interpret away) the reality of evolution through natural selection. This doesn't mean that nature is bad or worthless, but just that, without the eyes of faith, nature's imperfections should make us a little more circumspect in regards to the romantic claims we make of nature. This is why I am not one who subscribes to a 'back-to-nature' ideology as the universal panacea for our woes. On its own, nature cannot 'save us'.

The goodness of nature is not the only aspect of our lives that requires faith to be recognizable. Recognising our (and everything's) salvation in Christ is also an act of faith. It could hardly be otherwise. This explains why it often seems that life is anything but saved, and why we should be suspicious of pop gospel claims (and its secularized siblings in the self-help industry) that complete happiness and satisfaction is (or could be if you just did the latest self-help fad) the reality of our lives. Underneath our usual lives we can see the underpinning grace of God, and we can live this grace in the joy and pain we experience in life. But when it comes to salvation there will always be evidence to the contrary right in front of our faces. To see in this contrary, through this contrary and beyond this contrary evidence, God's activity requires faith, and a faith encompassing the realities of life, like crosses.

Evil is Close

It is commonplace to either understate the reality of evil or froth at the mouth about it. I doubt these two misrepresentations are exclusively Christian, but we do them well. Some Christians are still stuck in the Enlightenment's hope of progress, and think that with greater education, the curtailing of religious mania, and greater justice in the world evil would essentially evaporate. Such Christians are offended or embarrassed by the inclusion of 'evil' in the public life of the church, and edit out mention of it in, for example, the baptismal liturgy.

And then there are those Christians who seem to be obsessed with evil to the extent that human agency within it disappears, or certain people are identified entirely with evil. While I have some sympathy with that identification, those who do this seem to spread the just wide enough to catch those they don't like. (A tendency a bit evil in itself.) And the obsession with evil is then perverted still further by Hollywood which makes evil almost sexy (in a perverted way) or so 'other-worldly' that people are distracted from its actual locale. And I should also mention the teenage attraction to evil/demons which seems to derive from either self-hate or plain old teenager rebellion.

So what are we meant to think of evil? Well, first, it is real. Second, it isn't like Hollywood. It is to be found in the lives of real people, and manifests itself in individual perversion right up to whole societies. Third, it isn't sexy either, more banal than anything (but don't let this fool you, evil kills and destroys. Hannah Arendt attached the label of 'banal' to evil in her reporting of the Eichmann trial and the evil of Nazism.) And yes, I think sometimes people earn the appellation 'evil', although not necessarily for good. I looked into the eyes of a drug-crazed maniac yelling satanic abuse in my face from two inches away while he had a screwdriver poking in my belly. Two lives were lost after that night, and it doesn't feel like I was encountering 'merely' human failure that night. He was in the power of evil.

St Paul is right when he says that we are in conflict with more than flesh and blood (Eph 6:10-17); but we don't meet it apart from flesh and blood. It is close to each one of us in the distortions that make up our psyches, and the compounding historical perversions and distortions embedded in our global human community (and in each one of us; just as the doctrine of Original Sin says, we are sinners even before we 'sin'). Evil is opposed (personally and communally, historically and spiritually) through the traditional spiritual disciplines (including good counselling) and in our opposition to social movements of oppression and terror. And if you are really serious about opposing evil in your own heart and in the world, then truth, justice, peace and faith are essential.

Ultimately, evil is defeated on the cross and in the resurrection. Jesus' self-surrender and desertion by the Father to the power of evil, in utter openness to its power, defeats it. This is the truly disturbing heart of Christianity. Some atonement theories, and some interpretations of them, make the cross and resurrection in some way an overpowering of evil, as though God's power is of the same kind as evil, just of a greater magnitude. God's power in Christ is of an entirely different order, the power of self-sacrificing love given over to the power of evil and death. And in the apparent defeat of the cross, when all seems lost in the 'slabby darkness' of the tomb, there we discover that evil was 'tricked' (as the Fathers said in a variety of ways). The powerlessness of love overcomes evil in its (love's) powerlessness. Luckily God did it for us on the cross and resurrection because I don't have the courage to do it in my own life. If that terrible night with the man with the screwdriver was replayed I wouldn't give myself over to the evil, or watch as someone else fell into its power.

Stardust Saves All

The Incarnation tells us that Jesus was more than a teacher; the content of the gift of salvation is not a new teaching alone which can bring enlightenment to those who ponder it, but stardust that brings an eternal reconciliation. The tendency is to in someway split or peel off Jesus from the content of salvation. So he can become more like a prophet or an expression of the universal presence of God inherent in all of us from birth. The great heretics were much more subtle than the modern versions that try to tear asunder what God has united.

A truly astonishing implication of the Incarnation is that human flesh can save the whole cosmos. That is, a human being, living a very human life like you and I, can redeem everything and unite all with God. Can you feel your humanity reaching for, desiring salvation? Does it feel like human flesh made from stardust, just like your flesh, can be the point of salvation for all creation?

Salvation In Time, Not an Escape From It

The pagan corollary to a "spiritual salvation" is salvation as an escape from history, indeed, from the rest of creation. If Christianity means anything its meaning must be present in history. This is why the Bible is so material and historical. God's goodness comes to us in history, from creation, through covenant and finally in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is material, historical, and a legitimate Christian theology will never disavow this. This means that the salvation won in Christ is not an escape from history, but takes creation and its history into God. Herein lies the transformation of resurrection, and this for everything that is.

Contemplating the Descent to Hell

Jesus Came To Save (Kids' Talk)

[I'm using some model dinosaurs my brother and I made when we were kids.]

The point of the sermon is to make the connection between how I have looked after the models all these years because I made them, and how God intends to keep everything that God has made as well. Not lose any of it. That's the point of Jesus.

Points to emphasise: I made the models, a lot of time and effort, painted them etc., and I have carefully kept them in this box all these years. As I have moved from house to house, carefully they have been moved as well.

Parallel: God made everything, carefully, loves everything, and does not intend to lose any of it. In fact, God wants to bring it all home, back to God. That is why God sent Jesus.

Jesus, the Source of Salvation

Now, this is perhaps going to sound a little underwhelming, but Jesus is meant to be the source of salvation. "For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1Thess 5:9) The logical obverse of this is the possibility of 'wrath', but Christianity does not present salvation and 'wrath' as two equal pathways, one of which must be chosen when you get to the fork in the road. Christianity's hope is that all will be saved. (Rom 5:12-21; 1Tim 2:4) And if we think of this in terms of 'the fork in the road', the two possibilities are not equally weighted. Jesus Christ makes the path to salvation heavily weighted in our favour. The superabundance of God's love in Christ overshadows the estrangement of creation. Could God even save me? Yes, in Christ, even me. (This is the point to start reflection upon sin and salvation, and the possibility of either.) Christ forgave sinners, and, as he pointed out, all sin. (John 8:1-11)

However, this is our hope. It is not a tenet of belief. There is just too much in Scripture (much of it straight from Jesus) and the experience of our own perversity that must leave open the possibility of damnation. For those who pay lip service to Christianity's hope of universal salvation while emphasizing judgment and 'wrath', the shock of the Jesus who calls sinners as disciples (Lk 5:27-28), ate with them (Lk 5:29-31), forgave them (Lk 7:36-50), and told parables about them (Lk 15), needs to sink into the bones once again. And by this I mean deep into ourselves, to know our perversity and the grace that heals, and from there reacquaint ourselves with grace. The superabundance of grace. For those who have forgotten that there remains a fork in the road, it is important to remember Bonhoeffer's teaching about cheap and costly grace.

But what if we were to hang onto our hope that all will be saved, but through costly grace? It seems to me that those who hold to the hope of universal salvation have a tendency toward cheap grace. Let's put our hope in God's power through Christ and the Spirit to change the human heart, and even when the human heart remains cold, let us hope in the Christ who has harrowed hell itself. And in this hope preach and live a costly grace, and still hang onto the hope of St Paul himself.

Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. (Rom 5:18-19)

Ordinary Religion (vs The Gospel)

[Matthew 20:1-16]

Ordinary religion says that we all meet a fork in the road; one way goes to hell, the other to heaven. Follow the rules (whatever they happen to be, whatever it is you are meant to believe) and you go to heaven, don't follow the rules and the way to hell opens up. Its religion as law, and there is plenty of it about. It is ultimately about remaining in control within our relationship with God. The recluse in the story below is a member of ordinary religion.

When God walked into heaven and found that everyone was there, he wasn't pleased at all. He owed it to his justice, did he not, to carry out his threats. So everyone was summoned to his throne and the Angel asked to read the ten commandments. The first commandment was announced. Said God, 'All who have broken this commandment will now betake themselves to hell'. And so it was done. The same was done with each of the other commandments. By the time the Angel came to read the Seventh, no one was left in heaven except a recluse - smug and self-complacent. God looked up and thought: 'Only one person left in heaven? That makes it very lonesome." So he shouted out, 'Come back, everyone!' When the recluse heard that everyone was forgive, he yelled in rage, 'This is unjust! Why didn't you tell me this before?' (Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird, pp138-139.)

The recluse did his part of the bargain, and when God 'changed' the rules, he lost control. Personal interest does not take us all that far down the road to God. (It can take us a little way, as it turns out, but becomes a dead end if we can't jump tracks. More on that in a future post on the four degrees of love.)

Contrast this to the gospel. The gospel is not about control, but about grace. The gospel still holds out the possibility of damantion, but does not conceive of two equally wieghted roads. The road to salvation in Christ is heavily weighted in our favour, with the possibility of damnation remaining. In God's kingdom the rules of ordinary religion do not apply so neatly.

The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. ²After agreeing with the labourers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. ³When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the market-place; ⁴and he said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. ⁵When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. ⁶And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, “Why are you standing here idle all day?” ⁷They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard.” ⁸When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.” ⁹When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. ¹⁰Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. ¹¹And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹²saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” ¹³But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” ¹⁶So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ (Matthew 20:1-16)

What is the antidote to ordinary religion? The gospel of Jesus, of course. But how do we enter the upside down world of the gospel? Here are a couple of clues:

1. This is not popular at the moment, but start with your own failure, and your moral equivalence (in failure) with every other human being. Then remember grace.
   
   
2. But more importantly, love God. The grace of God gives us the gift of responding to God, and the response we are given is love of God. The more we love God the less we begrudge God's grace shown to others, and, sometimes only eventually, we come to see the grace that is at the beginning and end of our response of love.

Another story to finish.

Jesus began to teach in parables. He said: the Kingdom of God is like two brotheres who were called by God to give up all they had and serve humanity.

The older responded to the call though he had to tear himself away from his fiancee and his family and go off to a distant land to spend himself in the service of the poor. Years later he was imprisoned for his work, tortured and pt to death.

And the Lord said, 'Well done my good and faithful servant! You gave me a thousand measures of service. I shall now give you a thousand million measures of beatitude. Enter into the joy of your Lord.

The younger boy ignored the call. He married the girl he loved and prospered in his business. He was kind to his wife and children and gave an occasional alms to the poor.

And when he came to die, the Lord said, 'Well done my good and faithful servant! You gave me twenty measures of service. I shall now give you a thousand million measures of beatitude. Enter into the joy of your Lord.'

When the older boy was told that his brother was to get the same reward as he, he was surprised. And he rejoiced. 'Lord,' he said, 'had I known this at the time you called me I know I would have done exactly what I did for love of you.' (Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird, pp. 134-135.)

[Pentecost 19(A) September 21, 2008]