Sermon (Fr Cunningham) May 27, 2018

            Last Thanksgiving, I was out to dinner with a friend from High School whom I had not seen in quite sometime.  At some point we discussed my decision to become clergy and he asked if this meant that I now had all of my questions answered.  He is not particularly religious and so I am not sure what motivated the question - perhaps he had encountered some religious types who had claimed that they had cornered the market on truth.  Anyway I told him that I certainly had not figured everything out and did not plan on doing so anytime in the near future.  And while I don’t want to disparage those who claim to know everything, it would seem that not knowing is the more intellectually defensible position.  That is admitting that there are lots of things which we will never fully understand.  And if there were ever a Sunday on which to admit this Trinity Sunday would seem to be a very good candidate.  But before we get into celebrating our ignorance, let’s take a moment and reflect on why today is Trinity Sunday. 

Its origins go back to at least Thomas Becket when he served as Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1100’s.  He was consecrated on this day (that is the Sunday after Pentecost) and he declared that this day should be a festival to the Holy Trinity.  I am not sure why he did – there may be a good reason, but I don’t have access to a good library here so I am having to use the internet for most of my research, which is not always the most trustworthy of sources unless what you are looking for involves cat memes.  So instead of relying on the Internet I will give you the reason I think it makes sense.  The Church calendar begins in Advent.  In that season we are introduced to God the Father.  Then comes Christmas through Easter wherein we are introduced to God the Son.  And last week we had the rush of the mighty wind and tongues as of fire, which heralded the introduction of God the Holy Spirit.  So I am not sure if what I am about to say sounds crude, and if so I apologize, but here goes.  If this were a cooking show this is the first Sunday where all of the ingredients necessary to make a Trinity have been assembled. 

And now with that out of the way we can get back to not understanding the Trinity.  There is an old, most likely apocryphal, story about St. Augustine, the great fifth century theologian not the city in Florida.  It seems that after St. Augustine had finished his work, which was entitled “On the Trinity” he went for a walk on the beach.  A little ways down the beach he happened upon a small boy who was digging a hole.  He asked the boy what he was doing and the boy replied that he was digging a hole so as he could put the ocean into it.  St. Augustine is reported to have laughed and told him there was no way that he would be able to dig a hole capable of holding the entire ocean.  The boy replied that this might be true but that he had a better chance of accomplishing this than Augustine had of understanding the Trinity. 

So what this tells us is that not understanding the Trinity is a very proud tradition within the Christian Church.  So why is this?  Why is there this lack of understanding?  Well the Trinity at its most basic is pretty incomprehensible.  It is three persons and one God.  Or in the words of the Athanasian creed, “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.”  It goes on for a while longer, but you get the idea.  Three person and yet one God, distinct and yet one.  If you think about it too long your head might hurt a little.  And if you push it much further than that and start feeling like you are getting it you are probably committing a heresy.  And so this brings up a further question that question is if the Trinity is incomprehensible why do people spend so much time writing about it and talking about it?  Well, I think the answer to that question requires us to go in a few different directions, which may or may not be related.  And since it is Trinity Sunday I will give you three reasons for why we should pay attention to the Trinity, which is also rather convenient because that is all I can think of off the top of my head and so that’s what you get.

First, just because we can’t fully explain the Trinity, it does not mean that we cannot explain any of it.  Most of you have probably heard the Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant.  The brief version goes like this:  A number of blind men go out to interact with an elephant and each of them end up touching a different part of the Elephant.  The first feels the trunk and declares that an elephant must be like a snake, while the second feels its ear and declares that an elephant must be like a large fan.  This goes on with each man touching a different part of the elephant declaring the animal to be a certain different thing.  And there are lots of conclusions one can reach from this story but the one I want to point out is that each man was right in his own limited capacity.  None of them grasped the entirety of the creature, but that does not mean that they did not grasp some of it.  We understand something of God the Father, something of God the Son and something of God the Holy Spirit.  Certainly not all, but something.  And so we should not allow the mystery to keep us from some knowledge.

Second, in explaining what the Trinity is we spend a lot of time explaining

what it isn’t which helps guard against heresy.  This is a bit of a theological point and one that would take much more than a few sentences to properly flesh out, but many of the problems in Christian history have been when people understood the Trinity a little too well.  That is when, in order to make it comprehensible they took some mental shortcuts and reduced much of the majesty of God as understood in the Trinity and gave us an inferior product. 

Which leads us to the third point and that is the Trinity helps remind us, in its  

 incomprehensibility, something of the vastness of God.  The fact of the matter is we need awe and wonder in our lives.  We need to have something to reach up to.  We can certainly be like the blind men and the elephant and stop with the little piece of God that we understand or we can keep longing, keep stretching striving to gaze on more of God.  And while certainly the Trinity reminds us that this side of eternity we will never fully grasp or see God that is not a call to stop looking.  The human heart without being called higher will deform and decay.  I think our modern times could use a little more mystery.  As we have explained more and more things it has made us grow somewhat suspicious of things we cannot understand, but some of the things that make us fully human we do not fully understand.  Can anyone fully explain the love they have for their spouse or the beauty of a mountain stream?  I would argue that there is something in the inability to fully describe that leads us further up to God.  We cannot fully explain love because it comes from God, the same goes for beauty.  Explanations and full understandings are fine when you need to fix the water heater, but when your focus is God it will not work because it is simply too much for our human minds to grasp.  But God has given us more than reason with which to understand him.  The heart strangely warmed as Wesley called it is a perfect and wonderful reaction to the mystery and beauty of the Trinity.  We don’t always have to understand things intellectually because God has given us different ways to understand things. 

So on this Sunday let’s give three cheers (get it) for the Trinity, that most wonderful and beautiful of mysteries which reveals the vastness and greatness of God so that we may be his both now and forevermore. 

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) May 13, 2018

            Today in our reading from Acts we have a mention of one of the lessor known disciples, Matthias, who was the replacement for Judas.  I have generally thought of Matthias in much the same way that I think about Sammy Hagar at the time when he joined Van Halen, in that they both replaced Jewish guys who had left the band over artistic differences – but enough of the wisecracks.  The story we have today is how all of this went down; that is how was a new disciple brought in to replace the disgraced and now dead Judas.  The text from Acts states, “Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”  We don’t know a whole lot about Matthias either before or after this story takes place.  There are legends that he went to Cappadocia and possibly Armenia, but really we know very little of the man except for the very few things that we can discern from this all too brief entry and those things are this: 1. Matthias was a follower of Jesus, 2. He possessed certain characteristics that made him a candidate for replacing Judas and 3. We learn that he was willing to take on the roll of Disciple.  And I think from this very little bit of information that we have we can learn something; that is we can take these small bits and view them as prescriptive for us and how we live our lives.  So today let’s review this information and see how Matthias can be a roll model for us.

            So lets start with the first thing, which is that he was a follower of Jesus, which rather obviously we should be too.  This may seem a pretty obvious thing for a bunch of people sitting around church and also a rather low bar for things to emulate about Matthias, but it is the place from where all things begin.  As Christians we should all be followers of Jesus.  Being a follower of Jesus is different than being a church attender or checking Christian as your preferred religion.  Being a follower is a call on our entire life.  And while something like this may sound rather simple in theory it can be much more difficult in practice, largely because we can be easily distracted and start following other things.  Or the other danger closely related to this is that we deceive ourselves into believing that we are following Jesus when we are, in fact, following something or someone else.  But Matthias is someone who had his gaze firmly fixed on Jesus. 

            The second thing about Mathias is that he was chosen.  That is, there was something in his life that made people notice that he reflected the teachings of Jesus – that is he was worthy of being a disciple.  This may sound like a crude example, but today’s story tells us really about when Matthias went from being in the minor leagues to being called up to the major leagues.  And the reason for this call up, just like in baseball was there was something about him that was different, that showed people just how adept he was at being a follower of Jesus.  It would seem that in being chosen Matthias had shown that he got it.  He had moved from purely an intellectual ascent to the teachings of Jesus to having those teaching permeate his entire being.  For it is one thing to say that we believe that Jesus is who he says he is and quite another thing to actually have it change who we are.  Where our following is exhibited in all parts of our life.  And it is not just doing it, but doing it well and wonderfully.  I don’t want to belabor this major and minor league Christian thing too because all metaphors can become ridiculous if pushed too far.  But I think some of the difference comes down to the fact that both of them know the scriptures and the call that Jesus makes on our live, but it is only the major league Christians that fully follow Jesus and submit their entire will to the will of Jesus.  And when this happens it is something that is recognizable.  Those who do it are followers in thought word and deed –all day and every day.

            The last thing that we see in Matthias is that once he was chosen, he willingly submitted to his new role.  Now I don’t have the specifics of the job description for an Apostle and how it differs from just some dude who followed Jesus, but I am fairly sure that it involves more work and more responsibility.  Essentially, what you see in this is that Matthias was such a follower of Jesus that it showed through in his life, but because of this God asks him for more - and Matthias accepts.  And this is part of the Christian walk that we sometimes forget.  We never reach a point where we are finished.  Matthias is chosen for more because he has done such a good job and God wants to see more of what he can do.  Put into other terms we might call this stretching.  That is when God has seen what we can do and is now asking for us to do more.  Now to clarify, I may be making this sound like God wants to add one more thing to our plate.  That is our reward for doing a good job is that we get more work to do, but that is not necessarily what stretching means.  It is not saying you are good at these two things let’s add two more, but rather it is calling us to something else, something more.  Think of it like when we learned math.  We learned addition, then subtraction, then multiplication and so on.  These things built on one another.  You did not have to continue all of your addition homework when you started to learn subtraction; instead you used your knowledge of the former to better understand the latter.  In 1 Corinthians 3:2, Saint Paul writes, “ I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.”  In this passage Paul is acknowledging that there is a progression, that the place where we start is not the place where we end up – we move from milk to solid food.  Part of being a Christian is growing more towards God.  The Great fourth century theologian Gregory of Nyssa developed a concept called epektasis, which basically means perpetual progress.  He stated, “never cease straining toward those things that are still to come.”  Matthias shows us today that he was ready for the next step, for the higher calling of God and we should be ready for the same.

            And so let’s review the example of Matthias.  He was a follower of Jesus This following of Jesus permeated his entire being and he was not content with that but willingly strained towards the things that were to come.  Or put another way, he believed, he did and he wanted more.  All in all a pretty good example from a rather forgotten guy.    May we follow the path that Matthias has trod so that we may grow ever closer to God in thought, word and deed now and forevermore.

Sermon (Fr Peay) May 27, 2018

St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, Wisconsin

The Feast of the Holy Trinity – May 27, 2018

The Very Rev’d Steven A. Peay, PhD

Patrick Dennis’ “Auntie Mame” said that, “Life is a banquet!” I think so, too. But I also agree with those who see life as a dance, and that’s no small thing for someone who has real trouble keeping the steps and the rhythm at the same time! The image of the dance is a powerful one and when one considers the world in which we live, we can liken so much of it to a dance. Even the jockeying of politicians in Washington or the negotiations of diplomats reflects the give-and-take, the movement that is intrinsic to dance. When someone is being evasive we say, “Ah, he’s dancing around the point!” And so it is; sometimes the movements are stately and formal, like the waltz. Other times the steps are exuberant, though ordered, like a polka or a schottische. Still other times, the steps just happen, like most of the dancing you’ll see at ‘Summer Fest,’ or at least so it appears.

                  As I thought about the Scriptures today and the great Christian teaching that we celebrate on this Sunday, the dance came to mind. Sometimes the liturgy is called the “dance of God,” especially in the Christian East. And I think there’s something to seeing creation and our experience of it as expressions like that of the dance. The encounter of Isaiah with the ALL HOLY GOD, Paul’s reflection on how the Spirit draws us into God’s life, and John’s recounting of Jesus’ time with Nicodemus where he reminds him that God has sent His Son into the world for the sake of love, all three scriptures draw us into the dance of relationship with God. It’s a metaphor that just seems to work, and to make a very complex doctrine – which St. Thomas Aquinas called the simplest – a bit more approachable.  

                  Carl Maria von Weber wrote a beautiful piece for piano, later orchestrated by Hector Berlioz, entitled ‘Invitation to the Dance.’ He offers a musical dialogue designed to evoke a gentleman inviting a lady to waltz. Then the dance unfolds and we hear the music, and their delight, swell. Finally, it draws to a close and there’s a little coda, just a little something there, and we can almost see the gentleman bow to the lady and offer thanks for a lovely exchange.  Perhaps that’s how we should look at this gradual unfolding of God’s self in Trinity, as an invitation to enter into the dance of relationship?

From the patristic period forward – the time of the great teachers or ‘fathers’ of the early church -- perichoresis has been used to describe the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity. The noun comes from a Greek verb (perichorein) that means "to contain" or "to penetrate," and describes the three Persons of the Trinity as mutually "indwelling," "permeating," or "interpenetrating" one another. Each person both wholly envelops and is wholly enveloped by the others. A similar Greek word, perichoreuein, which means "to dance around," has been used as a metaphor for the relation of the Persons. In the Western Church, using Latin, the term was translated as circumincessio ("moving around") or circuminsessio ("sitting around"). Notice, though how both words describe relationship that is dynamic, not static; that moves and grows, rather than stands still.

The term perichoresis has also been used historically to describe God's relationship to the world, as a way of expressing God’s immanence (meaning to remain or operate within a domain of discourse, to be close) and transcendence (meaning beyond, or exceeding our ability to understand or to comprehend). It is important to understand, on the one hand, that God is contained by nothing, and is instead the One in whom we live and move and have our being — i.e., everything is contained by Him. Yet at the same time God is within all things, "omnipresent." This leads to the Christian notion of panentheism, that God is in everything and that everything is in God. As one of the early teachers of the church, Hilary of Poitiers put it, the Father is both "without" and "within" all things. This mutual indwelling and containment is a created extension of the mutual indwelling and containment of the Triune Persons. And this is part of the dance, the tension within One who is at once immanent and transcendent. Augustine pointed out in his book On the Trinity that we reflect the same tension within ourselves because we are at once spiritual and physical beings. Thus, we have yet another sign that we are made in the “image and likeness of God,” “little less than God.”

From the beginning God has been inviting creation, and humanity in particular, to the dance of relationship. I referenced Augustine a moment ago because when he tried to understand the Trinity he ended up looking at humanity. I think he was on to something because there are ways that we can still see the evidence of perichoresis in the created world and in ourselves in particular.

There is the realm of personal identity. We can well ask, “How can I be a distinct person, and at the same time be the product of all these influences from people who are other than me?” Don’t people say this about children, "I see his father in him"?  I know in my own case that this goes beyond physical resemblance, because the older I get the more I see and hear my father! Another way of seeing this personal identity point is when we speak of someone who is a son, a husband, and a father or a daughter, a wife, and a mother. What we’re talking about here is an economy of relationship

We can see that relationship in the “psychological analogies” of Augustine (the human qualities of mind, knowledge and love relating to the Divine persons) and that of later medieval theologians, like Richard of Saint Victor and Bonaventure who emphasized that the Divine Trinity is reflected in humans and their ability to relate and live in community. All analogies limp, especially when we’re trying to get our mind around God who is “uncreated” and according to Anselm, “greater than that which can be thought.” Yet, it’s important for us to talk and explore. I find it fascinating and encouraging that there are a whole raft of new studies being done on the doctrine of the Trinity, not only because it is a great excuse to visit the bookstore, but because it shows that we’re continuing to enter into the dance of life, of faith, and of understanding.

Another way we can see God’s “imprint” (the Latin term used by Augustine is vestigium) on us and our world is the use of metaphor. When we look at it, creation contains objects that are really distinct and separate from one another. Day is not night, waters above are not waters below, water is not land, birds are not fish, I think you get the point. That said, the Scripture still indicates that one thing can stand for, represent, or symbolize other things. Things in creation indwell other things. The Psalmist can say that a "righteous man is like a tree" not because we invent similarity between two essentially unlike things. Rather, there is a real mutual relation between them. So, the Son is the express image of the Father, and yet is not the Father. This perichoretic "is/is not" (man is/is not tree) structure is inherent in God, and is the very nature of metaphor.  And, ultimately, it is through metaphor that we can even try to talk about the Maker of All, the Source of All That Is, and the Ground of Being.

What’s the point? The point is that we talk about how God relates to us, how God has acted toward us and we have perceived that action. We can really only talk about the Trinity as the Divine economy, the manner in which God works and orders God’s affairs. God is inviting us into the dance of life, the dance of relationship and drawing us into the community that Creates, Redeems, and Sustains us and the world in which we live.

                  The world in which I want to live, the world I want to help to create is the one where we find interdependence, relationship, possibility, responsibility, becoming, novelty, mutuality, freedom, and I would add intentionality. I believe that this is the kind of world God created. I believe that this is the kind of world God wanted to heal and restore by becoming one of us in Jesus the Christ. I believe that is the kind of world God wants to continue by sending the Holy Spirit among us to be our companion, our advocate, and our teacher.              

The doctrine of the Trinity is not some outdated construct born of musty and abstruse philosophy and theology. The Trinity is about the dance of life, the dance of relationship, and the experience that each of us can have with the living God. It is an invitation to the dance, an invitation to move beyond ourselves and our narrow view of our world and our day-to-day experience and see the possibility, the hope, and the difference than can be made when we start to dance with God.

Pray with me, please: “Holy God, who created all things through the Son, with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit; Holy Mighty, through whom we knew the Father and the Holy Spirit dwelt in the world; Holy Immortal, the Spirit Comforter, who proceeds from the Father abides in the Son, Holy Trinity, glory to You!”  Amen. [Pentecost Hymn attributed to Emperor Leo VI (886-912) in John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 184.]