In the name of the Holy Trinity ☩ Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
There’s no getting around it - this is a difficult Sunday to preach. Even in a normal year, Trinity Sunday is a challenge because when it comes to how we understand that God is a Trinity of persons in a unity of being, as it is classically stated, there are more questions than there are answers. And while the doctrine of the Trinity is full of beauty and fills us with faith, hope, and love, it takes some explanation to get there in a way that the Parable of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son simply don’t.
But
this year is different. For one, the church remains empty, as it has been for
nearly three months, as our lives, economy, and society have been interrupted
by a pandemic that has taken the lives of well over 100,000 Americans. And,
while I could not have imagined saying this a few weeks ago - the pandemic
isn’t what is dominating the front pages of the news. Racial tensions are at
the highest they have been in at least a generation. And while there were
protests after Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, and Eric Garner, and Ahmaud
Arbery, the murder of George Floyd has set something off across this nation
that is different. It’s not that Floyd’s death was any more egregious than
others - but it’s becoming a tipping point because with the prevalence of
smartphones, we are seeing police brutality first hand, which, to be very clear,
is the minority in policing. But it’s as if we’re getting to the point of
saying “enough is enough” when it comes to racism and we’re ready to have those
conversations about how to address this systemic Sin.
You
all know that I’ve been working on initiatives related to dismantling
racism, both through our Becoming Beloved Community work at St. Luke’s and in
the wider community. I’ll tell you that it’s hard work. It’s hard work because
I’ve had to admit, over and over again, that I didn’t know things. I’ve had to
accept that I’m blind to so much – that there are things that I’ve never had to
think about or worry about. A lot of us find these conversations difficult
because we have to face our ignorance, our complicity, our guilt. We have to,
in the language of the Bible, repent, which, as you know, means to think
differently and have a change of heart. We have to unlearn the false narratives
and stereotypes that we’ve grown up with. We have to pursue justice which may
mean that our own lives will have to change. And, understandably, our sinful
nature often makes doing that hard work. But it is holy work – it is the work
that God has given us to do. To be clear, I’m not an expert on this and I’ve
got a lot more to learn. What I can bring to the situation are the fruits of my
experiences and conversations, and my prayerful meditations as I’ve tried my
best to listen to what the Triune God would have me speak from this pulpit
today.
I
am reminded of one of the most important pieces of Christian writing since the
New Testament – Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In it, he
writes “There was a time when the church was very powerful – in the time when
the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they
believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded
the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that
transformed the mores of society.” But he goes on to say “the judgment of God
is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the
sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit
the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no
meaning.” King says that he expected the church to be with him in the call for
love and dignity for all of God’s people – but instead, he found “too many have
been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the
anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.” In another speech, King says,
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of
our friends.”
Where
this connects for me with our faith is rooted in today’s celebration of the
Holy Trinity. If we really think that it is true that God the Father
intentionally and lovingly created this world, if we really trust that God the
Son lived among us and died and rose again, if we really believe that God the
Spirit is active in this world – then that changes everything. If God is God,
then that is the only story that matters. And any story that runs counter to
that story of the living, liberating, and loving God is a lie. Now, if the love
of God is not true, then the chaos that we see all around us really is as good
as it gets. But just as the Triune God brought order out of chaos in the
Creation story we heard in Genesis, God brings the order of love into the chaos
of our world, even now.
The
Holy Trinity brings order, and freedom, and love into being. But what we are
seeing right now is another trinity – the unholy trinity of poverty, racism,
and violence. And if we pay attention to the text of Genesis, we see how the
Holy Trinity actually counters this unholy trinity and would have us to
participate in holy order instead of unholy chaos. It’s become clear that the
course that we’ve charted isn’t working – but if we take a look at the path
that God set for Creation we will see the more excellent way of love.
The
first part of the unholy trinity is poverty. Poverty denies people their
God-given right and duty to “be fruitful.” When people are in poverty, the
doors of opportunity are made so much harder to walk through. Poverty makes
people desperate and, in that desperation, they have to make impossible
decisions. Sometimes we might not agree with those decisions, but poverty so
often takes what we might call the “good” options off the table.
What
this Creation story in Genesis builds towards is found in the verse that reads
“So God created humankind in the Divine image.” Biblical scholars tell us that
this Creation story, which really is a poem, is, obviously, not talking about
the mechanics or physics of Creation, but rather the meaning and purpose of
Creation. And as such, they tell us that the way the story is told, Creation is
being described in terms of a temple. It’s a fascinating way to read this
passage, which then becomes a key to reading the rest of Scripture and
understanding Jesus, but that’s not the point I want to make on this Trinity
Sunday. For our purposes, the point is that Creation is seen as a temple that
God is making.
Now,
when a temple was built, what made the temple a temple instead of just a
building is that at the center of the temple, there is always an image, usually
a statue, of the deity. And this image was not merely a reference to the deity,
but was considered to be, in a sense, truly that deity. Notice what God the
builder puts in the center of this temple of Creation – humanity. Humanity is the image of
God. This is what makes poverty such a Sin – it robs people of the dignity with
which God has endowed us. Poverty is not only a sin against our brothers and
sisters, it is blasphemy against God.
And
there really is no excuse for poverty – Genesis shows us this. God has created
in abundance. Later in Genesis, Creation is described as a garden where there
is more than enough of all that is needed. In the Holy Trinity, we see the
prodigious, abundant, and overflowing gifts of God. Poverty is an affront this and by
working to eliminate poverty, we not only put into action the commandment to
love our neighbors as ourselves, but we worship the Triune God.
Racism
is another part of the unholy trinity and is a scourge on our society right
now. Racism can be defined a lot of ways, but for the purpose of this sermon
and based on the content of Racial Equity Institute training, racism is the
systemic advantaging of whiteness over and against others based on the false
construct of race. I know there’s a lot in there, but at the most basic level,
racism is about believing and acting, even if unconsciously, that one racial
group is superior to another. And to be clear – race is a construct; it is not
real. Race is a sociological idea, not a biological or genetic one. In other
words, race is completely made up. If you want to learn more about this, I
highly recommend signing up for an REI training once we can resume having that
size group meet. So racism is about arbitrarily dividing people and privileging
one group over another.
And
this part of the unholy trinity flies in the face of God’s intention. As we see
throughout Genesis 1, there is a great diversity in Creation and this diversity
is repeatedly called “good.” It is clear in Genesis that humankind, in all of
our diversity, is what makes up the divine image. God is not white, or brown,
or black. God is all of those and beyond all of those. God made humanity in his
image. So to divide people into groups any further than God did really is a sin
against God’s created order. And to privilege one of those groups over another
is to deny the goodness that God has endowed them.
On
this point, the task must be made clear. Our goal is not simply to be “not
racist.” For one, that’s impossible. We are all impacted by racism, often in ways
we don’t even recognize. Instead, the work is to be, as Dr. Ibram Kendi puts
it, to be anti-racist. In a book called How
to Be An Antiracist, Kendi says that “denial is the heartbeat of racism.”
So it’s not enough for us to say “But we’re not racist.” Not being something,
even if it were true, is a pretty low bar. It would be like responding to God’s
call to love our neighbor by saying “Look, I don’t hate my neighbor.”
The work of the
Triune God is to bring order out of chaos, and God often uses us as the
instruments of that divine work. So being anti-racist might be no longer
letting racist remarks go by unchallenged when you hear them, it might be advocating
for access to affordable housing and healthcare for all, it might mean tutoring
students in a reading program. And it certainly means listening to the
experiences of people of color and taking our direction from them instead of
asserting that we know how to address their concerns. By being anti-racist in
our faith, we are celebrating the diversity and goodness seen in the Holy
Trinity.
The
third part of this unholy trinity is violence. Throughout Scripture, we see
that God urges us to love one another and are told that God is love. Violence
is one of the opposites of love. Embedded within the Creation narrative, we
have a refutation of violence. Scholars suggest that the version of the
Creation story that we heard this morning was refined during the Babylonian captivity
when the people would have heard the Babylonian creation myth of the Enuma Elish, in which creation comes
about as the result of a battle between the gods Marduk and Tiamat. Genesis
rejects this story though and says – no, Creation came about when God said “Let
there be,” not as the result of violence.
In
1961, in President Eisenhower’s farewell address, he warned against the dangers
of what he described as the “military-industrial complex;” a warning we did not
need. Violence fills our nation’s budget, our entertainment industry, our
conflict resolution skills, our legal system, our disagreements. We do violence
in thought, word, and deed every time we fail to live into the image of the
love of the Holy Trinity out of which we were made.
Over
the last two weeks, we have seen this unholy trinity align itself as we have
witnessed the evils of poverty, racism, and violence coming together. For those
of us who claim the faith of Jesus, who long for his peace, who have been saved
by his grace – we reject this unholy trinity and, in the words of St. Patrick’s Breastplate, we bind unto
ourselves today the strong name of the Trinity.
This is what we see in Genesis and what the Holy Trinity is all about – that we have a different narrative by which to live. There is a good, creative, active, and loving God who created all things, who came among us in Jesus, and who is with us as we are given the mission of being the Body of Christ in the world. By the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit, a story other than the chaos of poverty, racism, and violence is possible and it is possible in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
