Ordinary Trinity

Text: Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Other texts: Psalm 8

Yesterday a few folks came to work on the garden and grounds of the church. The sun shone. The air was perfect. Plants were growing. People walked by, happy and content. It was good. It was very good.

The story of creation in the first chapter of Genesis is rich in powerful themes. The extraction of order out of chaos. The power of making things by naming them into existence. The establishment of a sacred time of rest. The establishment of time itself as a byproduct of the separation of light and darkness. The creation of life. These are all themes of physics, of some sort. Substance, order, biology— they all could have existed without comment or meaning. A universe, as some say, set into motion and sent on its ways to see what might happen. But that is not this story. In this story, the creator has an opinion about creation. An opinion that grows stronger at each step. God’s opinion is clear: God thinks that creation is good.

Before even time is created, before day and night, dawn and dusk, light itself—the power behind life and revelation and discovery—light is good. The earth and the seas are good. The plants, the seeds, the notion of seeds and reproduction, fruit: all good. Sun and moon and stars: good. Fish and fowl, bugs and sea serpents: good. Animals, and creepy crawly things: good. Everything, including the humans who come last: everything is good. Very good. God made the world, and God saw how very good it was.

It is nice that our God is good. Not everyone worships a God who is good. One of the prisoners I used to work with was taught in his childhood that God was mean and nasty. Now, as an adult, he asked me “Why would anyone want to hang around with a God like that?”

Now, you yourselves might expect God to be good. That is great. What is greater is to worship a God who thinks that the world is good. That creation is good. Not only that it exists and chugs along, but that it is good. That you, just by being part of creation, are good. God thinks you are good. What you cannot miss in this story in Genesis is that God has a ton of affection for the world and all the things in it, from the fruit of the vine to the creepy things in the dirt. From living things to the very light that makes life possible, to the days that measure out our lives. God loves the amazing cosmos and the ordinary world.

Today is Trinity Sunday. It is also the beginning of the season of Pentecost. This time in the church is called Ordinary Time. The color is green, which I guess seems like an ordinary color. The word Ordinary doesn’t really mean plain. It means numbered. Like “in order.” But in fact during this time in the church things are more ordinary, meaning plain. No Christmas, no Easter, no Lent. Nothing out of the ordinary, as in those other, extraordinary seasons. In the ordinary church seasons we hear of the stories of Jesus that are more ordinary. More about the life of Jesus in the middle of his ministry and not about his birth, death, or resurrection. In one sense, these stories are easier to grasp, being about the stuff that happens to us all the time.

Maybe it strikes you odd, therefore, that we start this season with Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is not usually considered an ordinary sort of thing. Not something that is easy to grasp at all. In one sense, the idea of the Trinity came from a theological quandary. How can there be just one God—we are monotheists, after all—if Jesus the son of God is God? To say nothing of the Holy Spirit. But in another sense, the idea of the Trinity is about something else altogether. It is also about how God can love creation. It is not only about some theological mystery, it is about great big God having personal affection for this little tiny world. This ordinary world and our ordinary lives in it.

God is really big. And probably God is really strange, too. I’m sure that there is a lot about God that I cannot fathom at all. And never will. And do not have to, for which I am thankful. God has the whole universe to look after, and not much of it looks like Cambridge, I’m sure. But part of it looks like Cambridge.

The Trinity is a description of God that makes sense in this ordinary world. In a world where things are created, and loved, and comforted, and guided, God is our creator, and lover, and comforter, and guide. The Trinity is a way of describing a God that not only hangs around with dark matter and galaxies but that shows God’s self in the form of the ordinary forces of wind and fire. And in human form.

When I consider your heavens, says the psalm, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses—What is humankind that you are mindful of them, the human race that you care for them?

The writer of the psalm is flabbergasted. We have less power than we usually like to admit—we are unable to affect what’s happening in the world as a result of natural forces and even human violence. But we also are more powerful than we like to admit. Things we are doing are making a difference in the whole big world. We seem at least to have the power to bite off more than we can chew. Even so, we know that we are really not up there with angels on the power scale. We are small creatures on a small planet in a very very big universe. How can it be that God is mindful of us? Because the story of the Bible is that God is. Is mindful.

The Trinity is a way to talk about a God that can be with people without being foolish. Unlike, for example, Zeus or Apollo, who were competing with God for people’s attention at the time of Jesus. The Trinity is a way to talk about an awesome God who created the universe as vast as we modern types know it to be, who seems nearly unknowable, and who at the same time likes to hang around with us.

The God whom the Trinity describes is one who finds the world that we live in worthwhile, who finds our company at least entertaining and maybe even satisfying. A God who looks at the ordinary world, and finds it very good.

Being Prophetic

Text: Acts 2:1-21. Other texts: Luke 17:5

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.

In the time of Jesus, these places spanned from one end of the earth to the other. These were people from everywhere, from all over the world. These were all the people. From all sorts of lands. Of all different kinds. Who spoke all different languages.

Some had come Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, the 50th day after Passover. Some were there to trade, to do business. Some were traveling through. Jerusalem was a cosmopolitan city. A meeting place of many people and cultures. A place, like Cambridge, of many languages and ideas.

The disciples, and maybe many others, were meeting. They seemed to be both hopeful and confused. Apprehensive and eager. Jesus was gone. There was work to do ahead, but no one knew quite what kind of work or where it would lead. It was a time of transition. Something was going to happen.

Suddenly, the story goes, sound like the wind rushed through the house and tongues like flame touched each of them. And they began to speak in other languages.

The people nearby were amazed. Each one heard the same story spoken, but each in his or her native language. This was a miracle of communication. But it is hard to tell whether it was a miracle of speaking or a miracle of hearing. Was it a miracle of tongues or a miracle of ears? Where, from the minds of the speakers to the minds of the hearers, where did the Spirit intervene?

Some thought this might just be a drunken party. But Peter told them that this event was a sign of a new age. It was a time of prophecy. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, and see visions, and dream dreams.

Prophets are called up by times of turmoil and change. A prophet is not really a fortune-teller or a prognosticator. A prophet is someone who sees things as they are. Someone who see clearly what is going on. And then tells everyone about it. A prophet is a truth-teller. A prophet’s main job is to tell it like it is. Sometimes a prophet warns about what is going to happen, but the prophet is not foretelling the future through some special knowledge that no one else has access to. The prophet knows what anybody could know if they only looked clearly, without prejudice, and without preconception. The prophet’s power of prediction is in the form of: if you continue to act the way you are acting, then the future will no doubt turn out such and such a way. Usually, that way is not so nice. The prophet’s statements are warnings. Heads up, guys! Watch out! Change your ways! Or else.

Therefore, people who have a stake in keeping things the way they are don’t like prophets. Prophets are trouble makers. They are anti-establishment. For that reason, there is no such thing as an official prophet, a certified prophet, an authorized prophets. Prophets are unauthorized.

When Moses came down from the mountain after speaking to God, as we heard in the first reading, all the officials were bent out of shape. These guys, they said, these guys Eldad and Medad are prophesying, and they are not authorized. Authorized by us, they meant. But Moses said: it would be great if everyone were a prophet.

Anyone can be a prophet. You can be a prophet. That doesn’t mean that everyone who stands around criticizing is a prophet. Everyone’s a critic, as they say, but not everyone’s a prophet. The spirit of God has to be with them. How we judge that is an open question. But the point is that it the powers that be are never the judge.

Anyone can be a prophet. And the flip side of this is that a prophet can speak to anyone. People whom the powers that be have excluded, or oppressed, or ignored, or underrated.

Peter says that Jesus brings a new era to the world. The rise of prophecy—with all sorts of unauthorized speakers and all sorts of unfamiliar listeners—is both a sign and and means of change. Like a hinge, prophesy connects the familiar and predictable with the strange and new. It is the Spirit at work.

In the story of Pentecost the Spirit moves people to speak and the Spirit moves people to listen. To have skillful tongues and open ears. The ongoing development of faith in each of us and in the world is a conversation. We all have obligations in this conversation. We are called to speak up about what we know about God and about what God asks us to do in the world. What we hear Jesus to say, for example. And we called just as seriously to listen to others, listening as we are guided by the Spirit.

The other day someone spoke about some people who cut out the words in a children’s Bible and put in other words. They did that because in their culture there were no sheep, and thus no lambs, and the shepherd and lamb language made no sense to anyone. So they used some other image, some other symbol of humble sacrifice. I would say this was a prophetic sort of act. Sometimes we have to speak in unfamiliar languages. But people were concerned, hearing of this, that the result wouldn’t be Lutheran.

Our job in these days is not to be the keeper of the gates. Our job is to be prophets. Sometimes that will result in a call to uphold tradition, and sometime it will result in a call to break tradition. It is not always easy to tell which is right. But we are in a time of tumult in the world. We are in a time of transition. Something is changing. It is hard, but I think it is good. We don’t have to be afraid.

One of the great things about riding the Red Line [subway] during rush hour—probably the only great thing about it—is that the train is full of all sorts of people. People of all sorts of ways of dressing, speaking, acting, even probably ways of thinking. We live in a cosmopolitan city. Full of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia. And now, not just our city, but our world, our time is cosmopolitan. The whole world is like Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. It is a time that calls for prophecy. For truth telling. For warning, too.

Faith is not a conversation among like-minded people. Knowing that was what made Peter so excited. If everyone were the same, there would be no need for prophecy. Prophecy is a sign of God’s doing something.

We are all called to speak up, moved as each of us might be by the Spirit. We are all called to listen carefully. Go tell it like it is. Go hear it well.