New

A sermon based on Matthew 28:16-20 preached at South Haven UCC in Bedford, OH on Trinity Sunday, 6/11/17.

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The Trinity makes a strangely frequent appearance in the world of comic strips. Some of them are the classic hand drawn illustrations of kids walking out of a church, saying things like, “After Dad got done explaining the Trinity I didn’t have the heart to ask him about the electoral college.” Or a few people standing in front of a blank sheet of paper on an easel, pictionary style, saying they have five minutes to depict the Trinity. Or a multiple choice questions labeled “Beginner’s Theology” that asks how many people make up the Trinity and then gives the options one, two, three, all of the above, or enough for a football team.

I didn’t say these were good cartoons, but there are plenty out there.

We poke fun at the Trinity as this obtuse, complicated topic. How do we have a God who is three-in-one? What is this stuff about the Son being begotten of the Father? Does it still count if it’s a Mother, does the Spirit get a pronoun, and is this just some kind of weird family?

Many faithful people have taken a look at the Trinity and in a quite sensible move, moved across the street to become Unitarians.

It’s one of those mysterious parts of our faith that we all profess to believe, but logically none of us can grasp. I’m certain I mentioned the Trinity in my ordination paper, but I suspect with as few of words as I possibly could.

It’s delightfully tricky. One God, three persons. It’s odd and certainly doesn’t make explaining our faith any easier. In fact, talking about the Trinity is an easy way to land yourself in the company of heretics when you accidentally use the wrong metaphor. As comic strips have shown me, the Trinity is an easy punchline. And, it’s just the thing we need to knock us back, put us in place, and let us know where we belong in the world.

If you can recite every aspect of your faith, if you believe you can name God fully, I might gently ask how that’s working out for you.  Certainty is overrated. It’s absolutely not critical to be a Christian. I might even argue the opposite. To know God is to be constantly learning about God.

Matthew says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Here’s my paraphrase: Get out there and invite people to be students of God, and welcome them into the mystery of our faith.

We don’t use the word disciple very much in our day to day life, so occasionally when reading a scripture like this we can switch it out for the word student. We can understand much more readily how a student is one who is in a posture of learning. A student hasn’t mastered everything yet. They’re growing and changing--and this is our call as disciples as well.

It’s just right that this call Jesus made, what we sometimes call the great commission, this call to be disciples or students, is couched in the language of what we now recognize as the Trinity, one of the most unknowable and laughable elements of our faith?

The Trinitarians language in there might just be a note to us that the call to the Christian faith is the call to be a lifelong student, to welcome beginners along the way. Those who doubted? They were also asked to go get a few more disciples. Jesus didn’t separate his followers out and say, oh, you all who have had doubts stop helping and go home now. They were invited along as leaders.

It’s a trap to believe that you:

• Can only teach if you’re an expert
• Can only preach if you’re a theologian
• Can only pray if you’re a spiritual master

Disciples gathered more disciples. We are asked to invite people to be students. We are asked to invite people into mystery. We invite, because we, too, must know what it’s like to be a student. To know God and to not know God, as we continually learn and grow and adapt in our understanding. We are not here to clarify. We are here to bear witness to all that which is holy, which is unexpected, which has compelled us to love more and live more fully. We cannot know what that will look like to another person, but we can be willing to learn alongside them. Christ goes before us, the example of the one who will not abandon us to this laughable endeavor.

Who here might have begun their faith life with an image of God as old man, likely white, sitting in clouds? I know I did. But then perhaps you were given the vision of Jesus, a brown skinned middle eastern man. Or you felt the breath of the Spirit, or the embrace of a parent God, or knew God through God’s creating self. We experience and we learn God anew because we are disciples, students. Discovery is better than certainty. Even the facts of science are built on hypothesis; it is often lies that are the most certain.

I’ve been in places where theology, God-talk, was left to the elite and educated. What I’ve come to believe from scripture is the opposite. I trust that we are called to what the Buddhists name as beginner’s mind. In Christian language, we are called to be born again. We are asked to be made new.

When we have the humility of students, of disciples, we create a space for others to be made new as well. We transform together. We sit at the feet of mystery, asking curious questions, allowing ourselves to hear God in the way that God is speaking to us, not in the way that we expect.

I was looking at pictures Elizabeth posted on Facebook from last week, when you all took time to try something new for a Pentecost celebration. I saw pictures of adults coloring with children, children waving ribbons, all ages, playing and dancing with the Spirit together. It’s the same way I felt when you all came out to the picnic on Thursday, when Roger and Kenny spent the day being willing to clean out and rearrange the pastor’s office, to make it look new (or at least new-ish).

My prayer has been that God will continue to bless us with newness and hopefulness. I was talking to my sister the other day how I’ve spent the last nine years of so of my life preparing to be a pastor. Each life decision I made, including dating and marrying Josh, was directed by this preparation. On my first date with Josh I made it abundantly clear that I was leaving for seminary soon and that I was going to be a pastor and if he had problems with that to get out now. Luckily he stuck around. But I’ve spent over a third of my life taking classes about scripture and theology, spending time in internships, with mentors, at countless meetings, fulfilling ordination requirements. And now, here I am. All of that is behind me. I think the temptation of the world is to view that process as complete. I am now the Reverend Rachel--like I’ve reached my final level. But being with you is a reminder that instead of being complete, arriving, or completely achieving, I am instead being made new by God. I might be a pastor, but I am a disciple and I am full of gratitude to be surrounded by all of you fellow disciples. I have an opportunity to see my faith, to see God with new eyes, through each of your experiences, through the community you’ve created here.

I am being called to be made new, as we all are. We will always be disciples. And in the midst of this, God’s presence, mysterious and Trinitarian as it might be, is with us, always, to the end of the age.

Let’s be students together. Let’s delight in the mystery of God, knowing that it means there will always be something to learn.