 |
| Welcoming Jonah to the Christian Family. |
Epistle: Romans 5:1-5
16 June 2019
A realtor was driving out in the countryside looking for some property when he noticed a chicken. This bird was running alongside the car and it got his attention because it was keeping pace. Just then, the chicken accelerated moving on ahead of him...and it appeared like the chicken had three legs. It turned a corner and up a gravel driveway disappearing between a farmhouse and a barn. The realtor turned the corner himself and pulled in the driveway. He rolled down his window to speak to a farmer who surely had seen this. “Did you see a chicken running by here just now?” “Yep,” said the farmer. “Pardon me, but it looked like it had three legs. Did you notice that too?” The farmer replied, “Well, yes, that’s how I breed them. You see, the wife and I love drumsticks, but when Jr. came along, we were always fighting over ‘em. I figured that raising three-legged chickens would solve that problem for us.” “I can’t help but ask, said the realtor… how do the drumsticks taste?” “Well,” the farmer replied, “I can’t rightly say because we haven’t been able to catch one yet!”
I chose to begin with this joke to arrest your attention and because it seemed to fit in with the theme of three-ness that is on our plate for today. (It also honors the memory of my father, W.A. Dearman, Jr., who loved to joke about chickens.) This is Trinity Sunday which is the patronal feast, so to speak, of this parish. On this day, preachers all over the world are faced with the task of explaining how one God is described in three persons. It doesn’t seem quite to make sense, and perhaps that is the whole point. It was Augustine who said, “If you think you understand, it’s not God.” My homiletical task is to describe the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. ...but make no mistake, we will not be getting our minds around the divine mystery Who has no beginning and no end.
That three things can be one thing is not unheard of in our experience. Since, my grandson, Jonah, is being Baptized today, and since it happens to be Father’s Day, let’s take some bit of example from Jonah, the 5-month-old. He doesn’t cry much, but when he does it is typically for one of three reasons. I don’t think his cries are audibly different, but depending on the context, he wails as a response to three things. 1) when he is hungry, 2) when he needs to be changed, and 3) when he is fighting sleep. There is but one cry but three different contexts.
A central concept for Judeo-Christianity is that our God is one...our ancestors in faith came to believe that there is only one God Who matters, only one God Who has a claim on us. And this is the God Who intervened in the course of human history to rescue the Hebrew slaves from oppression and bondage in Egypt. As Christians we confess to have been redeemed from the slavery of sin by this same God Who again entered into history only this time en-fleshed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Looking at the concept of redemption can illustrate how this One God can be understood as a Trinity of persons. It’s something like three ways that God has of being God. Our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans underscores the Trinity by showing the triadic structure of Christian redemption. First, the source of our redemption is the Father by Whose will we were created, while, secondly, the redemptive act on the Cross was made by the Son. Thirdly, people of every age, including our own, experience being redeemed by the power of the Cross because we are guided by the Holy Spirit. Inspired by the third person of the Trinity, the redemptive act comes alive for us as it has come to have a fresh meaning from one generation to the next..
One way to visualize the Trinity is to consider three different church interiors. I think of God the Father, when I imagine this parish back in time when the altar was against the wall. Celebrating Holy Communion meant that everyone, including the priest, all faced the same direction in worship. The emphasis was on God Who is beyond the here and now, beyond the veil of time and space, and before Whom we are not worthy to stand. I think of God the Son when I consider a sanctuary, like this one today, where the altar is pulled away from the wall. The emphasis here is on God in our midst, on God Who is incarnate, on God whenever God is revealed to human beings whether in a burning bush, in the creation itself, and most perfectly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Finally, I think of God the Holy Spirit, when I visualize the kind of sanctuary that has no piece of substantial furniture as a focal point. Sometimes, there is a speaker’s stand, but it is often de-emphasized, made of a transparent plexi-glass material. At any given point, worship might be led from anywhere as people gathered feel moved to pray or speak. The emphasis is on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.
I am most comfortable in an Episcopal Church like this one; it’s a lot like the one in Baton Rouge, where I grew up. The emphasis is on incarnation but also on mystery. The Book of Common Prayer provides comfort like an old friend. At the same time, I recognize that our brothers and sisters across the street might find this sanctuary to be way too dark and somber. The point is: it takes all of us to worship God. The truth is: it takes a world of different traditions, with different styles, furniture, and music in order to worship the Triune God.
Baptism is not about being Episcopalian, or Catholic, or Baptist or any other specific religious branch. It is about being welcomed into the family of God, that great cloud of witnesses whose number God only knows. His physical family is represented today in this congregation by his parents and by sponsors, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles and others who have loved him from before he was born. His physical family represents a variety of Christian traditions. As Jonah grows in many ways, may he also find the religious diversity of his family to be a strength, a living illustration that it takes all of us to worship the One and Triune God. AMEN.
