Beside, Beyond, Within

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
An audio version of this sermon is available here.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

These words from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians go right to the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity, which we of course are celebrating on this Trinity Sunday. And these words tell us that, at its heart, the doctrine of the Trinity is about love, it's about how we as Christians feel the love and the presence and the being of God as real factors in our experience. At its heart the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Christian feeling of God is that God is God with us in three ways: God is beside us, and God is beyond us, and God is within us.

God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, right here in the midst of human life, sharing with us the substance of our hopes and dreams and fears and successes and failures and pains and sorrows and celebrations, sharing the glory and the absurdity of being human in every fiber of human being. God is incarnate, embodied in the real life of the real world. This is the God we encounter in Jesus. This is part of the experience of the Trinity

And God is beyond us, bigger than we are, around us and above us and below us, in whom we live and move and have our being, beyond any name we can name or idea we can think or image we can imagine, who is not limited by any of our limitations. This is God Transcendent, God whom we call Creator, or Father, or Yahweh, or Being — or just plain “God,” which is not really even a name but a title, “God,” because the Transcendent is beyond all names. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.

And God is within us, dwelling in our own spirits, empowering us within, transforming us from the inside out, giving us strength and courage and wisdom and compassion and a capacity for love that we know we could never have on our own. God is immanent, the life within our lives — or, as one Islamic Sufi writer put it, God is closer to us than our own arteries. This is the God we call the Holy Spirit. And this too is part of the experience of the Trinity.

God beside us, God beyond us, God within us. God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent. Three ways of being God, that are all one God. Or, as Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit that is with us all.”

We know God beside us in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Grace” is a word that means a free gift, an unearned blessing, something that is just given out of the sheer joy of generosity. That’s the kind of love Jesus showed all through his earthly ministry. In all the stories about Jesus, he never rejects anyone who comes to him — in fact, he was notorious for accepting all sorts of people whom the “religiously proper” folks would not accept, tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers and terrorists — he’d even hang out with Pharisees if they were willing to hang out with him. Jesus accepted everyone freely, graciously, for exactly who they were. And Jesus shared the good news with everyone, exactly as each needed to hear it. And Jesus called everyone to repent and believe the good news, exactly as each needed to be called. Jesus met people where they were, side-by-side with them in their real lives.

And we experience the grace of Jesus side-by-side with us in our real lives, too. Years ago I used to vacation in the summers in a small town in Northern Michigan, and just outside of town there was a waterfall that was a favorite place of mine. It was just a small stream, but it had carved a series of cascades and pools deep into the rock face of a hill, and it was great fun to climb up that waterfall to see all the cascades. One time I was climbing, and I decided to go straight up a rocky part that I usually detoured around, and as I was climbing the rock I remembered that I’m not really a very experienced rock climber, and I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing — and I panicked. I froze. I could not move, because I was certain that if I moved even one handhold, I would fall straight down that waterfall, go bouncing down each cascade, until I landed in a sodden bloody heap at the bottom. I was that scared. And I stayed there, pinned to that rock for what felt like an awfully long time, until I began to pray. I prayed that Jesus would be there with me, right beside me, and show me the way down. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus put his hand right on top of my hand, and with his hand guided me to the next handhold. I prayed with my imagination that Jesus took hold of my foot and guided it to the next toehold. And bit by it, feeling Jesus side-by-side with me, I got down off that rock. And that waterfall is still one of my favorite places. Sometimes we can experience the presence of Jesus so vividly that we know God is beside us, with us in the thick of things, sharing the very human details of our very human lives. That’s part of how we experience Trinity.

We know God beyond us in the love of God. The Greek word Paul uses for “love” here is agapē, and in the Greek translation of the First Testament that Paul was trained in — remember that Paul was trained as a Pharisee before he became a Christian, and that meant he knew his Greek Bible very very well — in the Greek Bible the word  agapē was used pretty specifically for a kind of love that is full of affection, but beyond affection is also an intentional choice to will what is good for the other, and to stay faithful in that goodwill no matter what. Agapē-love is the kind of love God has for Creation in our story from Genesis today, when God sees what is created and feels affection for it and says “It is good,” when God blesses the creatures and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and implies a covenant with them: “I will be your God and you will be my creatures and this is how the Universe will work, and I will be faithful to this Universe.” The  agapē-love of God is what surrounds us and sustains us and holds us in being, it is God’s goodwill for us before and behind and through all things.

And we experience that all-encompassing, creating, goodwill love in our lives, too. I know so many people who tell me they feel God’s presence in nature, in a forest, on a mountaintop, under a starry night sky, on the golf course — for me, I often feel God’s presence when I’m pedaling my bicycle out in the Valley. And people who share this kind of experience with me tell me that what they feel in nature is such goodness, beauty and awe and wonder and delight and a deep-down foundational sense that, as Genesis says, it is very good. Think for a moment of some time you have felt the goodness of creation, and have recognized that as a reflection of the goodness of the One who creates it. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.

We know God within us in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Now “communion” is a very special word: we use it all the time in church, but when you try to define it, it gets slippery. “Communion” means to be united, but not in such a way that you lose your own identity: you are one with God, but you are also still your human self. In the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta they call it “non-duality”; not singularity, but not duality either. Communion is to be who you are, but be who you are along with God.

One of the most moving stories anyone ever shared with me about their experience of communion with the Holy Spirit came from someone who had bouts of depression all through her adult life. There was one time, she told me, when it was particularly bad, when it felt like all the color, all the energy, all the joy, all the meaning had just drained out of her life; she felt empty and hopeless; her meditation, her church, her friends, all seemed insipid and pointless; and she found herself one night sitting alone in an empty dark room, seriously doubting she had the strength even to stay alive. And in that darkness, she said, she heard a voice — and the strange thing was she could tell the voice was coming from inside her. She knew it was a voice in her imagination, she knew it wasn’t coming from outside; and in her imagination it was as if she could hear it literally inside her body, echoing off her ribs, vibrating in the muscle of her heart. And in her own intonation and inflection the voice said to her “You know you are strong enough for this. You know you are strong enough to get through this.” That’s all it was. No light, no vision, no miracle. No sudden cure for her depression, no instant sense of wholeness and well-being. But in that moment she knew, without question, that God the Holy Spirit was with her, and from within her own struggling psyche was giving her strength to grow and to heal and to become well again. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when from within our own selves God brings forth strength and courage and wisdom and compassion that are more than we could manage on our own. We experience the communion of the Holy Spirit when we feel the power of God within us helping us to become our true selves. That’s also part of how we experience Trinity.

In all these ways, the doctrine of the Trinity is really all about love, all about putting into words the specific Christian experience of how God loves. God beside us, God beyond us, God within us; God Incarnate, God Transcendent, God Immanent; the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. May that grace and that love and that communion of the Triune God be with us all evermore.

Breathing the Spirit

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on the lectionary readings for Pentecost.
An audio version of the sermon is available here.

Today we are celebrating the Feast of Pentecost, the Fiftieth Day after Easter, the Sabbath of sabbaths after a week of weeks of dwelling in the Paschal Mystery. Today is both the final day of Easter and a holy day in its own right, the first day of a new season marking Christ’s continuing mission in the Church. Today we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost.

The centerpiece of our Pentecost celebration is of course the coming of the Holy Spirit, as Luke narrates in our reading today from the Book of Acts. It is to celebrate the appearance of the Spirit as flames of fire above the apostles’ heads that we dress the church in red today. It is because the Spirit made the apostles so enthusiastic for the Gospel that the bystanders thought they were drunk, that we let our own joy well up in us and open us up to the enthusiastic Spirit as well.

But Luke’s story of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is not the only story the New Testament tells of disciples receiving spiritual empowerment and presence for their life and mission in Christ. Another story, and a very different story, is told by John, and we read that story as our Gospel passage on this Pentecost Day.

In John’s story, the Spirit comes on the evening of Easter Day, the first day of the Resurrection, not the fiftieth. In John’s story, the Spirit comes when the disciples are huddled together in a locked room, the doors shut because they are afraid, their minds and their hearts confused because just that morning Mary Magdalene had told them she had seen the Lord, he was risen — but they haven’t seen him yet, and they know only too well what the Temple authorities and the Roman soldiers will do to them if they should venture out now in Jesus’ name. So there they are, locked in the room, huddled in fear, when Jesus suddenly stands among them, Jesus suddenly reveals this New Life to them, Jesus says to them “Peace be with you” — and then Jesus breathes on them, and he says “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” In John’s story the Holy Spirit comes when Jesus sends forth his disciples even as the Father has sent him.

There are a couple of things I really like about John’s Holy Spirit story. It’s not as exciting as Luke’s, to be sure; and I do like a good, exciting Spirit story. But there are some things about John’s way of telling this that really make me stop and think.

One of the things that makes me stop and think is the imagery of how Jesus communicates the Spirit to his disciples: by breathing it to them. Luke uses grand and impressive and powerful imagery of wind and fire; John uses the much more personal and intimate imagery of breath. But being personal and intimate doesn’t make the breath-image any less powerful; in fact, John’s use of the image is primordially, even cosmically, powerful. That’s because John has composed this scene of Jesus breathing the Spirit into his disciples consciously and intentionally as an echo of the story of the original creation of humankind in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis. You all know the story: how God scoops up a handful of mud — red mud, the original Hebrew says — and God shapes the mud into a little human figure, a little manikin, and then God breathes into its nostrils the breath of life, and the manikin becomes a living, breathing human being. That breath of God is the source of life, and poetry throughout the Hebrew scripture speaks of how God’s breath breathes life into all creation, into the entire cosmos. It’s there in our Psalm today, when we sing “you send forth your spirit — or, you breathe forth your breath — and they are created, and so you renew the face of the earth.” It is that life-giving, earth-renewing breath of God that Jesus is sharing with his disciples when he breathes on them and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In this story John shows Jesus not just giving his disciples a spiritual boost, but re-enacting the very act of creation itself; John shows Jesus beginning the re-creating and renewing of the whole entire world by sharing a New Life, a Holy Breath, with his living, breathing, sent-out disciples.

And the gift of holy breath, the gift of new life, has an immediate effect on the disciples. Jesus tells them that this re-created holy life brings with it the power of forgiveness, the power to move beyond old hurts and old fears and old mistakes and old failures — the power to move beyond all that and to reconstruct relationships that show forth justice and peace and compassion and reconciliation and love. Now think about that for a moment: these are guys who are locked in a room because they are afraid — they are completely trapped in their fears and their sadness and their uncertainties and their doubts. But when Jesus gives them holy breath, when Jesus gives them new life, they are set free from all that, they come alive again, they come more alive than they’ve ever been before, and they are ready to be sent on their mission to share Jesus’ new life with everyone they can reach. When Jesus breathes on them he brings them to life, and to greater life, in the ancient and eternal creative power of God the Holy Spirit.

And here’s the important part: The promise of the Spirit is for us, too; the promise that Jesus will breathe new life into us, the promise that Jesus will empower us with the creative energy of resurrection living — that promise is not just an old story about somebody else a long time ago; that promise is real and true and right in front of us today. And that promise is one of the most important spiritual truths in all of our religion. In a time when more and more people are saying they want something spiritual in their lives, something personal and experiential and inward, it’s important for us Episcopalians to be able to show that the outward and formal and institutional dimensions of our religion really do lead to spiritual experiences. Of course we have formal credal teachings about Jesus and about the Holy Spirit — that’s what today is all about — but those formal credal teachings are all for the purpose of guiding our hearts and our minds and our spirits into experiencing the living presence of the living God, they are all for the purpose of experiencing our own life-activities being activated by divine Spirit, as Paul writes in the Epistle today. We teach about Jesus giving the Spirit to the disciples, because we want to experience Jesus giving the Spirit to us, too. That's one of the most important ways our religion is spiritual.

So think about that for a minute. Where in your life do you feel a hunger for this Holy Spirit? Is there a part of your soul that feels like it is huddled away in a locked room? Is there a place in your psyche that seems trapped in old fears or old hurts or old brokenness? Is there something for which you want to forgive or be forgiven, a relationship you long to renew and reconcile and restore? Is there some part of your life that seems to have gone dead inside but wants to come back to life? Is there a way you want to be sent to share in Christ’s mission? How would you receive the Holy Spirit if it were offered to you right now?

Because that is what is offered to us in this liturgy today. Imagine that Jesus is standing in front of you now — Jesus is present here in Word and Sacrament, so he can be with us in imagination as well. Imagine that Jesus stands before you and says “Receive the Holy Spirit” and breathes on you. How do you respond? Can you picture yourself receiving this breath, this gift, this life? Can you picture some part of you that’s been locked away opening up and taking the air? Can you feel your breathing getting deeper and your heartbeat getting stronger? Can you imagine new energy, new creativity, coming on you like wind and fire — and can you see yourself wanting to share that energy with someone else? Imagine Jesus standing before you now and breathing the Spirit into you — how do you imagine yourself receiving it?

The Feast of Pentecost is the celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. And whether we think of that coming in images like Luke’s or images like John’s, the meaning for our spiritual experience is the same: the Spirit empowers us to be like Jesus, the Spirit empowers us to be filled with life and creativity and joy and love that comes from God, the Spirit empowers us to be sent out to share this life with all the world. That is what we celebrate today; that is what the Spirit inspires us to live every day. Amen.

Cast ALL your anxiety!

1Peter  4:12-14,5:6-11
June 5, 2011 at Trinity Church
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you.

I am wondering how many of us are at perfect peace this moment?  Who has not had a worry, not a care, not a concern, not any anxiety since you woke up this morning? Well, if you have experienced any state of anxiety, whether it be a minor flickering or a major physical wave of worry, you are in excellent company.  In our epistle reading from 1 Peter we can infer that the community to whom Peter was writing is experiencing a great deal of distress and anxiety.  Peter’s letter was sent from Rome to five Roman provinces of Asia Minor.  It is probable that these faith communities were despised and rejected by their own families as this Christian faith was considered a “foreign” religion, which caused suspicions and threatened the Roman way of life.

The passage for today begins, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.” So although we may not know specifically what the fiery ordeal has been for the Petrine communities, Peter is saying followers of Christ should not be at all surprised when life takes a difficult turn, when we are suffering or hurting.  And he actually urges his people to rejoice knowing that they are sharing in Christ’s suffering, that the suffering won’t last and that eventually they will share in Christ’s glory.

Peter then encourages the community how to move forward in their suffering, in their difficulties: humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert.  This is such practical help.  Again as is so often the case in Scripture, humility before God is the starting place. When all else fails, when life is going awry, when all seems lost and wrong, to be humble before God, essentially to remember just how big God is. And then, Peter reminds his audience to cast their cares, their anxieties on God.  In his wisdom Peter presumes they will have anxieties, they will have worries and thoughts that cause fear, a sense of foreboding, situations that disquiet their minds and hearts. Here perhaps Peter echoes Jesus’ exhortation to the disciples that they not worry about their lives and another abundant scriptural echo of “do not fear.”

What are we worrying about?  Where is our anxiety?  I am reminded of the bumper sticker that reads, “If you’re not outraged, then you are not paying attention!”  If we are not full of anxiety, not full of that sense of foreboding is it just that we are not paying attention?  I don’t think that is what Peter is suggesting at all.  Perhaps if we are not full of anxiety, we have chosen to give it all to God.  I am sure you know some folks, maybe you are one yourself, who just keeps a certain peace or calmness about him or her.  Perhaps that peace is the result not of the absence of stress or suffering but of casting worry on God, of drawing near to God’s peace through prayer.  As life goes forward and as we follow Christ, we will face situations that cause us worry. Difficulties are part of the life of faith.  We will still struggle when we find the lump that shouldn’t be there, we will struggle when we learn that our friend has betrayed us or when we ourselves have gone against our conscience; we will still struggle when we think our job is in jeopardy or when entire countries or communities like Haiti or Japan or Joplin, MO suffer due to catastrophic events.  We get anxious when we think about the things that could go wrong with our families, with our work, with our travels, with our health, with our finances, with our schooling. All of the “What-if’s” in our lives can stir up all kinds of trouble with our mental health, our sleep, even our physical state.  Sometimes we even hear people brag about being worriers.  But Peter tells us worry is not something to hold onto, not something to dwell on, not something to engage with; we are to give our worry, our undue burden to God because he cares for us.  

When we can actually cast our care, our anxiety, our worry on God then we can be more fully present IN the present which is what he asks of us.  To cast our care on God is not to live in denial but to wake up to the reality of what is at work in our lives, and to let God do his work in us and through us-to put things in their proper balance.  And Peter tells us that we can give this all to God because he cares for us. God wants the best for us and wants to carry our burdens for us.  Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”  How many times over the course of a day do we worry about things that will never happen or that later we realize were not worth worrying about?

In nine days 23 adults and teenagers from Trinity will leave to go on a mission trip to Honduras.  If we compiled a list of our combined worries, I wonder what it might contain? Maybe we will be worried that we will get sick, that the plane or the bus will be late or worse, worried that our money or passports will get lost or stolen, worried our roommate will snore or worse, they we will snore, worried that our not knowing the language will keep us at a distance from the Hondurans, worried that we will get separated from the group, worried that the heat will make us grumpy, worried that the adults will get on our nerves?  I think you get the drift.  There is GREAT potential for worry and anxiety on a major trip.  But Peter would tell us, Don’t worry! Give it all to God. Yes, give it ALL to God.  And what might we expect if we are actually able to give our worry to God?  We can expect a deep peace that offers peace to those around us, we can expect flexibility, we can expect to be more available to God and to others – more fully present to others such as our fellow travelers and the folks that we will encounter along the way, we can expect joy, we can expect to see God’s face in the faces of those we meet. And we can expect to laugh. A lot.

You don’t have to go to Honduras to experience similar temptations for worry and to experience similar outcomes in giving that worry to God in your life. As we cast our cares on God in all aspects of our lives we can expect that God will make himself known in all kinds of ways.  Worry is a waste of God’s precious resources – you and me. And we matter to God. So let us humble ourselves, let us turn it all over to the one who created us and who sustains and who redeems us so that then we may be available to God and to one another.  God is big enough to handle all our cares, all our anxiety, all our worry.

Amen