Year C
\u00a0Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
\u00a0Psalm 8
\u00a0Romans 5:1-5
\u00a0John 16:12-15<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like magicians\u2026 I think the first magician I ever knew about was Harry Houdini\u2026 doing the seemingly impossible in his Water Torture Cell\u2026 for those of you who are too young to remember\u2026 they locked his feet in a stock\u2026 and lowered him upside down into a tank of water\u2026 and yet\u2026 within two minutes\u2026 he’d emerge from behind the curtain\u2026 and then there’s David Copperfield\u2026 who I got to see in person once\u2026 and some of you may know about Shin Lim\u2026 or David Blaine\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like magicians\u2026 because they blur the line between reality and illusion\u2026 between what we see with our own eyes\u2026 and what we believe to be possible\u2026 and sometimes the illusion is so real\u2026 it makes me wonder if they\u2019ve broken some law of physics\u2026 if they\u2019ve learned how to access some other dimension\u2026 or have gained supernormal powers which no one else has discovered\u2026 especially when people or animals emerge from spaces which our minds tell us are just way too small to contain them\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like magicians\u2026 because they point to mystery\u2026 I see what I see\u2026 but my mind can’t comprehend the how of it\u2026 and there is a moment\u2026 when the impossible is made real\u2026 when we are forced to suspend disbelief\u2026 and open ourselves up to that which lies beyond us\u2026 but the culture in which we live dislikes mystery\u2026 it likes to have it all hammered down\u2026 likes being able to know things\u2026 to understand things\u2026 to control them\u2026 the culture in which we live prefers a black and white world\u2026 tries to make everything good or bad\u2026 right or wrong\u2026 either or\u2026 and sometimes\u2026 we rely on scripture to justify our positions\u2026 but just when we think the Bible is clear\u2026 there is contradiction\u2026 Deuteronomy 23 says Moabites are bad\u2026 they were not allowed to dwell among God\u2019s people\u2026 but then comes the story of Ruth the Moabite which challenges the prejudice against Moabites\u2026 we think the Bible is clear\u2026 Jeremiah 25 says that all the people from Uz are evil\u2026 but then comes the story of Job\u2026 a man from Uz who was “the most blameless man on earth”\u2026 we think the Bible is clear\u2026 no foreigners or non-binary eunuchs allowed\u2026 but then comes the story of an African\u2026 who is the treasurer for the Queen of Ethiopia\u2026 and who Philip baptizes and welcomes into the church\u2026 our stories may begin with prejudice\u2026 discrimination\u2026 and animosity\u2026 but what we find is that the Spirit guides God\u2019s people towards openness\u2026 welcome\u2026 inclusion\u2026. acceptance\u2026 and affirmation\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still have many things to say to you\u2026 but you cannot bear them now\u2026 <\/em>the disciples witnessed incredible miracles which demonstrated Jesus\u2019 true identity\u2026 Jesus told them who he was\u2026 and what would happen to him\u2026 but this not only went against the world\u2019s definition of success\u2026 but against the world\u2019s understanding of death\u2026 they could not get their heads around it\u2026 they had no point of reference for it\u2026 they could not rely on previous experiences\u2026 to understand Jesus’ works\u2026 or to predict the Spirit’s long-term vision and incremental revelation\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Rev. Evan Garner\u2026 of St. Paul\u2019s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, AR\u2026 shares a pivotal insight\u2026 Jesus reassures the disciples that the Spirit will guide them into that truth\u2026 again\u2026 ] John uses a specific word for the Spirit\u2019s action\u2026 implying that the Spirit will not merely teach the disciples\u2026 will not only give them didactic information or intellectual understanding\u2026 will not simply give them directions if you will\u2026 but will accompany them\u2026 will be with them\u2026 as they undergo new experiences\u2026 it’s like the difference between being told about the Grand Canyon\u2026 but it’s another experience entirely to have a guided and thorough tour of it\u2026 likewise\u2026 the Spirit will show Jesus\u2019 followers\u2026 what Jesus alone cannot simply tell them\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n June is PRIDE month\u2026 but PRIDE was not created simply out of the desire to celebrate being lesbian\u2026 gay\u2026 bisexual\u2026 or transgender\u2026 but out of the harassment more than fifty years ago this month\u2026 at NYC’s Stonewall Inn\u2026 created out of the right of LGBT people to live without oppression\u2026 the denial of our humanity\u2026 and our right to exist\u2026 as Pastor Martin Billmeier wrote\u2026 it took 2,000 years for parts of the church to open up to the idea\u2026 that the Holy Spirit might call women to ordained ministry\u2026 and it took about that same amount of time for parts of the church to wake up to the truth about LGBT people\u2026 that the closed-off interpretation of scripture just might be mistaken\u2026 ] and the Gospel isn’t finished opening our eyes and our minds\u2026 yet\u2026 there is more to learn and experience through the Spirit’s guidance\u2026 and this morning’s passage from Proverbs makes it perfectly clear\u2026 that God rejoices in the inherited world\u2026 and delights in us\u2026 each and every one of us\u2026 because the diversity which God created\u2026 was never intended to be divisive\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Today is Trinity Sunday\u2026 Holy Trinity Sunday\u2026 and it is incomprehensible that the One God\u2026 is revealed as three distinct persons\u2026<\/em> as Father\u2026 Son\u2026 and Holy Spirit\u2026 as Creator\u2026 Redeemer\u2026 and Sustainer\u2026 it confounds the rational mind\u2026 ] try as we might\u2026 it remains beyond our comprehension\u2026 but it is no less real\u2026 there’s even a story about St. Augustine\u2026 who\u2026 as he walked along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea\u2026 and was pondering the mystery of the Holy Trinity\u2026 came upon a small boy\u2026 who was carrying a bucket of water from the sea\u2026 and pouring it into a hole in the sand\u2026 Augustine asked\u2026 What are you doing<\/em>\u2026 the boy answered\u2026 I am pouring the sea into this hole in the sand<\/em>\u2026 Augustine laughed\u2026 Can’t be done\u2026 the sea is too large\u2026 and this hole is too small\u2026 <\/em> the boy replied\u2026 So it is with you and the Trinity\u2026 the mystery is too large\u2026 and your mind is too small<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the real magic of the Holy Trinity\u2026 is the magic of relationship\u2026 the mutual indwelling of the three Persons of the Trinity\u2026 the relationship between each one of us and the Trinity\u2026 and the relationships between each one of us and each other\u2026 of equanimity\u2026 of pouring ourselves into the Other\u2026 these relationships give us permission to reject rigid thinking\u2026 and give us permission to embrace nuance\u2026 subtlety\u2026 and diversity\u2026 it is one of the ways\u2026 as Bp. Singh recently wrote\u2026 that we are called to invite people toward a holiness of life\u2026 we may not always do it well\u2026 but that is our aspiration<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now a word\u2026 our reading from Romans claims\u2026 that suffering produces endurance\u2026 and endurance produces character\u2026 and character produces hope<\/em>\u2026 and much of the church… for centuries\u2026 has understood this to mean physical suffering\u2026 and sometimes\u2026 the more the better\u2026 like self-flagellation\u2026 but in her book Gift from the Sea\u2026 Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes\u2026 I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches\u2026 if suffering alone taught\u2026 all the world would be wise\u2026 since everyone suffers\u2026 to suffering must be added mourning\u2026 understanding\u2026 patience\u2026 love\u2026 openness\u2026 and the willingness to remain vulnerable<\/em>… and so I have to believe that the kind of suffering to which Paul refers\u2026 must be the kind of spiritual suffering… and corresponding growth\u2026 that we willingly choose for ourselves\u2026 in order to grow closer to God\u2026 when we replace certainty with mystery\u2026 when we let go of trying to understand the incomprehensible magic of God’s radical grace\u2026 unmerited forgiveness\u2026 and boundless love\u2026 a different kind of Trinity in its own right\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And at the baptism this morning at Two Churches.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cait and Becky\u2026 as you bring Ellery for baptism\u2026 you acknowledge that we are part of a Mystery which is incomprehensibly larger than we are\u2026 a universe with galaxies thirteen billion light years away\u2026 that we are stardust\u2026 that there is magic in creation\u2026 that there are angelic realms\u2026 and the company of saints\u2026 that we can’t do it all alone\u2026 and that we are connected to each other in ways we do not know and cannot yet imagine\u2026 though the Spirit will guide us into all truth\u2026 and that in baptism\u2026 we become members of the body of Christ\u2026 we die to our selves and are reborn to eternal life\u2026 and it is for that\u2026 that we were created\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year C\u00a0Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31\u00a0Psalm 8\u00a0Romans 5:1-5\u00a0John 16:12-15 May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026 I like magicians\u2026 I think the first magician I ever knew about was Harry Houdini\u2026 doing the seemingly impossible in his Water Torture Cell\u2026 for those of you who are too young to remember\u2026 they locked his feet in a stock\u2026 and lowered him upside down into a tank of water\u2026 and yet\u2026 within two minutes\u2026 he’d emerge from behind the curtain\u2026 and then there’s David Copperfield\u2026 who I got to see in person once\u2026 and some of you may know about Shin Lim\u2026 or David Blaine\u2026 I like magicians\u2026 because they blur the line between reality and illusion\u2026 between what we see with our own eyes\u2026 and what we believe to be possible\u2026 and sometimes the illusion is so real\u2026 it makes me wonder if they\u2019ve broken some law of physics\u2026 if they\u2019ve learned how to access some other dimension\u2026 or have gained supernormal powers which no one else has discovered\u2026 especially when people or animals emerge from spaces which our minds tell us are just way too small to contain them\u2026 I like magicians\u2026 because they point to mystery\u2026 I see what I see\u2026 but my mind can’t comprehend the how of it\u2026 and there is a moment\u2026 when the impossible is made real\u2026 when we are forced to suspend disbelief\u2026 and open ourselves up to that which lies beyond us\u2026 but the culture in which we live dislikes mystery\u2026 it likes to have it all hammered down\u2026 likes being able to know things\u2026 to understand things\u2026 to control them\u2026 the culture in which we live prefers a black and white world\u2026 tries to make everything good or bad\u2026 right or wrong\u2026 either or\u2026 and sometimes\u2026 we rely on scripture to justify our positions\u2026 but just when we think the Bible is clear\u2026 there is contradiction\u2026 Deuteronomy 23 says Moabites are bad\u2026 they were not allowed to dwell among God\u2019s people\u2026 but then comes the story of Ruth the Moabite which challenges the prejudice against Moabites\u2026 we think the Bible is clear\u2026 Jeremiah 25 says that all the people from Uz are evil\u2026 but then comes the story of Job\u2026 a man from Uz who was “the most blameless man on earth”\u2026 we think the Bible is clear\u2026 no foreigners or non-binary eunuchs allowed\u2026 but then comes the story of an African\u2026 who is the treasurer for the Queen of Ethiopia\u2026 and who Philip baptizes and welcomes into the church\u2026 our stories may begin with prejudice\u2026 discrimination\u2026 and animosity\u2026 but what we find is that the Spirit guides God\u2019s people towards openness\u2026 welcome\u2026 inclusion\u2026. acceptance\u2026 and affirmation\u2026 I still have many things to say to you\u2026 but you cannot bear them now\u2026 the disciples witnessed incredible miracles which demonstrated Jesus\u2019 true identity\u2026 Jesus told them who he was\u2026 and what would happen to him\u2026 but this not only went against the world\u2019s definition of success\u2026 but against the world\u2019s understanding of death\u2026 they could not get their heads around it\u2026 they had no point of reference for it\u2026 they could not rely on previous experiences\u2026 to understand Jesus’ works\u2026 or to predict the Spirit’s long-term vision and incremental revelation\u2026 The Rev. Evan Garner\u2026 of St. Paul\u2019s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, AR\u2026 shares a pivotal insight\u2026 Jesus reassures the disciples that the Spirit will guide them into that truth\u2026 again\u2026 ] John uses a specific word for the Spirit\u2019s action\u2026 implying that the Spirit will not merely teach the disciples\u2026 will not only give them didactic information or intellectual understanding\u2026 will not simply give them directions if you will\u2026 but will accompany them\u2026 will be with them\u2026 as they undergo new experiences\u2026 it’s like the difference between being told about the Grand Canyon\u2026 but it’s another experience entirely to have a guided and thorough tour of it\u2026 likewise\u2026 the Spirit will show Jesus\u2019 followers\u2026 what Jesus alone cannot simply tell them\u2026 June is PRIDE month\u2026 but PRIDE was not created simply out of the desire to celebrate being lesbian\u2026 gay\u2026 bisexual\u2026 or transgender\u2026 but out of the harassment more than fifty years ago this month\u2026 at NYC’s Stonewall Inn\u2026 created out of the right of LGBT people to live without oppression\u2026 the denial of our humanity\u2026 and our right to exist\u2026 as Pastor Martin Billmeier wrote\u2026 it took 2,000 years for parts of the church to open up to the idea\u2026 that the Holy Spirit might call women to ordained ministry\u2026 and it took about that same amount of time for parts of the church to wake up to the truth about LGBT people\u2026 that the closed-off interpretation of scripture just might be mistaken\u2026 ] and the Gospel isn’t finished opening our eyes and our minds\u2026 yet\u2026 there is more to learn and experience through the Spirit’s guidance\u2026 and this morning’s passage from Proverbs makes it perfectly clear\u2026 that God rejoices in the inherited world\u2026 and delights in us\u2026 each and every one of us\u2026 because the diversity which God created\u2026 was never intended to be divisive\u2026 Today is Trinity Sunday\u2026 Holy Trinity Sunday\u2026 and it is incomprehensible that the One God\u2026 is revealed as three distinct persons\u2026 as Father\u2026 Son\u2026 and Holy Spirit\u2026 as Creator\u2026 Redeemer\u2026 and Sustainer\u2026 it confounds the rational mind\u2026 ] try as we might\u2026 it remains beyond our comprehension\u2026 but it is no less real\u2026 there’s even a story about St. Augustine\u2026 who\u2026 as he walked along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea\u2026 and was pondering the mystery of the Holy Trinity\u2026 came upon a small boy\u2026 who was carrying a bucket of water from the sea\u2026 and pouring it into a hole in the sand\u2026 Augustine asked\u2026 What are you doing\u2026 the boy answered\u2026 I am pouring the sea into this hole in the sand\u2026 Augustine laughed\u2026 Can’t be done\u2026 the sea is too large\u2026 and this hole is too small\u2026 the boy replied\u2026 So it is with you and the Trinity\u2026 the mystery is too large\u2026 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[58,138,139,137],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-baptism","tag-holy-trinity","tag-relationship","tag-spiritual-growth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1662,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions\/1662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}