Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Seven years ago I was a name to many of you. A name as part of a paragraph, a paragraph as part of an introduction that probably went something like this, “The Vestry and the Search Committee are happy to announce that Jeremiah Williamson will be our new rector beginning in April. He comes with his wife, Jennifer who is a United Methodist pastor.” For many you I stayed a name for a while since I was busy being the pastor of Woodville United Methodist until 2013 when I became a stay at home mom and started coming here. But now … well I’d like to think I’m more than a name, or maybe my name means something more, more fully a name. Now that we have celebrated the birth of children together, we have mourned together, laughed together and prayed together week after week. Now we are more. But at first we were names to each other.
Names carry so much weight. When we named our children we took it very seriously. We read and researched and reflected. In the end we cheated, we went with names that had already become great. We took two amazing stories, Oscar Romero and the prophet Isaiah and attached them to our children in the hopes of bringing them roots and inspiration. Names are a big deal, the first thing we learn to write, the first question we are asked, the word we sometimes dread and sometimes long to hear from others.
In the Gospel reading today Jesus is identified. Sure, we already knew what he would be called, but it’s here in this scene on the beach that Jesus is identified: God’s son, the Beloved. This is who Jesus is, without this, before this he may have been a name as part of an introduction, Jesus of Nazareth, another name in the pages of history. But now he is God’s Son, the Beloved. This is who he is, identified by the voice of God after he emerges from the waters of baptism. Now it can begin, now his work of saving and preaching and restoring can begin.
But more than just Jesus is identified in this passage. This simple story of a group of people by the river is an amazing revelation of who God is. It is a complete understanding of the Trinity in one moment, one sentence, one action. It’s not very often that we get a mention of all three members of the Trinity in the same instance. But here we do. Jesus is praying, the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove and God speaks. All three, right there. What a sight.
This depiction might resonate perfectly with your understanding of the Trinity. Jesus down here on the ground, God way up there with a booming voice bestowing things upon the earth and the Holy Spirit coming down. Like a divine hierarchy. But let’s open up the picture for a minute, see if maybe there is something more going on here.
Every now and then one is fortunate enough to read a book that speaks directly to one’s soul and revolutionizes one’s worldview. For me, that happened my first year of seminary when I had to read a book called “She Who Is” by a Roman Catholic nun named Elizabeth Johnson. The way she talked about the power of symbols for God, God’s relationship to humanity and the Trinity blew my mind, even in and maybe for it’s simplicity. She suggests that the Trinity is more than a hierarchy or God looking down and giving gifts to Jesus and the Holy Spirit running around doing the work. Instead she sees the Trinity as active, alive, moving, circular. Less about the parts and more about the connections, the relationships. God the Creator giving God’s self to Jesus the Son, loving and moving in him, all three bound together by love, equality and divinity. Elizabeth Johnson explains what is sometimes referred to as a “social trinity” as she says:
“At its most basic the symbol of the Trinity evokes a livingness in God, a dynamic coming and going with the world that points to an inner divine circling around an unimaginable relation … Not an isolated, static ruling monarch, but a relational, dynamic, tripersonal mystery of love.” “The threes keep circling round. Whatever the categories used, there is reflected a livingness in God; a beyond, a within, and a within to the world and its history; a sense of God as from whom, by whom, and in whom all things exist, thrive, struggle toward freedom, and are gathered in. To use one more model, this time from the eleventh-century theologian Hildegard of Bingen, there is a brightness, a flashing forth, and a fire, and these three are one, connecting all creation together in compassion. All these metaphors express the Trinitarian structure of Christian belief in God.”
What I believe Elizabeth is saying is that the Trinity is about relationship, and we are invited to be part of that relationship. God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all parts engaged in self-giving. God says “this is my Son, the Beloved.” It is about the relationship. The Holy Spirit comes down and then Jesus goes about his work in the love and embrace of the Creator and Sustainer. They are more than motionless figures, names in a book, images to be worshiped. They are not three isolated separate Gods, but rather a relationship.
And so here we are gathering together, experiencing God through relationship. We come face to face, we join our voices in prayer because we are more than just names, we are relationship. We are God’s beloved, saved by Christ, experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit and holding one another’s hands.
We are invited to be part of this dynamic relationship between God and creation. God gives God’s self to us in love, mercy and compassion and we are called to give ourselves to God and one another, keeping the relationship active.
When we baptize we enter into this act of self-giving. The Holy Spirit is alive and moving in the water, God is calling the baptized, and then the newest Christian is sealed with the sign of the cross. In baptism we do not use last names because we are part of this family, this relationship where those distinctions do not matter because we are called beloved.
But here’s the down side of relationships. They can hurt. I take that back. They will hurt. We don’t get to stay in this moment forever. We have to say good-bye at some point. Whether it’s relocation or death or rejection or any kind of change … and it hurts. When we open our hearts and give of ourselves to another, through shared faith or shared pain or shared experience or compassion or love or friendship, we open ourselves to immeasurable joy and deep pain. Sometimes isolation is tempting, it might seem less risky, more reasonable. But God calls us to love. Love God and love neighbor. Give of yourself. This is our calling. This is what we are baptized into, a relationship with a God who gives. So we keep at it, cherishing the rewards and weathering the losses. We keep our place in the divine dance, in our relationship with a living and moving God.
Seven years ago I packed up our stuff and headed west from Youngstown to Toledo. I cried the whole way as I thought of all the wonderful people I loved and that loved me that I was leaving. You were names to me and I was a name to you. And then we knelt and took bread and wine together. We said goodbye to beloved members and friends, we ate donuts and chili, we sang Bible School songs, taught Sunday School, did Bible study together. We sang and worshiped, we cried and prayed. We grew, we welcomed more people into this place. And now our names mean so much more to each other.
In a few weeks I will once again pack up our stuff (a lot more stuff this time and twice as many people) and head west, very west from Toledo to Colorado Springs. I will cry as I think of all of the wonderful people I love and have loved me. I will cry when I think of your names and what they mean … the relationships. And then I will go to a place where I am right now just a name, a name as part of an introduction that goes something like, “The Vestry and the Search Committee are happy to announce that Jeremiah Williamson will be our new rector beginning in February. He comes with his wife, Jennifer who is a United Methodist pastor and their two children.” And you will become a name and accept names as you look for your next rector.
And then something will happen. God alive and active, the names will become more. Relationships will blossom, holy moments emerge, bonds form and the names will mean so much more. This is life. A circle, a dance, always moving. This is how we be the people God is calling us to be, engaging in loving relationship, opening our hearts and experiencing Christ in one another.
I will never forget watching my children get baptized here in this place. Their wet baby heads and wide eyes as they watched the candle. I’ll never forget the loving faces that greeted them as they were brought down the aisle with the other newly baptized. I’ll never forget because the Holy Spirit was in this place, making it more than a simple group of people in a building, making it holy. Today Oliver will have this experience. His wet head and wide eyes will be welcomed with love and joy by people who will be so much more than names to him. The Holy Spirit is moving in this place today. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, active, alive, giving, receiving, loving. Right here. And we are a part of it. Each of us with our own identities, stories and names, each of us together, called Beloved.
No comments:
Post a Comment