A crossover from the bible challenge blog:
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
We cannot conceive of that
beyond imagination;
ergo,
all that we attribute
to the deus ex
machina is
ersatz impossibility;
we cannot conceive of
that which God can
not create.
Trinity Sunday. In essence, it’s all about relationship. The relationship God has with us, the relationship we have with God, the relationship we have with one another. The whole three-in-one, one-in-three thing works well as a slogan but is famously difficult to unpack, pretty much impossible to explain without falling off the rails into one heresy or another. But essentially, it’s all about relationship.
We talked a couple of weeks ago about the Father and the Son. Jesus, in John’s Gospel and especially in his farewell discourse and prayer, tells his disciples repeatedly that if they have seen the Son, then they have seen the Father. It’s a little bit like seeing a child and knowing, without ever having met her before, who her family is, because she looks just like them; she looks as though she belongs with them.
Of course, Jesus isn’t talking exactly about a family resemblance; but he is saying that through him we can see God the father, because of his own unique relationship to God as his own father.
In other words, it’s all about relationship.
I had a couple of conversations recently around the verse where Jesus says: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Some people find that very challenging, usually because of anxiety about family or loved ones who do not seem to be able to find their way to or through Jesus; sometimes because of the pluralism of the world in which we live and the simple desire to be friendly, hospitable, inclusive.
Gail R. O’Day, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, puts this claim in the context of the community of John the Evangelist which this Gospel addresses as its primary audience. She says that:
“Jesus’ claim that ‘no one comes to the Father except through me’ is the joyous affirmation of a religious community that does, indeed, believe that God is available to them, decisively in the incarnation. This claim has been announced from the opening lines of the Gospel, ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (1:18). … It is important to try to hear this joyous, world-changing theological affirmation in the first-century context of the Fourth Gospel. This is not, as is the case in the twentieth [or twenty-first] century, the sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world. … The claim of John 14:6-7 becomes problematic when it is used to speak to question that were never in the Fourth Gospel’s purview. To use these verses in a battle over the relative merits of the world’s religions is to distort their theological heart. … These verses are the confessional celebration of a particular faith community, convinced of the truth and life received in the incarnation.” (NIB, 743-5)
“No one has ever seen God. It is God the Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known,” writes the Evangelist.
The same God, who made heaven and earth and whose loving kindness and steadfast mercy sustains the whole, whether we see it or not; that God has been hidden from our sight by the gulf between the human and the divine, the Creator and the creaturely, immortality beyond the imagination of the mortal. Yet Jesus, the Son of God who is close to his Father’s heart, has become our Revelation, our Redeemer, our Way to the Truth and the Life of God. This is not about exclusivity: but it is a new way of seeing our relationship with the God.
The God who made heaven and earth has been in relationship with us, of course, from the beginning. In the beginning, says the book, the earth was formless and empty.
The metaphor which the poet uses is that of a pitch dark, raging ocean; the waters of the womb gone wild, unable to bring forth life; a mess of futile struggle; labouring for nothing; the antithesis of relationship. Not only nothing, but beyond nothing; the opposite of good; the opposite of life.
Yet even the darkness on the far side of nothing is not enough to negate God. The Spirit of God, sometimes translated as a breath or a wind – think Pentecost, of Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit over his disciples, the rush of a mighty wind in an upper room in Jerusalem – the Spirit of God already was on the move, surfing the waves of negativity, soothing the ocean of all that is not to be. Some interpreters use the image of a great bird brooding over the primordial waters, ready to bring life into being out of less than life. Karen Armstrong points out that in most ancient Middle Eastern creation stories, the God himself (or herself) has a backstory: parents, siblings. This God alone appears out of eternity, and the first relationship that God has beyond God’s own self is with the less than nothing out of which creation is spoken into being (Armstrong, 10-11). Out of which we are called into being.
The sweep of the Bible from that moment to this moment of the gospel, when we stand on the mountaintop with Jesus and his disciples; the sweep of the Bible is like an exhalation, a breathing out of creation to replace that which is beyond nothing and to fill the air with life; and an inhalation, a drawing back into God, back into a relationship that sees God clearly, as our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer; as a Father, encountered through his Son, into whose family the Holy Spirit wraps us with her brooding wings and her playful wind…
It is a relationship at once personal and universal; particular and profound, but open and inviting. On a day that we celebrate the particular relationship of fatherhood, we lift up the image of the Father revealed in the Son, and we celebrate the beauty that it mirrors; but if we have trouble with that image of relationship, either as fathers, or as disappointed fathers, or as disillusioned sons or daughters, we have other ways into the relationship of Trinity; drawn under the wings of a brooding Spirit, lifted out of less than nothing into the climax of creation.
We live in a world that is thirsty for relationship. Witness the explosion of social media and the apparently endless new creative ways that are invented for us to stay in touch with friends and strangers at any hour of the day or night. And yet we live in a world where relationships are breaking down alarmingly. In the past two weeks we have witnessed three school-related shootings in this country; in the midst of communities based on relationship – because teaching and learning are definitely relationship-based activities – we have witnessed the negation of relationship; we have seen what is on the other side of those waters of chaos.
Jesus said, “Love one another.” Pay attention to relationships. Fathers’ Day is as good a day as any to start taking stock. We may begin with the relationships within our own families; but we should pay attention also to the relationships of our community. What is the joyous affirmation that Epiphany claims, which needs to be shared with the people who live around us? Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations;” share with others the good news that you have heard; that God is beyond the chaos, above the raging waters that oppose life; that God has power over them. Do so knowing that we come from a particular point of view, and do so with grace, and humility. It’s all about creating, redeeming and sustaining relationships.
In the beginning, God lived in relationship: three in one; the Creator speaking the Word carried on Spirit breath, hovering, brooding over that which was less than nothing; a long breath out which longs to draw us back in; the Holy Spirit breathing into us the knowledge of the Son who is close to the Fathers’ heart, who can show us all the way into a living relationship with God.
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX: The Gospel of Luke; The Gospel of John (Abingdon Press, 1995)
Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)
On the other side of nothing,
the waters of the dark womb
rage and writhe, resisting God,
labouring the eternal void.
On the other side of nothing,
over the pitched waters,
the breath of God hesistates;
surfing the storm, hopeful waits
to discover deep-sunken desire,
to offer the kiss of life
to the lost ones drowning,
to bring to its crowning
all that is; to soothe the dark sea
of all that is not to be.
Genesis 1:1-2 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”
Free kittens. Free manure.
Town Hall Meeting: Noise
& Shooting Tonight;
signs of our times.
I can only imagine that you fell
asleep on the sofa, bolt upright,
clenched paper tissues holding your hand.
Waking in the dark, too
bewildered not to zombie-walk to bed
to lie awake, watching for dawn, in
serious doubt whether the
sun will ever rise again. Waking
in the pale light, it seems
almost rude that the world should
turn on its axis to another day without
even pausing for a moment
of apology.
Browsing the shiny cellophaned produce section,
soaring over fields of grain on the
updraft of the bread ovens.
Sealed in our tin cans,
concentrated and reduced,
we must be such a disappointment to you.
I try to imagine the sound.
They say a tornado sounds like
a freight train; what would the apostles say?
We each tell only of what we know.
Was it the bluster of flapping canvas
familiar from their days at the sail?
Or the harmonious cacophony
of a festival of flutes and whistles –
seventy-six trombones and
a few ocarinas?
I remember counting the breaths between
the lightning discharge, like fire overhead,
and the rushing wind of the thunderclap,
burrowing into my parents’ bed.
The live version of this morning’s sermon included contributions from my wonderful congregation on where they saw God and eternity, which I have not included here.
I couldn’t help thinking about the movie The Matrix as I was reflecting on this gospel. In The Matrix, humanity is living in a kind of dream world, a hallucinatory trance, while reality is hidden from them. Only by knowing the true dimension in which they live can they find and finally win their freedom.
The reality of the movie is rather grim; it doesn’t quite add up to the image of eternal life that we would like to have, but the reason that I was reminded of it was that element of seeing clearly the dimension “in which we live and move and have our being”; having, as it were, “the eyes of our hearts enlightened.”
Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Eternal life is the knowledge of what life really is; it is the knowledge of the dimension of God, in which we live, move and have our being.
After Jesus had ascended, the disciples were looking up after him, scanning the clouds that had hidden him from their sight. As they were looking, two men in white robes, otherwise known as angels, gave them the message to move on, to continue to live in the here and the now, trusting that Jesus would return but living in the meantime.
Jesus sent his disciples to seek out eternal life in the here and now; in lives both new but also continuous with the ones that they had known before. Eternal life was not to be found gazing up into the clouds, but in knowing God, as they had come to know God in the person of Jesus Christ, whom God had sent to them.
Eternal life is knowing God in our own lives, here and now; seeing clearly that in which we live and move and have our being; seeing our own lives in
So where is it that you see God?
Julian of Norwich famously found eternity in a hazelnut: in her Showings, she wrote,
And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. http://intotheexpectation.blogspot.com/2012/05/praying-with-julian-of-norwich-and.html
I have seen eternity in the birth of a child –
Today was my son’s birth day;
his tiny hands beginning to unfurl,
a birthmark smeared beneath one arm;
this is the closest we come to perfection;
born between earth and eternity,
the closest we come to God.
So what clouds our vision of God, or of eternity?
Suffering; violence; intractable brokenness. It is true that in this world we encounter pain and grief. But is that incompatible with eternal life?
Jesus suffered so much pain and grief; even death; and yet we know that his life was one lived in close congruence with eternity. So, no, suffering does not cut us off from eternal life, nor does it have to blind us to God.
It is part of our nature to be mortal creatures, prone to death and decay; it is another part of our nature to know that this is not what defines us, but that we are also part of eternity, and destined for glory.
What redeems us out of this suffering is love. The love of Jesus, who suffered death on the cross for us, and came back to his disciples out of love for them. The love and faithfulness of those who spend their lives relieving the suffering of others: the rescuers, the caregivers, the pain whisperers.
When we see God in those people; when we see God in one another, we see how our own lives can become mirrors, or windows, or bridges for others to see their way into a life lived in the knowledge of the love of God, a life lived in continuity with eternity; a life lived with the eyes of the heart opened and clear-sighted, to see the dimension of God in which we live and move and have our being.
It is a high calling, to be a window onto eternity, but it is an indiscriminate one. You don’t have to be the Chosen One of the Matrix to fulfill it; you only have to open your eyes to God and your heart to the world around you, just as you have done today in sharing your visions of eternity with one another.
I am grateful for your witness and your willingness to share your eternal lives.
I often find eternity in the work of the poets, so I’ll leave you this morning with this bright gem from R.S.Thomas, called
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I haveto possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
A message offered to my son and his cohort, the graduating class of Bay High School, 2014:
Thank you for the honour of being with you this afternoon.
I was struck by some of the words you all chose for today: “What I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.”
Long ago, and far, far away, when I finished high school, I knew that one day I would be here. I mean, I hadn’t heard of Bay Village, Ohio; I didn’t know where here was, and I didn’t know what this day would look like, but I did know at least three things which eventually would get me here.
I knew that I wanted a life full of love.
I knew that I was called to serve God as a priest.
I also knew, by the time I finished high school, that I would never make it as a concert pianist, which helped considerably with narrowing down my focus.
I have to tell you that not everyone believed what I knew for myself to be true. My father had ambitions on my behalf; he thought, at one time, that traditional work was all well and good as a back-up plan, but that I should really be concentrating on my music.
I didn’t know, back then, who it was that I would love more than life itself. I had no idea that a person’s heart could be divided so many times, and drawn outside of themselves, and that person only become more alive. It’s like the loaves and the fishes; it seems that the more people love is shared amongst, the more there is. And because I am blessed to love a son who is in this class, I get to be here with you today.
As for the priest thing, I have to tell you that it took me a rather long time. I wasn’t as courageous or imaginative as the first women ordained in my church, so I wasn’t a pioneer. And when my children were small, it was all I could do to get three matching pairs of shoes onto three matching pairs of feet.
I read a poem this week by David Whyte:
THE JOURNEY
Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavensso you can find
the one line
already written
inside you…From ‘The Journey’: in ‘River Flow: New and Selected Poems’ ©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
That word, that call was already written inside me; and though it took me a while, by God’s grace it is as a pastor as well as a parent that I have the privilege of being with you today.
And I stand here today in awe of all of you, because you have already everything you need to be the person whom God has called you to be, because you are made in the very image of God; because you are already exactly who you need to be.
Still, if I had to give you some advice to take on your journey, from my experience it would be this:
Work hard, put your energy, your life, your love into things that matter to you. Resist the temptation to be distracted by the ambitions that other people might have for you; if they don’t resonate with that word that God has placed in your heart, they are not yours.
Maya Angelou, whom you all know passed away this week, is quoted as saying, “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love.” http://www.neontommy.com/news/2014/05/maya-angelou-s-legacy-9-quotes-inspire
Go easy on yourself if some things that you know you are called to still take a little longer than you expect. Enjoy those little detours that life and the Holy Spirit have in store for you.
Live a life that you can love, and live it in the knowledge that you are loved.
There are people all over this room who are here simply because they love you and will support you every step of the way. And you have heard clearly from your classmates how much God loves you, the goodness God has in store for you.
My car has a bumper sticker on it from The Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, of which I and some of you are a part. It says, God Loves You, No Exceptions.
Whether you worked your rear end off at school or scooted around the hallways on it, God loves you. No exceptions.
Whether you find the love of your life on your first day of work or college, or whether you are only just learning to love yourself, God loves you. No exceptions.
When the world fails you (because it will), remember that God loves you. No exceptions.
When you fail and falter (because you will), God still loves you; and God will help you put the pieces back together again.
When you fall in love with your life, God falls with you, never further from you than your own heart. No exceptions.
I quoted another poem in this morning’s sermon at my church (I like poetry):
Today was my son’s birth day;
his tiny hands beginning to unfurl,
a birthmark smeared beneath one arm;
this is the closest we come to perfection;
born between earth and eternity,
the closest we come to God.
(Rosalind C Hughes)
All of you were born into lives that are pregnant with infinite and eternal possibility, and you bear the image of God within you, the Word of God, in your mouths and in your hearts.
So my charge to you is also my prayer for you: to go out from here with confidence in the love that surrounds you. Live a life that you love, and live it in the knowledge that you are loved. Go in peace, and may each of you know that you go with God.
Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Today was my son’s birth day.
Small and soft, he begins to unfurl,
a birthmark smeared beneath one arm;
the closest we come to perfection.
Born between earth and eternity,
the closest we come to God.
over the water 