The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
June 7, 2020
Trinity Sunday, A
Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
Some of you have heard before a story I told of a former youth, now a young woman, who told me that all I do is talk for a living. She was joking around, at least kind of joking, and during times like this past week, I kind of feel like that is all I do, is talk for a living. When I see people being killed; see the violence in our streets; see hundreds of years of racism, of overt and covert oppression, and of mistrust throughout our society because of it, I want to do more than just talk. I want to make some kind of lasting change and difference in the lives of people directly affected by the racism, violence, and mistrust, and I want to make that change quickly and right now, but I can’t. Not alone, not immediately.
So, being that I can’t make some enormous, immediate change for the good, I figure I will go ahead and spend a few minutes talking, and I am going to talk about grace, love, and communion with the hope that these words will also address the racism, violence, and mistrust that we have all been witness to over the last week, months, years, and lifetimes.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. That is how Paul ended his second letter to the Corinthian church. With all else he had written them, addressing the good, the bad, the joys, and the strife, he left them with grace, love, and communion.
Grace: Compassion and understanding, true forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, and the new life and beginning that comes with that healing.
Love: Choosing to see others as beloved, to act accordingly, to give up one’s own will and way in order to be of service to others out of true caring for them.
Communion - Sharing that love and grace together; living and striving together through joy and sorrow, beauty and pain.
Grace, love, and communion is the way of relationship, the very image of God in whose image we were made. We call God, “Trinity,” the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bound up together so completely in love that they are one. Now today, on Trinity Sunday, we could go on and on, round and round about definitions of the Trinity, but I find overly defining God to be rather tedious and kinda boring. Like reading about a definition of a guitar rather than playing a guitar, I’d rather play with the Trinity a little bit instead of just define it.
Three persons bound together in love, God being relationship itself, I imagine conversations between the persons of the Trinity, conversations among God, each person of the Trinity contributing to the wisdom of the one whole God. I wonder, then if God might have limited each person of Godself so that the three persons of God had to be in communion with one another to have all knowledge and wisdom. God choosing that among Godself in order to fulfill relationship.
I like that idea as I imagine some of the conversations God might have had as I see changes in God’s desires and actions throughout scripture. Looking at ancient Israel and God’s command for animal sacrifice, we see that very command change throughout scripture. I imagine a conversation beginning with God the Father.
“Well, we need some sort of animal sacrifice to keep the people focused on us.”
“Dad, no we don’t. True worship is doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with us.”
“Boys, would you two stop arguing? Animal sacrifice is kinda how the humans do things. We can have them use it to focus on us for a while, and we’ll teach them justice, mercy, love, and humility as they go.”
Three persons united as one God, striving together for the sake of creation and for the sake of Godself. Wrestling together, dancing together with grace, love, and communion. That is the way of God as Trinity in whose image we are made.
As much as I want to just go and fix stuff immediately by myself, that doesn’t even seem to be how God chooses to work. Even if I could, I would just be imposing my will on others, denying them grace, denying them love, and certainly denying any communion between us.
If we’re going to fix anything in our lives and in the world, we need to do it together, striving together with grace, love, and communion. That means striving together with those whose views we find awful and crazy and striving together with those whom we believe see us as awful and crazy. Each one of us is limited in our knowledge, experience, and understanding. We need one another to find ways forward that don’t just impose one group’s or person’s will on others. That’s how we get riots and police brutality.
Striving together with grace, love, and communion means listening deeply to the differing sides, listening especially to ways we are called up short. After all, we cannot remove the speck in another’s eye without first removing the log from our own eye.
Part of my personal log removal is reading, Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. The understandings of white privilege and systemic racism which for yeas I refused to believe in, I am finally coming to understand and accept by listening to and learning from a black muslim woman. I need her wisdom and experience because I am limited in my understanding and experience. Listening to her and coming to accept the ideas of white privilege doesn’t mean suddenly believing that I am the bad guy, and that’s not what she’s saying. Choosing to accept the ideas of white privilege and systemic racism and choosing to accept that I have a part in that does mean that I am choosing love, grace, and communion with those whose beliefs I found threatening. Doing so isn’t particularly comfortable, and there is pain in the wrestling and striving, but I have also found divinity there.
Striving for justice and mercy, walking humbly with God and one another requires more than just talking. It requires listening, and it requires work. It requires striving together with grace, love, and communion in order to work together for change, for justice. That’s the way of God in the world, walking with us in grace, love, and communion, and as God walks with us in the world, God looks around and says, “This place is beautiful, fantastic!” God also says, “This place is also terrible and tragic.” Then, God also says, “Yes, and even now, we’re redeeming this place.”
