Grace, Love, and Compassion: the way of the Trinity in conflicted times (and joyous times)

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.”  

Lazybones

Imaginary Fables

Songs of Hope #4:  "Imaginary Fables" is about the ways we get stuck inside our own heads and the people and relationships which help get us back out.  Please like and share.  Blessings be upon you.

St. Francis / Serenity

Songs of Hope #3: This is a collection of songs I've written which bring me hope and peace. In "St. Francis / Serenity," I combined The Prayer of St. Francis and The Serenity Prayer with a melody I wrote, as these prayers bring peace to my heart. May they bring peace to your hearts as well.

The Good Old Days

Songs of Hope #2: "The Good Old Days" is about looking back at our lives, the good and the not so good, and realizing that even the bad parts were not as bad as we thought. They often held a lot of blessings. May you find hope and peace with this song. Please share if you do.

Light On The Horizon

Songs of Hope #1: "Light on the Horizon" is the first in a collection of songs I have written which I am recording and sharing during the coronavirus quarantine/social distancing. More to come. Blessings and peace be upon you.

Baptized In the Name of Conservative? Liberal? Any Particular Ideology or Political Belief?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

January 26, 2020

3 Epiphany, A

Isaiah 9:1-4

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

Baptized In the Name of Conservative?  Liberal?  Any Particular Ideology or Political Belief?

Jesus prayed for his disciples, for his church, for all of us, that we would be one, united together in love.  Paul then appealed to the church in Corinth that they would stop having division among them.  They were dividing over which preacher they liked better, which church leader had baptized them.  That may seem a little familiar to us when we think in terms of denomination.  I’ve heard folks say, “I was baptized Episcopalian…or Baptist, Roman, Lutheran, Methodist, and on and on.  We were of course baptized into Jesus, not into any particular denomination.  

Jesus is our unity and love binds us together, and yet we still let things divide us.  Issues, arguments, labels.  We weren’t baptized in the name of conservative.  We weren’t baptized in the name of liberal?  We weren’t baptized in the name of any particular stance on any particular issue.  We were baptized in the name of Jesus, and our faith and reliance on him is what unites us.  No issue is greater than our faith and reliance on Jesus.  He is our way, for his is the way of love, the way of grace, the way of seeking God’s will before our own and surrendering our wills to the will of God.  There is peace and freedom in that surrender, trusting in one so much greater than ourselves, trusting in a God of love who is everywhere around, among, and within us.

God is completely present to every one of us, and that is another aspect of our unity.  No one of us is closer to God than any other of us.  Some may be more habitual in prayer, more practiced in turning our wills over to God, but our access to God is absolutely the same for all of us.  There is no division or distinction within the church over who has greater access.  God doesn’t have a bandwidth problem.

Still, when someone asks me to pray for them, I often hear, “You’ve got the direct line to God.”  I think some of y’all know this and for some this might be news, but we’ve all got the direct line to God, or were Lance and I baptized in the name of “priest” rather than Jesus?  Clergy have no more direct line to God than anyone else.  There is no division of distinction or position within the church.  

See, Lance and I were privileged to get to study for three years at Seminary.  It was a privilege, a joy.  We love this stuff.  The scriptures, church history, theology, ethics, music, liturgy, prayers, partying like the guys in Animal House.  We had a privilege to get to spend time studying and learning about our faith.  None of that makes us any closer to God than anyone else.  Nor does it make us particularly better at ministry than anyone else.  The study and the priesthood gives us a particular role within the structure of the church, namely, “minister to the ministers.”  All of everyone in the church are the ministers.

Who did Jesus choose for his disciples and first ministers in the church?  It wasn’t the folks who were privileged enough to spend years studying religion.  He chose regular people, fisherman, a tax collector.  They were Jesus’ ministers, folks just like every single person here.  Our ministries and gifts vary, but every one of us is a minister of Jesus.  

Who here has ever comforted a friend, family member, classmate, colleague when that person was hurting.  If you ever have comforted someone else, you have been doing ministry.  If you’ve ever prayed with someone or eased someone’s burdens, you’ve been doing ministry.  If you have ever shared the fact that you find strength and hope in your faith and surrender to God, you’ve been doing ministry.

There is unity in the church because we are all ministers in the church.  We are ministers of Jesus, and our ministry is to help set each other free from all of the things which bind us.  Freedom from that which binds us is what Jesus gives us.  “For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.” That’s from Isaiah 9:4.

About 2700 years ago, Israel had made an alliance with Assyria, and things did not go well for Israel under this alliance as they became dependent upon Assyria and alliance became more like oppression.  So, Isaiah is telling the people that this alliance will not continue and they would be freed from the oppression of the Assyrians.  The people sought God, surrendering again to God’s will, trusting in God, and freed them from the rather poor decision their leaders had made in turning their will and their lives over to the Assyrians rather than God.  That was salvation.  They were a people no longer oppressed.  They were freed.  That freedom from what binds us is the freedom Jesus gives us, and we find unity in Jesus because we all need freedom from something.   

Sadness, not as a passing emotion over a particular situation, but sadness so deep that we are plagued by it daily, hourly.  Sadness which began with some event or situation but which has taken over and now holds us captive, our minds and emotions no longer able to move past whatever event or situation began the sadness.  Jesus would free us from that oppressive sadness, offering to take the burden from us, as we let go, turn our will back over to God, and trust that God will heal our hearts, even if we can’t imagine being healed.

Hopeless, as we see a world around us not as we would have it be, and the problems are too great for us to do much of anything about them.  Jesus would free us from that hopelessness, offering to take the burden from us, as we let go, turn our will back over to God, and trust that this is God’s world, not ours, and while we cannot change the whole world, God has given each of us ways to bring healing into the world. 

God makes each of us his ministers.  Noticing those around us, choosing to care, to bear one another’s burdens, we are all ministers of God, and God has no bandwidth problem.  We all have that same direct line to God.  

We’re united, one in God, one in Jesus, one in love.  We are all one in our need to be set free from burdens that oppress us, and we are all one in finding salvation, finding freedom from those burdens through Jesus, casting our burdens upon him and turning our wills and our lives over to him.  No other issue or belief is greater than that.  

The freedom that Jesus gives, freedom from whatever binds us?  No other belief or issue should cause us to be divided into camps or factions, not when we all get to be ministers of Jesus’ freedom from bondage.  We’re a diverse bunch of folks, with all sorts of political beliefs and backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies, and that’s just within Emmanuel.  Worldwide, we’re an extremely varied group of people, but we’re not baptized into any of those political beliefs, backgrounds, cultures, or ideologies.  We’re baptized into Jesus, into the freedom from bondage that he gives, and we are all ministers of that freedom, all ministers of Jesus.