Our contemplative service culminated in this guided meditation
followed by a breath prayer and prayer stations.
Today’s Trinity Sunday readings
are among the few biblical passages that even hint at the Trinitarian doctrine.
The Bible does not mention the Trinity.
Trinitarian theology didn’t crystalize until the end of the 4th
century, having developed in response to the problem posed when early
Christians began to deify Jesus even as they maintained their Jewish monotheism.
You can appreciate this “problem,”
can’t you? Early Jewish Jesus followers believed in ONE God. Judaism was distinctive among the other
Greco-Roman religions for its monotheism.
But when those same followers came to claim Jesus as a unique revelation
of that one God and lifted him up as co-equal with God, they seemed to be
revoking their commitments to monotheism.
Some thought they were on their way to creating a pantheon of gods like
that of the Romans and Greeks. Eventually, deliberations and battles and
compromises and political intrigue and no doubt earnest prayer produced the concept
of the Trinity.
The Trinity remains an
irresolvable conundrum but, for many including myself, it offers a destabilizing but compelling picture
of the Divine. Until my last year in
seminary I smirked at the Trinity. Now I love what it values about
interrelatedness and the equality of all persons. And a sense of time as cyclical rather than
linear.
If you want more on Trinitarian theology, I can point you to one of my earlier Trinity Sunday
sermons (http://thatpreacherwoman.blogspot.com/2012/06/to-trinity-and-beyond.html)
and suggest scholarly works. But today’s
Bible readings aren’t really about the Trinity. I see today’s common theme as beginnings
and endings. Whether you think of the Trinity as a contradiction or paradox . .
. as a muddled mess or mind-blowing mystery. . . you can certainly appreciate the way we can experience the Sacred in times of
beginnings and endings . . . and endings that become beginnings.
Today’s Hebrew Bible creation
myth attests to the human need to circle back to the very beginning of our
beginnings. In contrast, our New Testament
readings speak of endings: Paul’s gentle farewell to the church at Corinth and
Jesus’s challenging farewell to the first disciples. We heard a Jewish story
imagining the world’s first words: of creativity and affirmation. And we heard in the Christian scriptures Jesus’s
final words: of challenge and hope. Our rich Judeo-Christian tradition tells us
that God is in our beginnings and endings.
Consider the way our religious
rites mark our comings into this good world and our goings from it. The paradox
of these demarcations is that our endings ARE our beginnings and our beginnings
also hold our endings. In the sacrament
of baptism, for instance, a baby new in this life is “baptized into Christ’s
death.” Yet in Christian burial, you and I will be entrusted
to the God of life after death. It’s
hard to separate our good-byes from our hellos, isn’t it?
You’ve surely experienced the
paradox where the death of one thing became the birth of the next thing. Call
to mind now a time when you experienced an ending that opened you up to a new
beginning. I’ll share an example from my
life as you remember a time when saying goodbye to one good thing allowed you
to say hello to another good thing.
George shared with you some
months ago his perspective about a difficult time in his life when we left the
city, the university, the neighborhood, and the church we had loved and served for
sixteen years. Oh, in the great scheme
of things, moving is not a terrible trial.
But it was a move we made very reluctantly at the same time our only
child left for college. Overnight we
found ourselves in Ohio where we literally knew no one in the entire state. Overnight
we were empty-nesters living hundreds of miles from the daughter who had been
the queen of our hearts for all of her then-17 years. Overnight we were separated from our beloved
church family. Overnight I was without a
job. My identity as mother, church
leader, teacher evaporated. Some close
friends later told me they’d worried about me—mainly about how I would handle
life without Georgia. I, too, wondered
how I could bear her absence from our daily lives. I still sometimes wonder how
it’s possible I’m not perpetually devastated!
But if we had not moved from
our contented existence in Nashville, I’d have never started seminary, never
discovered my love of theology and the Bible, never responded to a call upon my
life, never found the joy of pastoring this amazing congregation. Ironically, our house in Nashville was within
walking distance of Vanderbilt’s very fine divinity school. For years I’d secretly dreamed of starting
seminary—and becoming a pastor. But the
voices of my Southern Baptist past would always drown out those thoughts. Besides, I loved teaching. I was very happy just
the way things were.
Moving to Ohio wrenched me
free of the old roles and patterns and plunged me into the new. I enrolled at the Methodist Theological
School in Ohio, a 90-minute drive from our new home. I told myself I’d take a few courses to distract
me from the pangs of missing my daughter, my friends, my career, my progressive
and inclusive church, my comforting home.
Simply staying busy would stave off misery, I hoped.
Life in Ohio would begin each
morning for me as I walked our dog Lily in our new neighborhood, and I spent
most of that quiet time spotting deer and rabbits in the nearby woods while trying to name things for which I was grateful. One
morning I said to myself, “I’m surprised and grateful I’m not feeling
as totally devastated as I expected.
Good for me!” Days later I admitted to myself that I found theology
courses fascinating. Soon I was making new friends and studying again with
my old ferocity and admitting that I really was preparing myself for pastoral
ministry. I had thought I’d never stop
lamenting the loss of our old life. But I LOVED seminary. I WANTED to preach. But
I would never have started seminary in Nashville—though the seminary was practically
in our backyard instead of a few counties from our house.
When I said good-bye to the
life we loved in Nashville, I said hello to incredible new friends, an amazing
new church, new learnings, new challenges, and a new pastoral
identity. Soon the new loomed larger for
me than the old.
So now it’s your turn. Maybe you’re in the midst of a farewell. Some chapter in your life is closing—by
choice or chance. Are you seeing any
signs of the new thing that’s next on the horizon for you? What are you saying “hello” to that has potential
for good in your life? Can you give
thanks for the part of your life that is ending (perhaps a relationship, job, home, past time)? Can you summon up a bit of gratitude for the new thing on the
horizon?
SILENCE FOR REFLECTION
Think now about our church
family’s perennial challenge to say goodbyes graciously and hellos expectantly. How does a church say goodbye to some ways of
doing things? How might we say gracious goodbyes when some
people decide their needs are best met elsewhere?
SILENCE FOR REFLECTION
How do we say hello? What’s new on Open Table’s horizon? Are you ready to embrace the new?
SILENCE FOR REFLECTION
On Trinity Sunday you might
think a triangle would be the best symbol for the three-personed God. But I picture the
confounding Trinity as a circle. History may live on a linear timeline. But sacred time is circular. Good-bye gives way to Hello which then gives
way to Good-bye, and the cycle continues.
BREATH
PRAYER
Breathing out
reminds us of the need to let go with grace, to say farewell.
Breathing
in reminds us to be refreshed, to welcome the new with thanks.
PRAYER STATIONS
Prayer station 1:
FINGER LABYRINTH
Take a copy of a Finger Labyrinth on lectern and
move to a nearby pew. “Walk” the labyrinth with your finger or a pencil, going
in and out again. Trace the path in a
relaxing pace as you journey back and forth to the center. Repeat several
times. Try it with your non-dominant hand for more of a challenge. It will help
you to give up control and break out of a linear response pattern. As you
“walk” this labyrinth, you might repeat a mantra like “To end is to begin
again.”
Prayer station 2:
GOOD-BYE. HELLO.
Using the cards on the table,
write a brief note on one side to say farewell to something in your life that
is coming to a close. Perhaps this is something that you did not/do not really
want to end. Then write on the other
side a “hello” note to some new opportunity you can imagine opening up because
of this ending. (“When a door closes,
God opens a window.”) If you’re willing
for your card to be read aloud later, please leave your card in the
basket. If not, take it with you.
Prayer station 3:
BEGINNING OUR GOOD-BYES TO ST. LUKE’S
Walk
slowly around this sacred space with gratitude for what we have received here.
Pray for the rector and people of St. Luke’s. Stand for a time at a window and
know that much lies beyond these walls for our faith community.
Prayer station 4:
GIVING AND RECEIVING IN THE ENDLESS CYCLE
First study the Andrei Rublev
icon that pictures the Trinity as a 3-personed community. Note the figures give
and receive around the Table in mutuality and equality. Note that the Table seems open enough to
include the viewer. There’s space for
you.
Next, prayerfully give to
serve others and contribute to Open Table’s ongoing purposes. In doing so, you end your ownership of that
money (and its ownership of you) so that it (and you) can be used for a new
purpose.
Then receive the Lord’s
Supper, remembering Jesus’s Last Supper. Give thanks that what seemed the end
was in fact a new beginning. Pray for
graceful endings and gracious beginnings in your life.
Prayer station 5:
PRAYING WITH THE PASTOR
Kneel beside the pastor to share in confidence a
particular prayer concern. She will then
offer a quiet prayer for you.
FORMING
THE TRINITARIAN CIRCLE
SHARING
OFFERING A TRINITARIAN BENEDICTION
SHARING
OFFERING A TRINITARIAN BENEDICTION
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