Bad Analogy Sunday

 

Despite what my childhood self would have wanted, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit do not come together to form God, like a mega-robot in Voltron or the Power Rangers (that's Partialism), and just one of the many Bad Analogies preached today!

May 30, 2021—The First Sunday After Pentecost—Trinity Sunday (Year B)

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

© 2021 Seth Olson 

Holy and undivided Trinity, One God, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be cunning enough to know the same. Amen.

Good morning and welcome to Bad Analogy Sunday. Or, as it is also known Trinity Sunday. This is a day when preachers hop into the pulpit and do their best… not to commit heresies or theological atrocities. This is a day when we try to say just the right things about who God is. Often in the process the sermon-giver bores the congregation into submission and all leave displeased or upset.

Maybe this is a good time to say hello to everyone who is coming to All Saints for the first time, WELCOME! Perhaps you are looking for a church home after the pandemic or trying to make meaning out of the last fifteen months. Now usually on Sunday mornings we do not celebrate a theological doctrine, nor do we attempt to simplify the immense nature of God into a ten or eleven-minute homily. Still, it feels fitting to be talking about the complex nature of God in this complicated world in which we live.

Just like it is nearly impossible to easily explain the challenges we have lived through during this pandemic, it’s nearly impossible to easily explain the nature of the Trinity. Still, we preachers try, and we do so with terrible analogies. For example, that God is like the three states of water: ice, liquid, and vapor. This, of course, is Modalism, which is a heresy that wrongly claims God is not three distinct persons, but rather takes three different forms. Or, we say that God is like a star that creates light and heat, which is Arianism. Arianism is another heresy that wrongly attests that the Son and the Spirit are subordinate creatures of God the Father.[1] Or, my favorite bad analogy, to become God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit must come together like a mega-robot in Voltron or the Power Rangers (That’s Partialism). There are many other bad analogies wheeled out today (keep reading you might spot another), for today preachers try to explain our infinitely transcendent and indelibly intimate God who is Father, Son, and Spirit!

Now, your being here is not all bad. Watching homilists on this day is sort of akin to watching an athlete, like a gymnast trying a never before completed vault or a steeple chaser trying to clear the big water jump. Part of what is captivating is knowing that at any moment the competitor could crash and burn. But, why is that? Why is talking about the Trinity so tough?

In the Western world, we do not do well with ambiguity, such as God being three-in-one and one-in-three. The West craves certainty. We want to know for sure. We desire certitude beyond a shadow of a doubt! But, let's face it, we have reached an age of laziness when it comes to pursuing the truth. When we want to know now, we just google it, right?

Nowadays, what matters most is not actually gathering evidence, but rather fighting for the position, the candidate, or the side that we feel is right. So many are too entrenched in one way of thinking to see beyond the way they have always seen things. So, what happens? Either/or thinking emerges.

We see the world in binaries, dichotomies, black or white thinking. And we say things like, “One of us is right and the other is wrong. It is either true or false. That person is either gay or straight, male or female, black or white, Christian or not, American or not, us or them.” Not only this, but a moralistic overlay gets placed on top of this way of seeing the world. And people believe that one way—their way—is good and the other is bad. So, to talk about the Trinity is not only precarious—because I might put my foot in my mouth—but it is also subversive and even a little dangerous because it runs counter-cultural opposing this either/or way. Usually in the Church we have an authority on challenging subjects and turning to it, you might wonder, what do our Holy Scriptures say about the Trinity? 

Often our Biblical passages throughout the Sunday Lectionary (the readings we hear each week) provide us with clarity. However, today it is a bit more challenging. When the Books of the Bible were written the Church had a very primitive articulation of the Trinity. God as Father, Son, and Spirit did, does, and always will exist, but the early Church’s expression of the Trinity was in its theological infancy.

So why shoehorn a complex idea into the Sunday after Pentecost? Why cobble together bits of Holy Scripture that barely mention the persons of the Trinity? What is the point of this day when we celebrate God as three-in-one and one-in-three? For one, we do this because it is God’s eternal nature. God is Father, Son, and Spirit. God has always been this divine community that is forever and always both distinct and united at the same time. But, given our current context of either/or, us/them, my tribe/your tribe existence the concept of not two, but three-in-one and one-in-three challenges the black or white lens through which we so often see the world.

This bucks against our desire to talk about God in a definitive way, but when we do this we can fumble and stumble too. Like saying that God’s nature is akin to an egg—whites, yoke, and shell—which is actually Tritheism, or the belief that there are 3 gods who share the same substance. Working out what we believe about God is good and right so to do, as is saying something conclusive.

And, as much as I am poking some fun at historical heresies, individually we will struggle to fully articulate the indescribable nature of God. So, when other people say something different about who God is, what if, instead of immediately casting them out as wrong, we listened? I wonder, how will we learn about the complexities of God if we only rely upon how we individually see God? How will we learn of the nuances of each other if we have already made up our minds about who the other is? The Divine Community of the Trinity teaches us that something can be multiple things at the same time, even if you or I can only see one of those viewpoints.

The mysterious nature of the Trinity makes sense one moment and defies our feeble minds the next. God is Father, but God is also Son, but God is also Spirit. God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer all at once. While none of these is the other, they are all God, and they are all one. One equals not the other, but all equal God. To see this truth though we cannot simply see things with our either/or, literal minds. This is what got Nicodemus stuck, at least for a time.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we heard Jesus say that one must be born “again.” The word for “again” is also the word for “from above.” Jesus was talking about both at the same time. Nicodemus only heard “again,” and thus was stuck. He could not get the full grasp of who God was in that moment, for he was seeing through a literal lens.

We too can see get stuck seeing God or other people with either/or vision. However, this will only allow a very limited view of God or the world. A view that will keep us thinking only on the literal level. Now, here’s the thing, we need the literal level, but to see the immensity of God we need both/and vision. We really need beyond both/and vision—sort of like having beyond 20/20 vision. We need three-and-one vision. We must be willing to be mystified, stupefied, and astonished by God being THREE—Father, Son, Spirit—AND ONE—God.

The gift that Trinity Sunday provides us is not good preaching—by now you all clearly know that. Rather, the gift is an opportunity to wonder about the ultimate reality of who God is. God and the multiverse that God creates goes far beyond a literal, either/or existence. The Trinity and our wrestling with this BIG theological idea gifts us with a chance. A chance to see what is on the surface and what runs much deeper. It helps us to see that we need each other’s viewpoints, especially today as we come back together and discern who God is calling us to be beyond this pandemic. In God’s very nature we are gifted this opening to dream beyond the either/or thinking that pervades so much of society. We are invited to see that God’s essence is divine community, which is what we are called to be as well. May we expand our vision to see the beauty, the enormity, and the complexity of each other and God who is one-in-three and three-in-one. Amen.

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[1] “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies” Lutheran Satire, published March 14, 2013, accessed May 30, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw&t=99s.

The Payback of Grace

The story of Joseph and his brothers always blows me away. I remember as a tween—that odd age between childhood and adolescence—when my parents dragged me to see a community theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Even though I tried to not like the story because I had all those pre-teenage hormones making me extremely irritable, I could not help but love the show. I was so impressed with it that I made my sister burn me a CD copy of the Broadway production’s rendition. “It was red and yellow and purple and gold…” those words still get stuck in my head occasionally.

Well, today we find ourselves a little further along in the story of Joseph and his brothers than the bit about the coat of many colors. A famine persisted everywhere in the known world. Joseph’s brothers were sent to find food if they could. Joseph had been set over all the food as a trusted advisor and governor appointed by Pharaoh himself. Strangely though Joseph did not immediately show himself to his brothers, but at first he made them wait in anticipation. Did they actually get food to survive? Did the brothers save their people? Were Joseph and his brothers reconciled? All of these and more questions unfold as this story from Genesis climaxes. Something from today’s reading though stood out to me as odd.

After Joseph’s brothers had agreed to leave one brother—Joseph would eventually choose Simeon from among them—the brothers said something that we might simply pass on by without another thought. “They said to one another, ‘Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. That is why this anguish has come upon us.’” If you do not recall the other brothers were jealous of Joseph and so they threw him in a hole, took his coat, and made it seem as though he was dead. In fact, they really did leave him for dead, but he was rescued and taken off as a slave to Egypt. Rueben wanted to defend his own actions, but in the end all of them were guilty. However, what stands out as strange comes in that these brothers attribute their current lot in life to something they did years ago—something horrible, yes, but still an event from deep in their pasts.

Perhaps you do not find this moment peculiar. The brothers linking one event in their lives and a current misfortune does not actually sound unlike what many people often do. I have heard friends, family, and even sometimes my own inner thoughts, which say, “You are getting this [positive or negative thing] because you did this [positive or negative thing].” Is this not a natural human tendency? Do we not all struggle sometimes with this belief that all of what we get in life is a result of what we have earned for ourselves in some form or fashion. Well, God’s love and life in the reality of that love does not work that way.

In the person of Joseph we see the compassion and love of God exemplified in this moment. As his brothers insist that they deserve their fate of famine, Joseph turns away from them to weep for he cannot stand to hear these words. Even though they abandoned him Joseph gracefully yearns for them to be made whole. We may think he could have revealed himself immediately, but to get his whole family back to him he felt that he must enact the rest of his plan. Still, what strikes me is that Joseph even then could see that life was not about getting what we deserve. God does not wish to punish us for what we have done.

Human beings may be inherently flawed in a multitude of ways, but God’s overwhelming love as exemplified in Joseph and ultimately represented in the person of Jesus helps us to see that true life is not an eye-for-an-eye endeavor. We may very well do awful, terrible, no good, very bad things to one another and to ourselves, still God’s grace points to the truth that the One who creates, redeems, and sustains all does not want to punish us. God wants us to be forgiven, released, reconciled, and redeemed! This is the story of Joseph, the story of Jesus, and this is our story too. May we feel the payback not of past events, but of the grace of God!

x

Changeless Change

The city of Austin, Texas boasts almost two hundred and thirty days of sunshine per year. After moving there from a foggy mountain in Tennessee I remained grateful for all the natural vitamin D that came my way until the day I moved here to Decatur. Oddly though, the two week period of “winter” in Austin brought out a strange quality in her residents. When the clouds rolled in or the temperatures dipped down into the forties Austinites’ moods soured. One day as a barber explained the locals’ inability to handle the cold she said something that I have now heard elsewhere—even in Alabama. “If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it will change.” The statement bemused me enough that it has remained in my memory.

We can joke about the weather. At almost all parish functions someone makes a comment about the current state of the out of doors. “It’s awful humid” seems to be the current refrain. Of course, when a cold front turns a summer’s day into a mild one someone will point out just how pleasant it is. In the fall we will remark on how blue the sky is. During winter we will complain about the cold. Then in the spring when we get all four seasons in a few days we can say again, “If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it will change.” Weather quite often we want to change, but so much else in life we fight tooth and nail to keep it just like it is. Fiddler on the Roof will soon grace the stage here in Decatur and I cannot help but hear those opening lyrics from “Tradition”.

So what about those things that we hold so dear? Do they change or do they stay the same? What about the Church? What about our Faith? What about our Traditions? What about God?

There is a prayer that I find myself praying quite often when I say Compline.

“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (Book of Common Prayer, 133). While I steadily believe that God’s nature of creation, agape love, forgiveness, peace, charity, self-sacrifice, redemption, reconciliation, etc. never changes; I do believe though, that our understanding of God continues to shift and yes (gasp!) even change!

We did not always believe in the abundant divine community known as Father, Son, and Spirit or Trinity. The Church took a long time to figure it out. We most likely would not have ever gotten to this grand realization and this huge shift in the way we relate to God without the saint whom we celebrate today.

Basil the Great was once just a boy who studied classical philosophy in the 4^th Century. Had it not been for the faith of his sister Macrina and the death of his beloved little brother he may never have been baptized. Though once he was at age 28 his life certainly changed.

For a time he helped to reorganize the anchorite order. They had been for a time a very individualistic group of monastics, but he brought them together to create communities of prayer and work. Later, he was ordained a priest at about the height of the conflict between warring sides of Christianity. Basil became Bishop of Caesarea by a narrow margin and set out to expand with other Orthodox Christians the view that Father, Son, and Spirit are One in glory, majesty, and unity. And, the language that the Church used in that day needed expansion, such that all three persons of the Trinity were properly adored. Without his tireless fighting we may not have ever understood the powerful mystery that is our three-in-one God. Sadly though Basil died before this change could be affirmed by the Second Ecumenical Council.

What Basil teaches us in our lives might seem a little strange. This great one sought a new way of seeing God. In each new age we must see afresh the face of God. We are often tempted to just settle on how things have always been, but just like the weather always changes God is eternally creating anew all things. Yes, as strange as it sounds this very moment God abundantly creates the vast expanse of interstellar space, even you and me.

As God continues to create we are called to create with God. Our life is to be part of the spreading of God’s way. We are to be like Basil and all those other great ones who have helped to point the Church to both God’s eternal changelessness and the every changing nature of God’s Creation at the same time! Like the mystery of the Trinity we will not understand this always. Still God beckons us to live in the relationship of the Trinity as we aim to make the world God’s place and rest in God’s abiding love.

x

No Other

Ken Robinson in his inspirational TED talk about education spoke of the importance of giving people the opportunity to be creative not only when they are young, but throughout their formal education and beyond. Our education system currently teaches creative thinking out of pupils as they must learn for a test and not for real world problems. As art classes, bands, choirs, drama, and sports diminish children lose more and more chances to learn to think and be creative. Adult life is no better.

While modern employers seek to provide some new ways to work, how often are recess or art breaks part of work? Still, within every one of us resides a creative force that connects us to our Divine Creator. Do you remember a time when you were young and creative? Or, perhaps are you still young or at least young at heart? 

By the grace of God I have never completely jettisoned my inner child. One may joke about how many stories I remember from my childhood, but those foundational tales continue to impact me today. One such tale still lives vividly within my soul.

I have said in previous sermons that I had many imaginary friends growing up—not just one, but many! We would play and run around and go on adventures wherever we were. Quite often this benefited my parents who did not have to entertain me. However, there was one time every week when I had to use my creative powers in a more confined way. 

One evening a week I had to go with my mom to pick up my sister from dance rehearsal. When it was too dark I had to sit in the car and entertain myself. However, over the course of time my mom and I developed a game that still makes me laugh. My sister’s dance studio was on a busy street, so many people walked by on their way to other stores or restaurants. As people walked by my mom would ask, “Is that your sister?” For example, a 50 year-old-man with a mustache strolled by and my mom said, “Is that your sister?” The same with a mother pushing a baby stroller or a kid on a skateboard. Each time I would erupt in laughter. I found this creative game so funny because I knew these people were not my sister, until finally it was my sister walking to the car. 

What happens though when we are looking for God? When we seek out the Messiah? In both the passage from Isaiah and our Gospel lesson from Luke these questions of God’s identity hover over the text. There is only one God. God is the one who creates all: light and dark, weal and woe. God says I am the one and there is no other god. Whereas I had a really easy time as a kid spotting which person was my sister walking up to me, I believe we continually struggle with identifying that there is only one God!

Often we try to make God into our little deity who shows up for our group of people and so conveniently leaves out those whom we do not like or who see God differently than we do. As we look at Luke’s story of John’s disciples going to see if Jesus was the Messiah—recall we heard Matthew’s version this past Sunday—we discover that John the Baptist is wondering about the identity of God. In particular, John wants to know is this the Messiah who came to show the world the way back to God?

The response sounds almost identical in Luke as it does in Matthew: “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” Jesus’ answer does not directly respond with a yes. Instead, he points a finger to the examples that correspond with how the people of Israel have been expecting to see God’s coming. The wild thing is that this is still how we see God coming into this world.

I think I need to resurrect that old game I used to play while waiting for my sister, but this time I am going to wonder, “Is that God coming?” Regardless of where someone was born, where they live, or what religion they practice if they take part in creativity within this world, if they take part in the healing of this world, if they are uniting “individual” parts of this world then they are from God, the one God. For there is one Lord, and there is no other; besides God there is no god.