[Propertalk] Trinity a 2017 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's the first part of the draft for Sunday.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  

	GENESIS 1:1 – 2:4a    THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: TRINITY
SUNDAY a 

	2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13   11th JUNE, 2017 

	MATTHEW 28:16-20   CANTICLE13 

	 There was a wonderful cast of comedians on the old TV show,
“Hollywood Squares”, broadcast many years ago. In response to the
question from Peter Marshall, “If you were pregnant for two years,
what would you give birth to?” 

	 Paul Lynde replied, “Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of
the dark.” 

	 That touches on a problem we all face – the dark, whether it’s
physical, spiritual or mental darkness. That may be why the writer of
the creation story emphasises that the first thing that God said was,
“Let there be light”. God knows that we have a tough enough time
as it is without there being any unnecessary complications. So God
produced light so that we can see; so that we’ll know what’s what;
so that we’ll be able to comprehend more about who God is; and so
that we’ll behave appropriately. 

	 This is not to say that those who are blind and those who develop
diseases of the eye are, somehow, less important to God and should be
offered less compassion that any of our other brothers and sisters.
Exactly the opposite. God actually gives light in so many different
ways that we often talk of “insight” – the art and science of
being able to see past the clutter, to discover what a person, what an
object, what a situation is REALLY like. 

	 Of course, this takes skill; this takes time on our part. And it
takes both common sense and – well, insight. It’s too easy to make
up our minds based on fake information and misperception. What God
wants us to work on, then, is developing our insight so that not only
will we discover what our brothers and sisters are like, but also that
we’ll discover what God is like. In the meantime, we have this
wonderful description of God from which to begin. God brought
everything into being and set everything into interactive motion, and
God, who loves us unconditionally, wants us to be unafraid. 

	 As Paul Lynde put it, whatever it is, whoever we are, it and we will
never need to be afraid of the dark. Such is the power of God that
we’re given the means to address fear, AND to have insight into
ourselves, our neighbours, AND God. 

	 Remember that prophetic passage of hope that we read and hear just
prior to Christmas? “The people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light; on those who lived in a land as dark as death a light has
dawned.” 1 

	 We all need to be brought into the Light. We all have our places of
darkness in our lives – perhaps kept dark deliberately because we
don’t want to deal with them; or kept dark because we don’t want
others to see that much of us – have others see or, indeed, to have
God see.  

	 But here, as the first reading puts it, here is God who doesn’t
want us to stumble around in the dark. God, who IS Light, who knows
how much healthier, how much more appropriate we can be; how much more
we can do if we are in that Light; God wants us to live with that
Light within and around us all the time. 

	 Still, we are afraid. We fear so much and are being taught to fear
so much by both people and events. 

	 Life ISN’T always straightforward. No matter how well things may
seem to be going, somewhere at the back of our minds, we’re waiting
for the other shoe to drop, for things to start to go back towards the
dark places of life. THIS is why God and God’s messengers came to us
to give us practical advice, and to offer suggestions about how we can
work on our fears and live, instead, in faith. 

	 This isn’t to suggest that what we’re going to be given by God
is in any way unrealistic. Quite the opposite – God finds ways to
awaken our hearts and minds precisely so that we CAN deal with
reality, so that we can analyse our fears to see exactly how they can
be addressed and their paralytic properties put aside. 

	 Now, you may have been wondering where I’m going to start to talk
about the Trinity today, so let me insert a little thought or two here
to let you begin to reconsider the Trinity. Think about how God is
constantly reaching out to us in so many different ways, to make
whatever self-revelation may touch and help us best at any given time.
 

	 The United Church of Christ, the Congregational Church, has a
wonderful knack of coming up with provocative slogans to engage
people. One that I particularly enjoy is, “Never put a period where
God has placed a comma ,” – meaning that God continues to make
personal revelation, God continues to speak to us in ways that, if we
don’t fully understand at the outset, then they challenge us to work
to tease our their meaning. 

	 This leads us back to how we live in the Light; how we deal with
fear; how we deepen our faith, because this is an ongoing process,
just as is how we encounter God and how we come to know one another
better. As Brother Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the
Evangelist wrote, “We, as Christians, believe that the Spirit of God
continues to show forth God’s revelation and ‘to lead us into all
truth.’ We do not worship a God who is ‘packagable,’ but rather
a God who is always More”. 2 

	 Six years ago, in his commencement address to the graduating class
of Yale, Tom Hanks said, quite forcefully, “Fear will get the worst
of the best of us.” Again, “Fear will get the worst of the best of
us.” 3 

	 THAT’S why God said, “Let there be light”. God knew, and
continues to know, and deal with, all that can derail us. God knows
that there are all sorts of people who seem hell-bent – I use the
expression deliberately – hell-bent on confusing us, on leading us
astray by subtleties or by blatancies. God knows that it can be so
difficult to sort out what’s going on, so Paul was inspired to say
“let your minds be filled with everything that is true, everything
that is honourable, everything that is upright and pure, everything
that we love and admire …”  4 Paul knew that we need to be on our
guard, constantly, even with the Light that he prays is in our hearts.



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