Who We are Meant to Be

Sermon on Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a offered to the people of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, TX.

As many of you know, my wife and I are cat people.  We have two adorable kitties that give us an incredible amount of joy, even though they can frustrate us at times.  Neither of us grew up with animals in the house; our foray into pet guardianship began when my wife somewhat arbitrarily decided to adopt a cat from the animal shelter in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.  Gradually, we became so enamored of Winnie (who is named for Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire) that we decided she needed a feline companion.  This led us to adopt Abby (named for her hometown of Abilene) from a parishioner’s backyard.  We are, to put it mildly, smitten.

Now, when some people find out that we are cat people, they are inclined to explain that cats aren’t nearly as cute and cuddly and innocent as we think they are, that they are, in fact, “evil.”  Now, I’m not particularly disposed to use the word “evil” for human beings, let alone animals that presumably have a limited understanding of morality.  Nevertheless these feline detractors will enumerate the reasons that, in their mind, cats are selfish, duplicitous, and unworthy of our affection.  For instance, they will explain that when cats nuzzle you, they aren’t showing affection, but are actually claiming you as their property.  Being a devoted cat guardian, I am familiar with this behavior and I’m fine with it.  Cats are territorial; they mark the things they want in their lives, whether they are scratching posts, food bowls, doorframes, or their human guardians.  But what really bugs me is what the anti-cat party thinks is the most damning evidence against cats.  They explain that unlike dogs, cats do not do anything useful.  Now, I love dogs, but dogs are bred to do useful things like retrieve and point and follow scents.  Cats weren’t bred to do any of these things.  As a civilization, we decided to keep cats around because they hunted and killed disease-carrying pests.  We developed a symbiotic relationship with these animals, benefiting from their natural instincts.  The anti-cat folks, in other words, tend not to like cats because they are not enough like dogs, and I don’t think that’s fair.  They need to be reminded that cats are not dogs, and that that’s okay.  We can’t fault these creatures for doing what they have evolved to do; we should celebrate cats and dogs and other animals for being what they are meant to be.

Today is Trinity Sunday.  In the words of our Collect, it is the day we are called “to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of God’s divine Majesty to worship the Unity.”  Put another way, it is the day we are reminded that as Christians, we have a truly unique understanding of monotheism.  The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that though God is one and there is but one God, God is made known to us as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Now, if this sounds wacky to you, you are not alone.  Adherents of other monotheistic traditions like Judaism or Islam smile to themselves whenever they hear us talk about the Trinity and claim to be monotheists.  Skeptics roll their eyes when Christians talk about the Trinity, thinking that we simply cannot count.  Even some traditions that claim Jesus Christ have eschewed the doctrine of the Trinity: Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus was adopted as God’s son and is not part of the Godhead, while Mormons believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct godlike figures.  Since its inception, in other words, the doctrine of the Trinity has been one of the more challenging elements of the Christian faith.

One of the reasons the Trinity is so difficult for us to understand is that we have to deal with a substantial language barrier.  The Church fathers who first articulated Trinitarian doctrine used the Latin word personae to describe the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  While “persons” is an accurate translation of this word, personae refers less to individual people and more to the ways that we experience people, kind of like the English derivative “persona.”  In fact, another way to translate personae is “masks.”  The early Church, in other words, was saying that we experience God in three very particular ways: as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit.  Now, we are currently bordering on heresy; the Early Church would never say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were mere masks of God.  Then again, when you talk about the Trinity for any length of time, you are almost always bordering on heresy.  In any case, this leads us to wonder: what was it that led the Early Church to affirm that we experience God in these very particular ways?  Why didn’t they simply say that God manifests God’s self in a variety of different fashions and leave it at that?  After all, the word “Trinity” never appears in Scripture and the references to “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” are few and far between.  What was it that made the Church fathers reconsider the very nature of monotheism?

Part of the rationale is for this change is made clear in our gospel reading for today.  Matthew tells us that after his resurrection, Jesus gathered his disciples on the mountaintop, where he gives them the Great Commission.  Of course, he tells his followers to make disciples by “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” but this is not the most important Trinitarian moment in this passage.  That comes two verses before, when the evangelist tells us that the disciples worshiped Jesus.  To our ears, this does not sound weird; Christians have been worshiping Jesus for almost two thousand years.  For devout first-century Jews, however, this was an astonishing statement.  One of the foundational confessions of the Jewish faith is the Shema, the affirmation that God is one and is the only one worthy of worship.  But for these disciples of Jesus, something had happened to persuade them that Jesus Christ was also worthy of worship, that Jesus Christ manifested the presence of God.  The Early Church saw this trend among the earliest followers of Jesus, saw that they recognized the presence of God in the person of Jesus Christ, and began to wonder how exactly this was possible.  They began to wonder if Jesus Christ was somehow also God.

But perhaps the most compelling rationale for the doctrine of the Trinity is illustrated in the creation account from Genesis.  We are intimately familiar with this story: God speaks into the empty void and calls creation into existence.  The author of Genesis tells us that a wind from God swept over the waters of chaos prior to God saying “Let there be light.”  In Hebrew, the word for “wind” is ruah, same as the word for “Sprit.”  In other words, even before creation began, the Spirit was present in the chaos.  But this is not the reason the creation account points to the Trinity.  That comes later, six days later according to Genesis, when God looks around and says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”  Theologians have wrestled with what it means to be made in the image of God for generations.  Does this statement in the creation account mean that God looks like a human being or does it mean something else?  Artists throughout history have interpreted this statement somewhat literally: God is depicted in many great works of art as a bearded man (just think of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel).  To my mind, however, when the Genesis account tells us that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” there is something deeper at play, something that I believe the Early Church recognized.  In the second chapter of Genesis, God creates woman from the rib of Adam.  But in the first chapter, God creates woman and man at the same time.  God creates a micro-community of human beings, as if to say, “Human beings are meant to be in relationship with one another.”  I suspect that the Early Church looked at this story and said, “That must be what the image of God is.  If God created human beings to be in community, then community must exist at the very heart of God.”

Ultimately, this is why we take a Sunday every year to remember the doctrine of the Trinity.  It’s not so we can brush up on our fourth century theology.  Trinity Sunday is an opportunity to remember the divine community that grounds our very being, to remember that relationship exists at the very heart of God.  We celebrate the Trinity every year to remember that we are created in the image of that God, to remember that we are meant to be in relationship with one another.  The Trinity, in other words, reminds us who we are meant to be.  And just as cat detractors need to be reminded that it’s okay for cats to be cats, we need to be reminded that we are created in the image of God, because it is so easy to forget.  We live in an age when abusing strangers anonymously behind the keys of a message board has become commonplace.  We live in an age when selfishness seems to be the order of the day.  We live in an age when we are too scared to admit we are vulnerable and so we wallow in loneliness, uncertainty, and despair.  The Trinity is a reminder that we are not meant to go through this life alone.  The divine community is a reminder that we are called to share what we have with others who have been created in God’s image.  The relationship at the heart of God is a reminder that we are called to see ourselves, to see God in those who are different from us.  As we gather in community this Trinity Sunday, I pray that we will reach out to those in our midst and those outside of these walls as we celebrate who we have been created to be.

One Hit Wonder

The other day, “Who Let the Dogs Out” was on the radio.

For those of you who don’t remember, “Who Let the Dogs Out” (click at your own risk) was a song written by a Trinidadian group called the Baha Men that made it to the United States as part of the soundtrack for Rugrats in Paris: The Movie.  It was probably the most popular song of the summer of 2000; in fact, it won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording in 2001.  On one hand, this is somewhat understandable.  The song is catchy, danceable, and insidiously easy to remember.  On the other hand, it’s hard to understand why anyone enjoyed the song in the first place.  It has the dubious distinction of being third on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 20 most annoying songs, and it is frequently cited as an example of the fact that quality and popularity are not always one and the same.

The Baha Men are also an example of a common phenomenon in popular music: the one hit wonder.  Though the Trinidadian group released several other singles, none achieved the ubiquity or acclaim of their magnum opus.  For better or worse, this means that the Baha Men will forever be defined by a song that repeatedly asks a rhetorical question about the provenance of dogs.  I imagine that being a one hit wonder has to be frustrating.  Instead of being trusted for your talent and potential, you are known for an isolated moment in your career.  Even if you go on to grow and change, people define you in terms of something you did in the past.

Holy Week begins tomorrow.  As such it is appropriate for us to take stock of our Lenten journeys.  And when it comes to Lent (and other things), I suspect that many of us think we might be one hit wonders.  We assume that what we have done in the past will forever shape our futures.  If we have had a Lent that was particularly fruitful, for instance, we tend to have two responses.  We either assume that this is the best we can do and say that we will try to have the same experience next year  or we believe that there’s no way we could possibly experience the same level of fulfillment and regard this as the high water mark in our spiritual development.  We must recognize, however, that we are called to grow in our relationship with God.  When St. Paul tells us that we are called to walk in newness of life, we are meant to walk in a particular direction.  We’re meant to be aware that we are moving toward a deeper and fuller relationship with the God who created and redeemed us.  I pray that this Lent has been a time of spiritual growth for you, but more importantly, I pray that you will continue to grow in your awareness of God’s love even as this season of renewal comes to a close.  Above all, I pray that you will remember that in God’s eyes, you will never be a one hit wonder.

Evacuation Day

Today is Evacuation Day.

For those of you who didn’t grow up or haven’t spent any time in the Boston area, Evacuation Day commemorates the conclusion of the eleven-month Siege of Boston, when the British Army evacuated from Boston to Nova Scotia early in the Revolutionary War.  While it was George Washington’s first victory of the war and represented a morale boost to the beleaguered Continental Army, it wasn’t a terribly significant military victory.  Once the British had (easily) captured New York City, New England was almost completely cut off from the rest of the colonies, meaning that the rest of the war was mostly fought in the southern colonies.  So why does Boston close its schools and public offices to observe the anniversary of this relatively unimportant military victory?  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it’s also St. Patrick’s Day.

If you know anything about American cultural history, you know that being from Boston in the 19th and early 20th centuries was practically synonymous with being Irish.  By the late 1800s, people of Irish descent lived throughout the city, and Irish politicians had, in turn, come to dominate the local Boston political establishment.  So when seeking an opportunity to reward their constituents with a day off on St. Patrick’s Day, these pols combed the annals of Boston history to discover any event of significance that had taken place on March 17th.  Thus, in 1901, the people of Boston began celebrating Evacuation Day with a St. Patrick’s Day parade and other celebrations of Irish culture.

While there is an element of this story that is politics-as-usual, there is also something beautiful about it.  In some ways, it is the embodiment of the American ideal: an ethnic group becomes so immersed in American life that the line between “American culture” and “Irish culture” almost ceases to exist.  Individuals are shaped not only by what they have been, but also by what they are becoming.  Ideally, this is what the Christian life is supposed to look like.  We enter into the community of the Church shaped by our past experiences and  influenced by the people we have known.  As we grow into our life in Christ we embrace new opportunities and new experiences; we are shaped by our relationship with other members of Christ’s body and transformed by our relationship with Christ himself.  In the meantime, however, we’re not meant to lose our sense of ourselves.  We are still who we were before, but our humanity and our sense of being a part of God’s creation has been renewed by Christ and his Church.  The season of Lent is our opportunity to embrace this renewal, to be mindful of the reality that we are shaped not only by what we have been, but by what we are becoming.

Bridles

“Do not be like horse or mule, which have no understanding;
who must be fitted with bit and bridle,
or else they will not stay near you.”

–Psalm 32:10

The Book of Psalms is one of the great treasures of Holy Scripture.  It is at the center of the common life of many worshiping communities, particularly those in monastic traditions (many Benedictine communities, for instance, read the entire Psalter in worship every week).  The centrality of the Psalms is not at all surprising when you consider their extraordinary breadth.  The Book of Psalms covers the entire range of human emotions, from the jubilation of Psalm 150 to the despair of Psalm 22, from the hopefulness of Psalm 121 to the lament of Psalm 51.  There are, however, moments in the Psalms that are difficult to categorize.  One of my good friends is fond of saying that there are times that the Book of Psalms sounds a bit like the rantings of the uncle you only see once a year.  These snippets include non sequiturs like Psalm 147:10.  It’s easy to imagine a middle aged man interrupting the dinnertime conversation by saying, “Hey, hey, hey!  Just so you know, God is not impressed with the might of a horse,” just before the rest of the party returns to the topic at hand.

This verse from Psalm 32 that Episcopalians read last Sunday (also horse-related)  seems to fall within this category.  The Psalmist gives us the unsolicited advice that we should not behave like horses or mules, that we should not depend on bits or bridles.  The implication, of course, is that the intelligent person, the one who is not like a mule, remains close to God without tethers and without the threat of punishment or retribution.  This sentiment is somewhat expected.  We are used to hearing that truly faithful people have a desire to be with God.

Notice, however, that the converse is also true.  We are told not to behave like horses or mules, but this implies that God will not treat us like horses or mules.  God does not fit us with bit or bridle and coerce us into staying near; rather, God invites us into the joy of a nearness that is not about being chained down, but being in a loving relationship.  Unfortunately, the Church has a poor track record when it comes to embracing this aspect of God’s identity.  We have been inclined to fit people with bits and bridles in order to keep them in line.  We have been more interested in getting people to follow rules than in helping them experience the nearness of God’s presence.   We have, in short, failed to invite people into a relationship with the one who created and redeemed them, and we are called to repent.  Fortunately, Lent is an opportunity to do just that.  This season is a chance to invite people into relationship rather than trying to keep them in line.  I pray that you will see this season as an opportunity to draw closer to the God who refuses to fit you with bit or bridle.