Loading...As I was growing up, my sister was my best friend mostly because we liked each other (despite squabbles). But, that we were best friends was helped in large part by the fact that our family moved so much. She and I were – in our child-like way – re-enacting what seems to be a universal truth:
When the world (or, at least one’s own world) is in the midst of change and upheaval, our tendency, our desire, our impulse is to cling to the familiar and to the known quantity.
We stuck together in moving from the sunny and carefree days of our life on the miniscule Pacific island of Guam to the new suburban neighborhood in Charleston—the neighborhood which we quickly explored and took to as if we’d been there for at least as long as the houses being built each day had been there.
We still stuck together (albeit a little less easily) in the move that uprooted us from the fertile, lush, and humid South in order to cross an continent and an ocean to land in just as humid Japan.
And, then from that adopted home to yet another place.
Throughout all of that, my sister and I hung together. Everywhere we moved, even if we knew no one else, we each had a friend in the other.
In the midst of the chaos, confusion, and upheaval of a move, we had the familiar in each other and in our parents and we clung to that familiar, at least until the merry-go-round of the new place quit spinning and we’d found our equilibrium again.
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It doesn’t really matter what period of history you poke your nose into –
from pre-history of no written records
to the Israelites wandering the desert
to the Industrial Revolution or Cultural Revolution
to today.
Because anywhere you love, there will be chaos, confusion, and upheaval –
from the storms and droughts and heat waves (!) of weather changes;
or amongst people – family rifts or wars between nations;
as a result of economic boom or bust;
or because of technological changes:
from the iron age to the quick-as-the-blink-of-an-eye smartphone era.
True to form, we humans want to cling to the stolid, the familiar, the seemingly unchanging
as a port in the storm
or, at least a lifeboat in the pitching and yawing seas of life.
Many people – dare I say “most”? –
throughout human history have turned to, clung to,
relied upon and trusted God –
or whatever they may call the Divine –
as their lifeboat, port, and solid rock.
After all, God is the one who created the world with Wisdom helping and rejoicing – practically frolicking!
God shaped mountains,
established the fountains of the deep,
made earth, fields, and bits of soil,
set limits on the seas and sky,
established the moon and stars. And much more!
God empowered humans to care for and steward all that God and Wisdom had made. God is the one who didn’t just make the world and then walk away. Rather, God is the one who promised to be with us.
God is the one who didn’t just promise to walk with us each day
but did,
and still does
through every joy and challenge,
in the midst of each struggle,
and amid the grief and the peace-filled moments.
Most human beings who live or who have lived
could likely identify
(even if they didn’t have words to express it)
at least one time when God was present with them as encouragement, strength, comfort, or in some other way.
For those who can identify and talk about God’s activity and presence in their lives,
there can be a sense of knowing God intimately since clearly God knows them so fully.
This is a beautiful and nurturing aspect of our relationship with God. Yet, the potential downside of it is the temptation to limit God to the ways in which we know God – as though that’s the only way the God can be real or known.
Or, to limit God to how we as Episcopalians, Christians, or even those of us in the Judeo-Christian tradition experience God.
That may not be our intention, and indeed we’d likely argue loudly and vociferously against this, but the temptation is to put God in a theological box, and ignore, quash, or remain blithely unaware of the various and mysterious ways that God may be at work;
or, in other kinds of relationship that others may have with God;
or, the variety of ways to faithfully and lovingly encounter God.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Could it be that living in a time when Wikipedia can give fast – if not always precisely correct – answers and science can explain a tremendous number of mysteries (blueness of the sky, workings of the human body, behaviors of regal emporer penguins) that we’re now uncomfortable with mystery?
Could it be that we try to explain and rationalize mystery away because it confuses us, scares us, or feels like it limits us?
It could be....
Our Bible texts today – and many more within Scriptures, as well as our life experiences – offer clues pointing us deeper into the mystery of God.
Not to more answers and definition, but to more mystery and wonder.
There are no easy, off-the-cuff answers on this Holy Trinity Day!
I’m not going to use an egg, water, the sun, an apple, or even the roads connecting the various cities of the Tri Cities together to explain what the Holy Trinity is all about!
Rather, you’re invited to let go of the desire and the need for explanations, rationalizations, answered questions and pat descriptions for God.
You’re invited to let go of all of that so that our minds, our hearts, and our hands would be open to embrace and be embraced
by the mystery of God the Trinity who is, in fact,
so much more than “three persons in one God’
or whatever theological, mathematical gymnastics
we may try to perform!
You are invited to enter into the mystery of God who is both beyond our comprehension and without our knowing,
and to live in the peace and the hope that our on-going
and ever-changing relationship with God fills us with possibility.
~~~~~~~~~
Whether you fully feel the presence of God
or wonder at times at God’s seeming absence,
God is fully here and fully present in the variety of ways you have come to know and even expect
and in so many other surprising and wonderful ways.
Come into this place of mystery and delve deeper into your relationship with God.
See the creative work of God all around you.
Revel in the grace and freedom God gives you and every person on earth.
Live in the hope renewed in you each day by the Spirit. Live in the mystery of God!
Amen
