Several years ago, on a mission trip to New York City, the mission team and I visited the cathedral of St. John the Divine. Though an ordinary Episcopal parish in many ways, its gothic architecture and cavernous nave—the nave being the technical name of the part of the church building where people worship—astonished us. At least to my recollection, there was no posted sign asking people to be quiet. There was no need. For as soon as the group of teenagers I was leading stepped into this staggering height and length, into the majestic columns and intricate stained glass, they stopped talking. Towards the back of the nave, a large sculpture collection of dancing animals delighted us. Walking past the sculptures, we inspected the chapels along the sides of the nave, intimate spaces for small weddings and funerals. We walked and walked, making our way past sections set up with chairs, past the baptismal font, past sections roped off, past the choir stalls, and finally reaching the altar surrounded by enormous columns. We set our heads back and peered at the cathedral’s tiled dome. 601 feet long, meaning nearly two football fields long, 177 feet high, meaning 16 stories high, St. John the Divine is the largest worship space in the United States. In that majestic, awe-inspiring space, we had no doubt: God is here.
During my first call, a woman in the congregation, Esther, had been battling illness. Esther had gone in and out of the hospital for months, so routinely that each time I passed the hospital on my way anywhere, I would stop to visit her. On this particular day, I stopped to see her even though I had seen her the day before. When I made my way to her room, I was surprised to see nearly her whole family gathered there: adult children and their spouses, grandchildren and great grandchildren. To my inexperienced eyes, Esther’s health appeared as stable as ever, but something kept me there, at her bedside. After an hour, I was about to leave and was actually walking out the door and down the hall when what I assume was the Holy Spirit stopped me, and I walked back. When I walked through the door of Esther’s hospital room, the nurse followed me in and announced, “It won’t be long now.” She meant Esther was about to die. Shocked, we gathered back around Esther’s bed, and I held her hand in mine. “Into your hands, I commend my spirit,” I sang with my eyes closed, a portion of the compline prayer from the green Lutheran Book of Worship hymnal. “In righteousness, I will see you. When I awake, your presence will give me joy.” When I opened my eyes, Esther was gone. And I had no doubt in that thin, liminal space between life and death, the temporal and the eternal: God is here. Today, Holy Trinity Sunday, we proclaim a mystery: that God is One and Three, that God is majestic and awe-inspiring, that God is close and intimate. We proclaim a mystery: that God who created the heavens and the earth also became flesh and lived among us. We proclaim a mystery: that the One who died and was raised now lives in us, the body of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. This mystery challenges our notions of who God is for One who is Three cannot fit in any of our boxes. God is not simply the booming, distant creator, not simply love incarnate in Jesus, not simply the wild, fiery spirit of God. My favorite children’s book Old Turtle explores this mystery, and so I share it this morning. If you’d like to come close to see the pictures, you are welcome to come sit in the front pew. I read Old Turtle with the children gathered in the front pew to see the pictures. At first, all creation declares that God is only like them. To the fish in the sea, God is a swimmer. To the stone, God is a great rock that never moves. To the mountain, God is a snowy peak. And their competing views of who God is creates conflict among the animals and the people who follow them. But later, the animals and stones, mountains and breezes discover God in the elements of creation most unlike them. The stone says: I sometimes feel God’s breath as she blows by. The breeze whispers: I feel his still presence as I dance among the rocks. The star declares: God is very close. Old Turtle speaks to the fullness of who God is—out beyond our categories. Not simply a twinkling and a shining far, far away like the star. Not simply a smell and a feeling that is very, very close, like the ant. Not simply like the wind who is never still. And God comes to us not just in immense, cavernous cathedrals but also in tiny hospital rooms crowded with family. God comes to us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And before we reduce God to just One, Holy Trinity Sunday announces: God is more than any one of us can comprehend. On Holy Trinity Sunday, I am less a scientist, figuring out how God could possibly be One and Three and more an appreciator of fine art, content to marvel and be "wowed." We give thanks for the beauty of this greatest mystery: God who is One, God who is also Three. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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AuthorPastor Sarah Stadler shares her sermons from the previous Sunday. Archives
June 2024
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