Easter 5 (A) + A place at the table + 5.14.17

(Rublev's "Trinity")

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Acts 7:55–60; Ps. 31:1–5, 15–16; 1 Peter  2:2–10; John 14:1–14)

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:55-56)

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung said of today’s passage about Stephen’s martyrdom that here we have the best picture of the triune God in the New Testament. Stephen, looking to heaven, sees the glory of God (because just like Moses, he cannot see God directly, but God’s glory). And then he sees Jesus standing at God’s right hand, Jesus who is “the image of the immortal God,” and then, filled with the Holy Spirit, Stephen dies.[1]

In the death of this first Christian martyr, we are reminded that human connection with God is the key.
Which brings me to something I learned this week about the famous icon of the Trinity – perhaps you have heard of it- by Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev, and also called “The Hospitality of Abraham” – It has three seated figures at a table under a tree, the three figures to whom Abraham provides hospitality and who one begins to think might be something more than angels, but rather a possible depiction of the triune God. Well right there in the picture, in a square on the table, Franciscan scholar Richard Rohr points out that there may have been a mirror. This is a very unusual aspect in an icon, which is meant to invite the viewer to gaze on the nature of the divine or a saint. Instead, we are invited in. There is a fourth place at the table. God wants to interact with us.[2]

Which makes so much sense because it is clear in today’s gospel text, when Jesus says: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works (John 14:10)” he appears to mean that his whole ministry is about revealing the nature of God the father or God the creator, and then sending the Holy Spirit to guide us- as we will hear more about next week.[3] Jesus came to earth to share with us about the God of love- to reveal that God to us, and to invite us into the dance with the Holy Trinity.

Rohr points out that until the recent film and less recent book, The Shack by William Paul Young, that we did not have too much discussion in the public square about this concept of the Trinity. We could in some respects have as easily been completely focused only on one aspect of God, without fully seeing the dynamic relationship of a three person God that we see in Christianity.[4] But in that book, with the earthy carpenter normal dude Jesus, the earth mother type and African American mother figure God, and the flighty gardener and creative non-specifically Asian personage of the Holy Spirit, we saw an imperfect but interesting vision of what “God in three persons” might look like.
Now those of you who follow the liturgical calendar might point out that this is not Trinity Sunday, that that won’t come for a few weeks yet, but I think it connects.

See, many of us connected with some aspect of the unorthodox Trinity presented in Young’s book, and I loved the image of God as Mother. On Mother’s day of all days, we must acknowledge that our mothers are beautiful, imperfect people who many times share so much about God’s love with us, but when mothers fail to love it can be doubly painful. And when we fail to be able to love as a mother that can compound the feelings. But all that said, I loved the image of a totally relatable, totally loving and accepting mother figure for the Godhead. God the Father/Mother as ultimate nurturer rather than judge or whatever other image we tend to have for Him or Her.

And this relates to some of the ways we talk about Jesus. As I have mentioned before, one of my favorite images of Jesus is as Jesus the mother, as Dame Julian of Norwich used to call him. Jesus is a mother in that Jesus expects greater works from us than he has done. Now, how can that make sense? Not one of us is the perfect human manifestation of the divine in the world! We are all imperfect mirrors. But I do not think Jesus is asking us to do bigger or more showy actions than he did. He is asking us to go further, literally to spread the Word further than he did in his human form. We as the Body of Christ, empowered by the Spirit, have spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth. But it doesn’t stop there. This is an ongoing work. Just like any good mother or mother-figure (because today we honor not just biological mothers but those who mother in so many ways), Jesus wants us to take what he taught us and move it one step further. In the story of Stephen, we see that God’s Holy Spirit fills us and interacts with us.
In order to do this, we need to join our triune God at the table. We need to join the dance. And in order to do that our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, we need to be some “crazy Christians.” He says “We need some crazy Christians … crazy enough to believe that God is real and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the gospel. Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil and death. Crazy enough to believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. often said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ … Christians who are crazy enough to follow [Jesus] into the work of helping God to realize God’s dream for all people and for all creation.”[5]

Jesus is saying good-bye in this passage from John. And he is saying he can’t do this alone. That God is at work transforming the world. And shockingly, God desires our help. And that we, no matter what our family story is – whether it is happy or sad, or for most of us, in between—are invited to take our place at the table. To take our place in God’s family. And to join in the dance of the Triune God, and the work of renewing the world, one moment at a time.

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[1] Rolf Jacobsen, Karoline Lewis and Matt Skinner, “Working Preacher: Sermon Brainwave Podcast #540 – Fifth Sunday of Easter,” for May 14, 2017, https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=883.

[2] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, Audiobook, 2017.

[3] Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary on John 14:1-14,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3238.

[4] Rohr, ibid.

[5] Michael B. Curry, Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus (NY: Morehouse, 2013), 9.