Trinity A + 6.7.2020

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(Trinity, Rublev)

M.Campbell-Langdell
All Santos, Oxnard
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. ...
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.
Today is Trinity Sunday, and today we celebrate the big-ness of God, the complexity of God. The dancing mystery that is God.
Understanding God as Trinity has many benefits. If at times we cannot relate to God as Father, perhaps Jesus the friend and brother can have our spiritual back. And at times we just need to connect to the Spirit's guidance and also a less gendered notion of God that can be seen as Mother or gender-fluid Spirit.
The dancing mystery that is God was described by John of Damascus, an eighth-century monk, in this way: as a “fluid partnership in which there are neither leaders nor followers but only an eternal movement of shared giving and receiving,” as Jay Emerson Johnson summarizes of his work. He says that God is not three persons but “three dancers, the mutual and eternal choreography of which makes it impossible to discern the dancers from the dance itself. And the dance is nothing less than creative self-giving love.”1
Today we hear from Genesis and the Gospels, literally the alpha and omega of our Christian bible, and we celebrate that the God who was there from the first word spoken over the deeps will be there at our last breath.
Where was God this week? Some of you may have wondered.
I saw God:
in protestors
in a drive-past birthday celebration
in prayers
in the faithful responses to the person who disregarded God's house and the glory of her holy word. Because God's expansive dance is not diminished by other peoples' smallness.
God was there in the tear gas and in the quiet fears and hopes of all the people looking on the television. Or even those like our friend Frank who witnessed others with crowbars looting as he helped board up shops.
God was there.
God was with us in the beginning and God is here with us now, yes even and especially in these uncertain times.
This I know for sure:
God is with us, dancing with us, breathing Ruach, the breath of the Holy Spirit into us, reminding us of Jesus' life and teachings, and of our loving creation -God is with us, now! At any moment when we are invited into sharing love for others, God is there.
God was with George Floyd in his last breath. God mourned that disregard for the life that God had given Floyd.
I was invited to show God's love this week by my brother Pastor Torrence Nivens. When we arrived at the NAACP protest (appropriately masked and socially distanced) this week, we carried a sign: “Life is a Gift from God. # Black Lives Matter.” We had that sign because all life is given to us from God, but our society does not respect all life in the same way. Thus we need to say that Black Lives Matter.
God is with us. But we know from Jesus that the way we love God is by loving our neighbor. We cannot love God whom we have not seen if we cannot love our brother or sister whom we have seen.
And thus I also pray that God is with all of the police officers who have acted violently, calling them to repent and seek a better way. Because we trust that God is with each of us and forgives us even hen we do not live up to our baptismal vows.
God is with us. Every moment when we are invited to love one another and show that love in a concrete way, we are participating in the dance of the triune God. May we be aware of that.
In these uncertain times, let us find ways to connect even if we are socially distanced. To reach out to brothers and sisters of all kinds and all faiths, and say, in the name of the Trinity, I see you. I love you. Your life matters.
As we proceed forward with finding a new balance in the partial re-opening, let us take a moment to really see each other, to breathe and really hear each other. To love God in each other.
And thus to dance more faithfully with our Triune God, today and always. Amen.
1Jay Emerson Johnson, Dancing with God (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2005), 74.

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