Trinity Sunday
May 29, 2018
Isaiah 6:1-8
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Do you
believe that transformation is possible? Or is there any situation in
I ask this
because I think transformation is a pretty important part of Jesus’ mission,
yet I think a lot of us live our lives as though some things are more powerful
than God’s ability to change them. I hear it in statements like, “They are just
evil,” or, “He’s never going to change,” or, “All of this certain kind of
people [black, brown, white, gay, women, men, Muslim, immigrant] are that way.” But it
goes even beyond the way we label others. I wonder if we also have convinced
ourselves that we will never be
different or better than we are. “I can’t do it. I’m not good enough, smart
enough, brave enough. I will fail at that,” or, “I could never forgive that
person,” or, “I will never forgive myself.” I get it – I have felt that way
too, about myself and others – but I do wonder: have we convinced ourselves
that there are some things in this world that are simply beyond God’s power to
transform?
When Nicodemus comes to Jesus by
night, Jesus tells him that he must be born anew, born again, born of water and
the spirit. Normally we associate this famous verse with baptism, or in some
circles, re-baptism. But this week I’ve been thinking about it more broadly:
when Jesus tells us that we are to be born anew, is he, in fact, telling us
that transformation is and must be a part of a life of faith, whether that
transformation is of ourselves, or of others, or our perception of others?
Furthermore,
what, then, counts as a transformation? Only big things? Or even the mundane
things of life? What brings about a transformation? Major life events or
epiphanies? Or could something very small also be a sort of transformation, or
a step on the path to one?
I’ve been
thinking about this question this week, prompted by a number of stories and
incidents I have come across. Allow me to share a few.
The first is
right out of our scripture for today. A young man named Isaiah was a sinful
man, from a sinful people. He lived in a time that seemed completely beyond
restoration or redemption, in which people had turned from God and engaged in
evil acts. Yet one day Isaiah has a vision. In that vision, he is in God’s
Temple, and God is there, surrounded by heavenly beings. Stunned by the
magnificence of this vision, Isaiah is moved to lament that he is sinful and
unclean. In response, an angel touches his lips with a hot coal, and voila,
Isaiah is made clean. He is forgiven. And so, forgiven, he is also transformed:
when God asks whom he will send to bring an important message to God’s sinful
people, Isaiah is able to say, “Send me.” And suddenly, Isaiah becomes God’s
prophet.
If you have ever forgiven or been
forgiven, you know, forgiveness brings about a change – change of heart,
lightening of a spiritual load, and perhaps even a call into a new way of
living. Because of forgiveness, you
see, transformation is possible.
The next
story is closer to home. Last weekend we had a wonderful conversation with
Pastor Julie Cicora, who works with Rural Migrant Ministries, one of the
recipients of our annual Christmas Stocking Program. She also pastors a church
close to the city, and she was telling us about some of the youth programs they
have there, aimed at children of the migrant workers. Many of these young
people have endured significant trauma in their lives because of the harsh conditions
under which their parents live and work. Some have seen their parents taken
away in handcuffs and deported, some have hidden under beds during ICE raids, they’ve
witnessed violence of various types, most live in abject poverty, itself a
trauma. Enduring childhood trauma is a key risk factor for engaging in future
violence. Pastor Julie said, almost off-handedly, “I think the church ought to
be a healing place, so we focus our programs on helping these kids heal from
the trauma they have experienced.”
The church ought to be a healing
place – this has been ringing in my head ever since! And when healing, whether
physical, spiritual or emotional, takes place, we are born anew. When our
deepest pain is acknowledged, when our story is heard, when we find companions
who will walk with us and love us, transformation
is possible.
The last
story I want to share today is the story of a young man who was a part of a
college field trip through a program called Sankofa, in which 20 pairs of
students, generally one black and one white, traveled to the south for what
amounted to a tour of the history of racism. Their first stop was a plantation
in Louisiana, where the cheerful guides went on about “happy slaves” who sang
in the fields, who lived under good conditions and whose fingers never bled. At
the end of the tour, the students all had a chance to pick some cotton out in
the fields.
Back on the bus, the black students
were angry and the white students were confused about why the black students
were angry, dismissing their friends’ feelings and knowledge of their history
in favor of the “expert” tour guides. Surely if the experts said they were
happy, they were!
They went on to their next stop, a
museum whose only exhibit was a history of lynching. Here they saw horrifying
pictures and letters, reflecting some white people’s pride of this practice, pictures
showing white families smiling in front of hanging bodies. The students walked
silently, stunned, through the exhibit.
This time, back on the bus, the white
students did their best to separate themselves from this history: “My family
didn’t own slaves. I didn’t even know these sort of things happened. I’m not a
part of this.” The black students were even more outraged by the white
students’ unwillingness to own this history, or truly recognize their pain. The
tension on the bus was palpable.
Then one
white student stood up and changed the whole tone. She said, “I don’t know what
to do with what I’ve learned. I can’t fix your pain, and I can’t take it away,
but I can see it. And I can work for the rest of my life to make sure your
children don’t have to experience the pain of racism.” Then she added, “Doing
nothing is no longer an option for me.” (Christian
Century, “Talking about racism on a college bus trip,” https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/talking-about-racism-college-bus-trip.)
Would she
have been so changed if she had walked through the exhibit on her own? I doubt
it. There was something about seeing and hearing the pain from friends and
colleagues with whom she had just traveled hundreds of miles, that brought
about that change. When we build relationships with one another, see and listen
to one another, seek to understand and bear with one another in our pain, transformation is possible.
And this, this is a wonderful gateway
into understanding the Trinity. Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, the day when we
celebrate the triune nature of God. It’s a difficult doctrine to understand –
how God is three-in-one and one-in-three. So instead of trying to wrap our heads
around it, think of this: God is, by God’s very nature, a relationship, of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As our hymn of the day says, the Trinity is a sort
of dance, always moving, working, impossible to be apart yet each its own. Our
God is a relational God.
And when we
are baptized, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we
indeed join that dance of Trinity. Or as Paul says in our epistle reading
today, we are adopted, we become a part of the loving, living, relationship
that is our God.
So what does
that mean for us? As a part of that divine relationship, we, too, are pulled
into the transformative work of the Triune God: we love one another, we forgive
one another, we walk with one another as companions, we bear with one another
in pain as in joy.
And as we
live out this life, as children adopted and baptized into the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are continually born anew,
transformed. We are daily assured that transformation is possible – for
ourselves, for our friends, and for our enemies – even when all hope seems to
be lost.
Transformation
is possible, brothers and sisters in Christ. Thanks be to God! Let us pray… Three-in-one, One-in-three, we give you
thanks for pulling us into your joyous, transformative dance. When we have lost
hope that anything will ever change, assure us that you are more powerful than
anything that could bring us down, and as long as we are in relationship with
you, transformation is possible. In the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Amen.
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