God Revealing: Born anew, born from above

Icon of the Trinity
By Andrei Rublev

My sermon for today, Trinity Sunday, is based on Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 29,  Romans 8:12-17 and John 3:1-17. Here is the sermon:

+ + +

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day the Church sets aside for preaching about that ancient and obtuse doctrine of the Trinity.

It is perhaps no accident that the Church saves this teaching moment for the start of summer vacations. And we are already in trouble. Listen to the opening words of Psalm 29: “Ascribe to the LORD, you gods.”

 We’ve arrived quickly at the doorstep of multiple gods. As many a preacher has tried to do, my task is to make what sounds like three gods fit back into the package of one god.

Usually the senior pastor in a big church assigns this preaching task to a seminarian or an intern. But ours, Joe Lenow, took off last week just in the nick of time.

 So it comes to me.

You may fairly ask, though, why we should care? What difference does it make if we understand this ancient doctrine?

And it must be fairly said that a great deal of blood has been spilled over many centuries by those fighting to the death over the finer points of the doctrine. Was Christ of one mind with God or of two minds melded into one? Was the Son subordinate to the Father or co-equal? Was Holy Spirit of the same substance with the Son or different, or both at the same time?

I know that these questions are not exactly high on the list of topics that command your attention. And how would anyone really prove any of this anyway?

Yet these questions once consumed people. We might ask why? We might start by reminding ourselves that those who came up with the concept of the Trinity were maybe not that different than us. They faced hardships and untold calamites, and life was certainly more precarious for them than it is for us. They tried very hard to grasp how God could be present in the world but feel so distant at times.

 At its core, the Trinity is fundamentally a statement of the infinity of God and God’s infinite ways. It is a statement about how to experience God and who God is. The God of the Trinity is the Infinite One who is the spark that creates all things, and calls it good; the Infinite One who came in a particular time and place as a man called Jesus to show us how to love one another; and the Infinite One who is a holy spark living still within us and going infinitely where she will.

In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “spirit” is a female-gendered word, so it is perfectly appropriate, and biblically correct, to speak of the Holy Spirit as female. In fact, I’ve heard people recite the Holy Spirit section of the Nicene Creed using the female pronoun.

The Trinity gives us God as male, God as female, God as a living breathing being who is capable of reaching all people everywhere infinitely. The Trinity is another way of saying that all people are capable of experiencing God, each in our limited way, yet God is bigger than any of us can experience in only one way.

Yet it is also true that the idea of the Trinity solidified – some would say fossilized – into a rigid doctrine with hard religious boundaries. The seed of that religious rigidity is still with us in the Nicene Creed, that fourth century statement of religious doctrine that was written primarily as a loyalty oath for bishops.

I would hope you would hear the Creed as a prayer, but I realize that is not always so easy to do because it can sound like a doctrinal trap.

There is a way out of this from the depth of our tradition. We need look no further than, for example, William Temple, who was the archbishop of Canterbury in the darkest days of World War II. William Temple* once wrote that “Christianity is not first and foremost a religion; it is first and foremost a revelation.”

By that he meant that Christianity is defined by experience – a revealing – of the Risen Christ in our daily life as individuals and in our collective life as the people of God.

“It comes before us chiefly not with a declaration of feelings we are to cultivate, or thoughts we are to develop,” Temple wrote in a short book published in 1936. “It comes before us, first and foremost, with the announcement of what God is.”

This revealing of God’s self is not about the nature of God in heaven – the stuff of doctrine. Rather, this revealing of God’s self is about the nature of God in the world – the stuff of human experience.

And we experience this revealing of God not once, but many times, all through our lives, and every single day. If we can be aware of these experiences of God’s revealing, we might grasp more deeply our connection to God, to each other, and to every living thing.

If we are open to these experiences, much else in our life will open up and we will come to the central purpose of our life. We will discover how God calls each of us uniquely as individuals and collectively as the people of God.

Jesus himself talks of this revealing as almost as a riddle. “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” he is quoted as saying in the Gospel of John.

Those words have been much misunderstood, translated by some modern people as a test of being “born again.” The words have become, for some, a badge of being doctrinally correct. But that is not what Jesus is getting at.

The phrase is a play-on-words with the double meaning of being both “born anew” and “born from above” or “born of the Spirit.” Jesus talks about an experience of God that happens over and over again, that transforms us in such a profound way that we become new people – changed – literally born anew every single day.

That kind of experience transcends rigid doctrines and creedal formulas, and nurtures us into becoming servants of each other and the world – the people we were created to be. As we grow into our own true selves, we might just find that other ancient words will ring true for us as they did for the prophet Isaiah:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

* William Temple, Christian Faith and Life, MacMillan, 1936, p. 34By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

Marking my ten years as a priest today

He brought me out into an open place;

he rescued me because he delighted in me.

-- Psalm 18:20

Today I am taking a moment of personal privilege. Today is the tenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood in God's One Holy and Apostolic Church. I am writing this the night before because today I want to sleep in a little. I am going to take the day off, and I might not read any email.

Today I want to pause and take stock a little. Maybe that's because I am still a journalist at heart, and we journalists like round anniversaries, and this is one.

Ten years ago today, I was ordained at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Sacramento, my home parish, the faith community that sparked and nurtured my adult spiritual formation.

Lori and I came to Trinity because we were working in Sacramento, and we found in Trinity a community of faith that was open and inviting and welcomed exploring the hard questions of faith.

For two decades I was a newspaper reporter, working everything from the crime beat to covering the inside of the California Legislature. I went off to seminary in 1997 at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, commuting from Sacramento while Lori continued to work at The Sacramento Bee where we had met as colleagues. When I finished, I went back to work at The Sacramento Bee for awhile. And then, to my amazement, I was called to return to Trinity Cathedral to serve as an assistant and eventually as Associate Dean. I also got to return to the Legislature for four years as the Chaplain to the California Senate and reconnect with many friends there.

All told, Lori and I spent 18 years at Trinity, including the six incredible years I served on the staff with many friends. I was especially privileged to serve with The Very Rev. Donald Brown, the dean of the Cathedral. His friendship, guidance, mentoring, wisdom, irreverence and humor means more to me than anyone can imagine and still does. He and his wife Carol Anne, and their children Kevin and Meredith are our second family (and Meredith will be joining us Friday for a little celebration).

In 2006, Lori and I were invited to leave Trinity when a new dean took over after Don's retirement. Leaving was hard, and we are very grateful for the many friends from Trinity who have stuck with us in our low points. We did not want to leave Trinity, or Sacramento, but leave we did.

We've been on the road ever since, serving brief stints at St. Luke's Auburn, St. John's, Marysville, and then a wonderful year at All Souls Parish in Berkeley (my home town). I will be forever indebted to the people of All Souls for their confidence in me. God has kept us in open places.

We've been at St. Paul's Memorial Church since July 2008. It's been delightful at times, difficult at other times. We've had many joys and many heartbreaks. We are still in transition. I am continually amazed at the depth, the smarts, the dedication to mission, and the energy of the people of St. Paul's. I am ever growing with you.

Throughout Lori has been at my side. She married a journalist and ended up with an Episcopal priest. She has rolled with every wave on the high seas. She's been unfailingly supportive, ever willing to try the next adventure. I love her more than life itself.

Finally, truth be told, I don't remember much about my ordination ten years ago. I remember we had a great party, and my dad was there. Bishop Jerry Lamb laid hands upon me along with an assemblage of priests and that was an emotional moment for me. Jerry was and still is a great friend and a wise counselor. But I felt more relief than anything for having reached this major milestone. I do remember one thing: Don Brown's sermon. I've tried to live up to it every day of these ten years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully.

Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to be your priest and your friend, for your patience and forgiveness, and for hanging in there with me and supporting Lori. May all of you have many blessings in the years to come.

Here below is Don's sermon from January 13, 2001. We were very mindful that it was the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the feast day of Hillary of Poitier. The lessons we used that day were Isaiah 6:1-8, Ephesians 4:7,11-16, and John 15:9-17.

Sermon at the ordination of James Richardson

By The Very Rev. Donald Brown
Dean, Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento

We are gathered here this morning as a community of Christ's people to participate in making James David Richardson as a priest in Christ's holy catholic Church.

Now for those of you who are Jim's friends and supporters who may not be from this congregation, the Episcopal Church or any other Christian Church, let me assure you that your presence and support for Jim today and in the years ahead are very important. God's Holy Spirit works through those who are baptized and those who are not. God's Holy Spirit works through Churches but also through other institutions, like the Sacramento Bee and the California State Legislature, neither of which would officially claim any special divine blessing even though certain individuals in each of these organizations consider themselves more knowledgeable and enlightened than God.

When I first met Jim 12 or so years ago he was deeply immersed in the life of both of the Bee and State government. Jim was, and still is, very good at political reporting and at maneuvering through the machinations and the good, the bad, and the ugly of the public façade, as well as the smoke filled back rooms, of the political and journalistic world.

As Jim's relationship with the Lord of all life deepened, he became aware, perhaps precisely because of the Bee and the Legislature, of God's calling him into another avenue of ministry.

In fact, Jim much like a modern day Isaiah, as his sense of calling to ordained ministry became more intense, may very well have said to God as Isaiah did so long ago in a smoke filled religious setting: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips."

This comment of Isaiah's is a simple recognition that he was unworthy of a holy calling. The same is true of Jim….who probably is thinking right now, "Why did I ask this guy to preach?" But the truth is that Jim and all the rest of us, ordained or not, are flawed human beings and are in need of God's grace, God's love, and God's Spirit if we are to know healing and hope in our lives. For Isaiah the assurance of that healing came in the form of a seraph, a winged creature of some sort, who carried a live coal from the altar and touched Isaiah's mouth with it.

The point is that Isaiah experienced a sense of holy cleansing that prepared him for ministry. Fortunately for all of us this painful sounding coal routine for cleansing was ultimately replaced by the act of baptism. By virtue of our baptism all of us who are baptized are called to ministry. We are not made worthy by our own efforts. We do not earn God's forgiveness and love. No, God gives these to us as gift…pure gift.

During the first century when St. Paul was busy planting churches in cities that bordered the Mediterranean Sea, he constantly emphasized that in Christ’s Church, each follower of Jesus has been gifted to play an important role in the building up of the Realm of God.

In the powerful and poetic language we heard this morning from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds us that grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. We who are part of the Church are members of a living body "joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, [and] as each part is working properly [we] promote the body's growth in building itself up in love.”

What we are about here, in this service, is asking that God’s grace be given in special measure to Jim, not so that he can become markedly different in rank or importance in the Church, but in order for Jim to be especially gifted so that he can do the work and mission God has given him to do within the body of Christ.

Like Isaiah in this morning’s first reading, Jim has heard a call from God and he has responded, “Here am I, send me.” Bishop Lamb and the priests who will soon lay their hands upon Jim’s head and shoulders, do so as an outward and visible sign of God's gift of grace which will empower Jim to live out his call to be a priest in this branch of Christ’s Church.

Bishop Lamb will give specific instructions to Jim which affirm that he is to work within the Body of Christ as a pastor, priest, and teacher, and to share with other clergy in the councils of the Church. In other words, Jim is being ordained to a position of leadership within the Church.

But as the Gospel reading from John makes abundantly clear, this is to be a ministry of love as modeled for us by Jesus, Jesus who says to us, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Jesus calls all of us to a radical love and respect of others even as we are to love and respect ourselves. Jesus is even so radical as to call us to love our enemies and do good to people who are evil to us.
This is a particularly fitting reminder to one who is called to be a priest. It is also very appropriate on this weekend when our nation remembers the life and witness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His commitment to non-violence was rooted in Jesus' Gospel of love.

Worldly wisdom teaches and practices the conviction that force and power will change people and societies. Press, politicians, priests, people of all sorts and conditions easily slip into thinking that coercion will change behavior and it can, at least for a while. But unless the heart is changed, the old and usually destructive patterns of human behavior will reassert themselves.

Jesus' way, which Dr. King emulated, demonstrates that only radical love of even the worst and most reprehensible of neighbors can change hearts and lives, and in time even societies. This is a lesson all the baptized, including those of us who are clergy or elsewhere in the public arena, can never be reminded of too many times…. only radical love of even the worst and most reprehensible of neighbors can change hearts and lives, and in time even societies.

Perhaps more than any other attribute, the love that Jesus lived must be at the heart of Christian ministry. This is true for all the baptized and especially it is what we seek in our priests. And there are other qualities that are needed such as integrity, trustworthiness, courage, a passion for knowing God more fully, intellectual inquisitiveness, a love of people, a heart for service, and a vision for living life that is anchored in trusting the goodness and mercy of God. Furthermore, in the sometimes rough and tumble of congregational life, a thick skin and a sense of humor are also very helpful. These are the qualities that enable one to be a faithful pastor, priest, and teacher so that each member of a congregation can respond to the call of Jesus can be engaged in ministry to a world which is full of broken, hurting, needy people.

Jim, my brother in Christ, please stand.

All of your life experiences have led you here to this Cathedral and this holy time. Your baptism, the congregations you have been a part of from childhood until now, your experiences with your friends and co-workers in the field of journalism and politics, the love of your family and especially of Lori, your years of questioning and wondering how you were to respond to God's call to you, the intellectual and spiritual challenges you encountered in seminary, your ministry as a transitional deacon in this congregation, all have been gift and grace filled, each playing a part in forming you into what you are about to become: a priest in the Church of God.
May you always be a priest of vision and have the faith and courage to live that vision. Do not settle for mediocrity. Remember that the Lord of Life always deserves the best you can give. Pray hard, trust God, work collegially, don't ever take yourself too seriously and laugh a lot.

And to paraphrase a line from the prayer of St. Hilary which you included on the back cover of today's program: May the sails you have hoisted for God always be filled with God's Holy Spirit and carry you forward on the journey which lies ahead. AMEN.