Trinity Sunday, Year B (2021)

Isaiah 6:1 – 8 / Psalm 29 / Romans 8:12 – 17 / John 3:1- 17

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, May 30, 2020.

 “GRAPPLING WITH THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY”

Some things in life are mysteries, that is to say, they are elements of life which we understand in part, but we don’t understand fully. For example, in my earlier life as a professional singer, we used to say, “Trying to learn to sing is a little like trying to grab hold of a cloud….by the time you think you’ve gotten hold of it, it’s changed shape.”  (I suspect that many singers would agree with that statement!)

The mystery of the nature of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is – at least in part – a mystery. Of course, one reason for that is that God is God and we are not. We know what we know about God’s nature and God’s ways because God Himself has revealed that to us. If God hadn’t revealed those things to us, I imagine we’d know very little, if anything, about God at all.

On this Trinity Sunday, the Church Year invites us to reflect on God’s nature, the fullness of God’s nature as One God in Three Persons. (That’s the classical way of describing the Holy Trinity.) The focus, liturgically, on this day is on the very nature of the God who has called us into relationship with Himself. We do this because we are poised now, on this day, to venture forth into the world as the season after Pentecost unfolds. That season after the great feast of Pentecost invites us to grow our faith (hence the liturgical color is green, the color that denotes growth and life). So we venture forth into the world, recalling at each step of life as it unfolds in this season the God who loves us, who inspires us, who guides us, and who fits us out for ministry in His name.

As we read the pages of Holy Scripture, the Old and the New Testaments, it’s clear that the understanding of God’s nature changed radically with the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, many theologians maintain that it is the Christ Event (a term which describes everything related to Jesus Christ, His teaching, His love for people, His suffering, death and resurrection, His ascension into heaven, etc.) that is the signal event which prompted a new reflection on God’s nature, and the resulting fuller understanding of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It might be helpful, therefore, to reflect briefly on what we know about the concepts of God’s nature as they existed before the coming of Christ, that is, in Old Testament times. Then, let’s look at the changed understandings as they came to be (over a period of some 400 years or so) in the Church.

We’ll begin with the ancient understandings of God.

The Old Testament provides us with a picture of a God who had, in very ancient times, an intimate relationship with human beings. God is said to have walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, for example.  God spoke directly to Abraham and to Moses.    

God, in Exodus, is the giver of the Law (Torah). God is a righteous God, one who punishes wrongdoing and sin. God is both protector of the people He has claimed for Himself, but also the God who reproves and punishes them when they disobey or when they fall into idolatry.

Over time, God’s relationship with His people had grown distant. The voices of the prophets ceased to proclaim God’s truths. God had come to be seen as the God who blessed those who kept the Law of Moses, but who punished those who didn’t.

The Spirit of God was seen as something that emanated from God, as in Genesis, chapter one, where we read that God’s Spirit hovered over the chaos of the unformed creation. So the Spirit had creative powers, but those creative powers, I think we can say, were seen as a reality in the distant past.

With the coming of Christ, a radical change took place.

Jesus related to God by calling God His Father, something that the Jews of His day reacted to quite strongly. To claim such a relationship was to claim a share in God’s divinity, after all. Such a thought was anathema to those who heard it 2,000 years ago.

Moreover, Jesus kept reminding those who heard Him that God’s essential nature is one of love. God is the holy and righteous God, to be sure, but God’s nature is also to love, to love abundantly and freely. Somehow, the people God had claimed for Himself had forgotten that truth.

Jesus also kept saying that God’s kingdom is close at hand. That kingdom isn’t something that is in the far distant past, nor is it in some far off, wished-for, future. God’s interaction with human beings is immediate and ongoing, Jesus said.

Then, the Lord said that God was going to send His Spirit in a new and palpable way, which that Spirit did at Pentecost. Here we might pause for a moment to remind ourselves that God’s nature is unchanging. But our human nature is in need of reminding when it comes to understanding that divine nature, and our human nature needs, from time to time, a jolt to get us to see God clearly again.

No longer was the Spirit seen as something that went forth from God, but the Spirit was God in all of God’s fulness and power. In a real sense, the human understanding of the divine nature elevated the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to a fuller and more important place in our appreciation of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to the Father and to the Son.

Whenever God reveals something of His nature to us, it often takes us awhile to grasp the full meaning of what God has done. So it was that the Church wrestled with the nature of the Godhead for over 400 years. The church wrestled with the nature of Jesus Christ as both God and man, whose dual natures were totally intertwined without confusing either one. The Church finally articulated the understanding we’ve come to accept about Jesus Christ’s nature in the Council of Chalcedon, in the year 453 AD. (You can read the statement from the Council about our Lord’s nature in the Book of Common Prayer at page 864.)

And so, we go forth into the green season of Pentecost, carrying with us the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus Christ, He who is one with the Father, but also with the Spirit. One God in three Persons, the blessed Trinity: God in all of God’s fullness, God who is completely united in the distinctiveness of one God, but in three Persons.  

AMEN.

         

         

Easter 7 – Year B (2021) – The Sunday after the Ascension

Acts 1:15 – 17, 21 – 26 / Psalm 1/ I John 5:9 – 13 / John 17:6 – 19

This is the homily provided for St. John’s, Huntingdon, by Fr. Gene Tucker, for Sunday, May 16, 2021.

 

“WHAT SORT OF ‘ONENESS’?”

(Homily text:  John 17:6 – 19)

“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” These words are part of what has come to be known as Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer”.

This prayer occupies all of chapter seventeen of John’s Gospel account, and it ends John’s extensive reporting of the things that happened during the Last Supper. John devotes five chapters (13 – 17) to these events.

In this prayer, our Lord is looking back at His earthly ministry, but He is also looking forward to the post-Pentecost unfolding of the Good News (Gospel), as His followers will go out into the known world, carrying with them the wonderful news of what God had done in sending Jesus Christ into the world.

The Lord prays that His followers will be “one”, even as He and the Father are one. (It’s worth noting that our Lord will pick up this idea again near the end of the prayer.)

What sort of “oneness” might the Lord have in mind?

Would it be an organic, completely unified “oneness”, or would it be some sort of a “unity-within-diversity” oneness?

The evidence seems to show that it was the second model, and not the first, that emerged as the Church was formed and sent into the world.

Let’s explore this a little.

One of the most valuable books I made use of in seminary was the late Raymond Brown’s[1] book The Churches the Apostles Left Behind. Taking a close look at the New Testament, Brown came to the conclusion that the early Church had no less than seven different models of organization, of theological focus, and so forth. If his observations are correct, then, there was no organic, completely unified Church, even from its very early days. Such an idea must be, if this conclusion is correct, a fiction and not a reality.

Could Jesus’ citing of the relationship that He enjoys with the Father give us a clue as to the shape of the about-to-be-born Church? Perhaps so. For we understand that the Father, the Son (and the Holy Spirit) are one, completely one. And yet we affirm that there are differences between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

In similar fashion, the Church would be unified in its common purpose and its common witness to the risen Lord. But its governance would vary as the local needs of the congregation demanded, and its theological concerns would also vary from place to place, according to the local setting of each congregation.[2]

Such a model can inform us about the shape of the “oneness” of the Church today. It’s been estimated that there are no less than about 34,000 different denominations or groupings of churches in the world. That’s an astounding number. And in many cases, many of these church groupings differ from one another almost not at all, which raises the question about why there are so many quite similar denominations. There are, perhaps, a number of reasons why unity, organic unity, between churches that are virtually the same, doesn’t take place. (That isn’t a concern of this homily, but something that could be explored at another time.)

Yet, there are encouraging signs of growing cooperation and mutual respect and unity-within-diversity among differing bodies of Christ. For example, not too long ago, Pope Francis invited the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury and a representative of the Eastern Orthodox to Rome in common witness to Christ. What a positive development!

Locally, St. John’s works closely with other churches in the Forum of Churches, and we cooperate in outreach ministries when hardship or disaster strikes our community. There is also growing mutual respect and a shared love of Christ among these churches. Sadly, there are some Christians in our community who purposely seem to stand apart from such a cooperative witness.

We Episcopalians, who are inheritors of the Anglican way of being Christian, are uniquely positioned to appreciate the diverse nature of the Christian family, for we incorporate into our self-awareness a Catholic thread and a Protestant thread. We are, rightly, called the “Bridge Church” between Catholic and Protestant. Moreover, we have never claimed to be the “one, true church”, so we are able to see in other Christians those good things they bring in their witness to Christ. We are blessed to be able to see such things and to make use of them in our own witness to the Lord.

May the Holy Spirit enable, illumine and guide us into greater and greater levels of unity-within-diversity, in common witness to the risen Lord.

AMEN.

         

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[1]   Brown was a renowned New Testament scholar and a Roman Catholic priest.

[2]   Such a distinction between what is essential to the Christian faith and life, and what is adiaphorus (not essential), is in view here.

Easter 6, Year B (2021)

Rogation Sunday

Acts 10: 44 – 48 / Psalm 98 / I John 5: 1 – 6 / John 15: 9 – 15

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, May 9, 2021.

 

“DO SOMETHING!”

(Homily text:  John 15: 9 – 15)

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” We hear, in this morning’s appointed Gospel text, these words, spoken by our Lord during the course of the Last Supper. The writer of the Fourth Gospel tells us a bit later in our appointed text that the Lord seems to repeat Himself, saying, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (Surely seems like the Lord really wants us to hear and learn that lesson!)

If we could summarize these two statements, we might boil them down to this: “Do something!”

The Christian faith is never a matter of being an observer or a passive part of those who have gathered around the marvelous work of God that we know in the sending of our Lord Jesus Christ to live and die as one of us. The Christian life is never simply a matter of thinking to ourselves, “Well, I’m getting what I want out of church, or out of my religious observances, so little else matters.” Consider where we would be today if that original body of Apostles had chosen to harbor their wonderful experiences with Jesus in their own hearts, cherishing them as the most wonderful chapters in their lives. What would have happened if they had chosen to keep their association with the Lord to themselves? I think we know the answer, it would be an obvious one, wouldn’t it? No, those Apostles were motivated by the coming of the Holy Spirit (an event we will commemorate in two weeks, on the great feast of Pentecost) to go out into the world, going far and wide, to share what God had done, and what a difference the coming of Jesus had made in their own lives.

If we trace the experience and the pattern of the Apostles’ lives, we can glean some insights into the shape that our own faith walk will take.

The Apostles’ experience of God, come in the flesh in the person of Jesus, began with a personal encounter with Him. Likewise, each one of us must come to a personal encounter with the risen and eternally-present Jesus. Head knowledge alone won’t do. Nor will having some knowledge, some idea of who Jesus was, do either. Nor will being baptized without living into the solemn vows we’ve made to God in our Baptismal Covenant. No, what we’re talking about here is a knowledge that is deep, and is getting deeper and deeper as we live our lives in Christ. The original band of Disciples-become-Apostles began with a personal, face-to-face encounter with God through Jesus Christ. We, too, must emulate their experience.

Those original followers learned. They learned by virtue of their associating with Jesus, day in and day out, through hard and challenging times and in times of celebration (yes, there were some of those). We, as mature Christians, are called to a life-long pattern of study and learning. The necessity of learning and its central role in the formation of a mature faith is one reason we read, mark and learn (as the Prayer Book states) what Holy Scripture has to tell us about God and about Jesus, and about the experiences of the saints of old who succeeded in following where God had led, and about the failures that we human beings are all too prone to repeat. After all, the Bible is very open about the mistakes and the blunders that God’s people had done in ages past. The Bible is very candid about such things.

They learned to love. The ancient world was a very unloving place, I have the feeling. Many people living in the Greco-Roman world into which the Gospel was proclaimed knew it to be a place that was a harsh, uncertain, unloving place. Many in that world found themselves in slavery, living far away from their homes and their loved ones, whom they would never see again. Our world today looks a lot like that world from 2,000 years ago. Our world today is a lonely, uncertain, unloving place for far too many people. And yet, the early Church welcomed such people into its midst, it said it didn’t matter if a noble man or woman sat next to an unwashed slave, for each one called the other, “brother” and “sister”. Such an attitude and such a practice posed a direct challenge to the structure of the society of the first century. Yet, we, too, are called to do the same thing, to offer a generous and radical welcome to all who come to us. We are called to invite those we know and associate with into a relationship with God in this place we call St. John’s. After all, if the early Christians were known to be those who “loved one another”, then St. John’s also ought to be known, above all, as a place where we love one another in the Lord.

Those early Disciples-become-Apostles went out and did things. Practical things. They cared for one another. I am reminded of the wonderful Letter of James. It’s a very practical, short letter. In it, we read this: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them. ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15) Doing things like that for others in need is nothing short of sacramental living, a Sacrament being defined as an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace”. We are showing by the things we do that the love of God dwells within us.

A warning is in order here: The Christian life consists of far more than simply “doing good stuff”. Works (practical acts of love, mercy and kindness) are necessary to the proper and full living of the Christian life, as we read in James 2:26. But it is our relationship and our continual quest to be molded and shaped into the full image of Christ that comes only by having an intense, personal relationship with God through Christ, and our quest to learn more and more, in order to be fully formed in Christ’s image, that must come first. If we lapse into thinking that a Christian life that consists of little more than a casual knowledge of God and an easygoing relationship with Him is enough, then the good works we do will make us little more than “religious busybodies”.

Our Lord Jesus’ life, work and witness is sacramental in nature. For He it is who said that He would demonstrate His love for us by being willing to lay down His life for our sake. (See John 15:13 in this morning’s text.) We return, then, to the basic definition of a Sacrament, and there we see that our Lord didn’t simply say that He loves us, He proved it. “Go and do likewise,” we are being told in so many words this morning, go and lay down our lives in service to the Lord and to others. “Do something!”

AMEN.