June 11, 2006

Clay Nelson

Trinity Sunday     
Isa 6:1-13     
John 3:1-13

Just as the Queen's Birthday gave us our last three-day holiday for awhile, Trinity Sunday is our last major feast day for this church year. As the only feast dedicated to celebrating a church doctrine, and a fairly incomprehensible one at that, the only rational thing to do is tell a joke about it. But I'm going to break with the long tradition of preachers on this Sunday and invite you to a place in your imagination instead. Think of a town or village by a river. It could be the Waikato, the Thames, the Mississippi or one from Middle Earth. You're call. Just make the setting one that is beautiful and tranquil. Where the soil is rich; the foliage is colorful; and the snow-crested mountains in the distance stand like protective angels. The village is well-kept and picturesque. It still qualifies as quaint even though it has broadband, cable and excellent coffee bars. You know every nook and cranny. Your fellow citizens are your friends and family. You know each other's stories and they weave seamlessly into one story. Harmony is the rule of life and everyone understands the rules. The river that bends around it is a source of life. It provides food, water, transportation and sanctuary.

It is a place that has been there for generations and generations and generations beyond knowing. It has developed its own rhythm of life that has become one with its people. Its music, art and language are steeped in its history and they colour the present and proclaim with assurance the future. It is a place where you know who you are.

But even into this idyllic place some rain must fall. It isn't noticed at first that the normal annual rainfall, which has always been just the right amount, has been exceeded. But day after day the rain falls relentlessly. Memory doesn't serve when it last rained this much, this long. And still it doesn't let up. The ground becomes saturated, and then the river begins to rise. As it threatens to breach its banks you and your fellow citizens form sandbag brigades to keep the formerly friendly waters from engulfing your homes and destroying that which you value. But no matter how fast you fill the bags and how high you pile them, the rain keeps falling and the river rises faster. Soon the floodwaters cover your fields destroying the crops and drowning the livestock. Retreating from the river you and the townspeople watch with horror from your homes as the water continues to rise, helpless as your livelihoods are destroyed. You want to flee but where do you go. Your roots are too deeply planted. You are too attached to this place and the values it enshrines.

You cannot leave. The waters enter the first floor of your home and you watch family photos curl up and float away along with the very meaning of your lives. And still you stay. And yet the floodwaters continue to rise threatening your physical existence. The groundwater is contaminated. Options for reaching higher ground are quickly disappearing. Soon you will be cut off. Your mind tells you to run for your life, your heart says stay no matter how unlivable the place.1

Now using your remote, freeze frame that image. Feel the anxiety, despair, ambivalence. Then you will know how I feel today for it is “Here am I,” to quote Isaiah in today's first reading. In his vision of the holy, he despairs at what will become of his beloved land of Judah if they join in an alliance with the northern tribes to battle the Assyrians. In my glimpses of the holy, a new light has been shed on the church for me. And it is not a vision I welcome. The church, like the village frozen in our collective imagination, is becoming an unlivable place. And the rain destroying it is our ancient way of describing what the holy is. It begins:

I believe in one God,

the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.

No, your ears don't deceive you, it is the Nicene Creed. The one repeated endlessly by the church for 1681 years, and which ironically defines what we celebrate today, the Trinity. It is our formula for the holy. I don't like saying that it is “Here am I” in a flooded church for it is uncomfortably close to his next statement, “Send me” to bail it out.

The prophetic role has never been one to which I aspired. Prophets have to have thicker skins than most. They never get dinner invitations. Folks tend to cross the street when they see them coming. I never felt comfortable in a beard and when was the last time you invited the local prophet to the pub for a few frosties? You'd rather just toss them into the nearest cesspool. And that isn't unprecedented, ask the prophet Jeremiah about the experience. There is a reason. The occupational hazard for prophets is that they can confuse their message with themselves. They become all doom and gloom and begin to sound like “Johnny One Note.” To quote the modern prophet William Sloan Coffin, “There is nothing quite as small as a person wrapped up in themselves.” And I might add, “in their message.”

So, I'd rather be pastoral about the present soggy state of the church and use some of those great Kiwi-isms I've learned like “No worries, mate,” or my personal favorite, “She'll be right.” And then tell a joke or two and let this Sunday pass and hope Glynn is here to preach on it next year.

My problem is that after a quarter of a century of trying to explain the mystery of the Trinity and it's attempt to say who God is, I now see that it's a dangerous doctrine of God. It is life threatening. So, it's no joking matter. It can't be ignored. So, here am I… damn it. You may be thinking, yeah, it's boring and incomprehensible, and of no apparent relevance to my life, but how is it dangerous?

The first problem the Nicene Creed has is it's a creed. Creeds by definition are the ultimate barrier to our being an inclusive community. Creeds are the product of debate. Who is Jesus? Human or Divine? If divine, is he the same as God? If not, how is he different? If so, how is he the same? Is there still only one God? If human, how can Jesus also be divine? If he is one with God how do he and God act in the world today? These were all hotly debated questions that would have been common on the 4th century's equivalent of talk back radio, like such modern controversies as whether or not Rodney Hide can dance or whether or not exotic trees should be replaced with natives on Queen Street. In 325 AD, the winners of the debate were declared and their positions were summed up in the Church's creed. That was supposed to end the conflict. It was an attempt to unify the church. That hope was not realized. What it actually did was divide the faithful into insiders and outsiders. The orthodox and the heretic. The Nicene Creed became a line in the sand to intimidate our personal authority to explore our spirituality and it has been used historically and in the present in very destructive ways. Considering the position I'm taking this morning, we thankfully don't burn people at the stake to defend it… anymore. But we have and a lot worse.

The second problem with the endlessly repeating of creeds is they have shaped our thinking and our living to the point where we cannot think of God outside the forms they affirm or the boxes they create. They have permeated our land, and shaped our values. Ultimately they have shaped our religion.

What's wrong with that you might reasonably ask? Because the God this creed has given us killed his son, damns disbelievers, subordinates women, blessed the bloody Crusades of the past and blesses the Iraq war in the present, brings his wrath on gays and lesbians, justifies literal and spiritual slavery, under girds racism, encourages subjugation of the environment and according to conservative Christians in the paper this week endorses smacking our kids.

The third problem is not what the creeds contain but what they don't. Ultimately every creed is limited. No matter how it is massaged it can not be a full statement of faith. They are only reactions to arguments. All the undebated issues have been left out. There is no mention of love, or living out the Christian life, or living in the realm of God in the here and now, or experiencing the divine in the world or in ourselves.

Over the centuries and in particular, recently, we have tried to modify the Creed to make it more palatable. The one we use at St Matthew's is an example. But these efforts are like trying to damn up Niagara Falls with sandbags. We cannot protect ourselves from this God with sandbags. Tinkering with the creed won't do it. Making the language less sacrificial, less masculine, more inclusive won't hold it back. We must seek higher ground.

Perhaps, at this point in your thinking I am not alone in the flooded church. Perhaps now we can say, “Here are we.” To test that I would ask you to return to that frozen image in the village and hit the play button. The waters are continuing to rise. Yet, this creed and the definitions that arise from it are so powerfully present in our emotions, that even when we know it to be a destructive document killing our souls we have trouble leaving. It taunts our fears saying we will be lost without it. We must stay where we are. Do we listen to it and climb to the roof and pray that God will save us or make a run for higher ground?

For the sake of argument, let's say our desire to survive wins out and we leave the village and head for the distant mountains. Taking our memories but little else. We discover that it was not the village that unifies us, but our pilgrimage. We begin to understand that we cannot define God. If we believe anything in common it is that we cannot say “God IS anything.” We can only experience God and describe that. When we do, that is a very personal experience that may help us form a personal creed, but not a corporate one.

In our common journey, we may discover that God is not love, but love itself. God is not life, but life itself. God is not a being, but being itself. That insight begins to give Jesus new influence in our lives not as a deity but as a man through whom we experience the holy. That experience opens our eyes to the holiness in one another and in ourselves, drastically altering how we relate to one another and to ourselves. Judgment evaporates. Barriers dissolve. Hope flourishes. The world is enlivened and sanctified. We rejoice at the end of the day's journey for the freedom and sense of liberation we feel. Our joy becomes infectious and others not from our village join our little ragtag army of refugees. We enter neighboring villages and find kindred spirits who call themselves Humanists, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews. And together we express relief that the God wrapped up in the Trinity was always too small. We conclude in prayerful silence humbled before the holy of which we now know we are a part. Thankful that we can now say, “Here are we,” creedless, but alive. Creedless but not Godless.

1 The preacher is indebted to Katherin Ford whose metaphors and ideas inspired this sermon. A New Christianity for a New World, John Shelby Spong, HarperCollins: 2001, pp 243-266.