Sermon for Trinity Sunday Year B 2012 How Do We Know?

Transcription

1 Sermon for Trinity Sunday Year B 2012 How Do We Know? What did you think of that experience of God that Isaiah had? Quite something, don t you think? And it wasn t even the 60 s! A little more than 12 years ago, I had a very strange experience. At the time, I was managing my father s physical therapy practice on Staten Island. It was a Friday morning and I was driving to work from Bayonne. I was traveling in the extreme right hand lane of a four-lane main street. A van in the adjacent lane to me was stopped, waiting to make a left turn. As I passed the van, my view of anything beyond the van was blocked and so I couldn t and didn t see the car that was making a left turn across my lane into the strip mall that I was to my right. As I was passing legally in the right hand lane past the van, suddenly a car was right before me. As I slammed on my brakes, I was sure that I was about to be in a major collision. The car making the turn lost some control and ended up turned around on the sidewalk. Miraculously on that very busy, congested street no one was hurt and our cars did not collide. At the time and to this day it seemed as if we passed through one another. Of course I know that didn t happen but I can t explain to you how or why we didn t collide or how and why the other car that lost some control didn t hit at least one of the many pedestrians walking on the busy sidewalk or how and why I wasn t hit by a car behind me. I was so shaken by this narrow escape, I had to pull into the nearby parking lot and call my husband to tell him what had happened. After a bit, I felt calm enough to drive the rest of the way to work. About a half-hour after I arrived at work, I received the news that my brother Paul had died about an hour before in York, Pennsylvania where he had been hospitalized for a time for pneumonia. Its not good theology and its not entirely rational but I remember thinking and knowing to my core By the grace of God, somehow my brother saved my life that day. Don t ask me to explain it I had the overwhelming sense of knowing that I had experienced a divine intervention. Truth, author Madeline L Engle once wrote, is what is true, and its not necessarily factual. Truth and fact, she said, are not the same thing. 1

2 Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but goes through and beyond facts. This is something that is very difficult for some people to understand... Well, just ask Nicodemus! In his conversation with Jesus, Nicodemus was certainly struggling with the problem of knowing and telling the difference between truth and fact. How is it that we know anything? And, perhaps most importantly for us this morning, how is it that we know God? How do we know we know God? When you think of knowing God, what comes to mind? Knowing the bible? Daily prayer? Having a worship experience? How is it that we know God? Do we know about the world through science, religion, or both? These seem important questions to contemplate on the Sunday that we are invited to be in awe and wonder and worship the mystery of our triune God. The father of Methodism and the author of many of our hymns, John Wesley, once said, Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I shall show you a man that can comprehend the Triune God. Episcopal theologian Robert Farrar Capon put it this way when he said that when human beings try to describe God we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. It seems we simply do not have the equipment to understand something so utterly beyond us and yet That has never stopped us from trying and that has never stopped God from trying either! The prophet Isaiah tried as we just heard: I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus tells him that if he wants to know God he needs to look at the Son of Man and the Cross. 2

3 Believers throughout the centuries have tried to describe God, but very few have been satisfied or even successful with their descriptions. They and we cannot paint a true portrait of God, because as the created ones we cannot capture our creator any better than a worm can teach anatomy or oysters can do pliés. Perhaps it would be easier for everyone if God were a bit easier to peg down, if God could be put in a box, but that s not what is revealed in scripture. Because God resists our attempts to create God in our image. No, scripture tells us we are created in the image of God. Perhaps the best any of us has ever been able to do is to describe what the experience of God is like how it sounds, how it feels, what it reminds us of. And this is significant because knowledge (according to the dictionary) is the condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. It seems knowledge is more than knowing facts. To know is to be acquainted with, even intimate with, to be aware of by experience to know is to be in relationship with. So it seems that the best any of us has ever been able to do is simply to confess what it is like when we are in the presence of God, when we are in relationship with God. And yet, as Barbara Brown Taylor points out (in a wonderful sermon entitled Three Hands Clapping ), it is rarely the same experience twice in a row: Some days God comes as a judge, walking through our lives wearing white gloves and exposing all the messes we have made. Other days God comes as a shepherd, fending off our enemies and feeding us by hand. Some days God comes as a whirlwindnwho blows all our certainties away. Other days God comes as a brooding hen who hides us in the shelter of her wings. Some days God comes as a dazzling monarch and other days as a silent servant. If we were to name all the ways God comes to us, the list would go on forever: God the teacher, the challenger, the helper, the stranger; God the lover, the adversary, [God] the yes, [and God] the no. (from Home By Another Way, p. 156) Or perhaps even God the divine intervener in potential car accidents. 3

4 In our readings this morning, God is both transcendent and infinite, mysterious, and beyond human knowing. And yet, we can never say or imply that God is unknowable. Rather, God is immanent, not only high and lifted up but near and dear to every person. The first words of the Lord's Prayer capture this perfectly, Our Father, who art in heaven. Jesus tells us that if you want to know what God is like, He is like a loving Father. Paul says the same thing when he writes to the Romans. We should not relate to God as a slave who fears a master, but rather as a child in relationship with a loving, protective parent: "Abba, Father" As many people have observed that Abba is the Aramaic word for something like "Papa." The word is used only three times in the New Testament, and it conveys a shocking sense of intimacy. It's a word that little children first learning to speak use for their father, and that Jesus himself used to speak to God. What is God like? Jesus says that God is like an earthly Father who does anything to bequeath all that is best to his children. God is like a loving Father who embraces us and welcomes us home. God is strong, affectionate, protective, impeccably safe, and unconditionally loving. Jesus tells us that God desires not to condemn us but to save us God is mercy and steadfast love. In his work of redemption Jesus not only reconciles us to this loving, merciful God; in his work of revelation Jesus the Christ shows us what this God is like: He who has seen me has seen the Father" Jesus tells his disciples. (John 14:9) The Eastern Orthodox communion confesses or emphasizes that God is transcendent, beyond human definition and comprehension, and yet at the same time truly immanent always present. (Remember what Paul tells the Athenians? God is the One in whom we live and breath and have our being.) In his book Encountering the Mystery; Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today (2008), the Ecumenical Patriach Bartholomew I, summarizes this well: God [is] unknowable and yet [is] profoundly known; God [is] invisible and yet [is] personally accessible; God [is] distant and yet [is] intensely present. The infinite God thus becomes truly intimate in relating to the world. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. When we experience God in contradictory ways, that is our problem, not God s. We cannot solve it. We can, however, as Jesus invited Nicodemus and all who seek God 4

5 to surrender and open ourselves up to what is non-rational to God whose freedom and creativity embraces us but also dazzles and boggles our minds. Perhaps one thing we learn from the example of Nicodemus is this: There is no shame in not knowing. The shame lies in not finding out. And again from Madeline L Engle: Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it. Neither do children. But as we grow up and we are hurt, we learn not to trust. How do we know God? We begin by looking to Jesus and listening to him. Through him we can know God. God is revealed in the Word and in the meal shared by all the seeking saints though out the ages yes, even in this time and this place. This triune God made know through scripture and the prophets, through the cross and the Gospel, through the font and the table This Holy God is the one who welcomes us into this holy sacred relationship and life and then sends us out to share this with the world. Perhaps it would be a lot easier for everyone as I said earlier if we had a God who was a bit easier to peg down, if we could just have God in a box and we could say, there there is God! Thanks be to God, that is not the case. Instead we have a Triune God who is impossible to explain and yet who reveals God s self in community, in wine and bread and in water In signs and wonders and in interventions of all kinds. Don t ask me to explain it. I can t. But I confess the truth that the Spirit bears witness within my spirit and yours that you and I are reborn children of God held in a love that will not let us go! 5