Receiving His Riches - Trinity Sunday, Year A
Yesterday, my parish held our "listening event." That's a gathering during which we answered a questionnaire about ourselves and our hopes and dreams for the Diocese of Long Island. We're about to call a new bishop here, and this information will help the nominating committee with their work. The last question on the form was the most important to me. "If you could ask a potential bishop one question, what would it be?" I answered:
"Who is Jesus to you?"
I can always tell by the way a person answers this question whether they're talking about someone they've heard about, or Someone They Know.
You know that phrase, "What goes around comes around?" Well, it usually works out that way, and as I prepared to write about the Trinity this week, my own question came back to bite right on the fanny. I've written some pretty cool stuff (if I say so myself) about the nature of the Trinity, and, God bless his soul, one of the dearly departed members of my parish asked me when I was interviewed for my current position to explain to the gathered calling committee and vestry (I met them all at once.) why I thought the doctrine of the Trinity was important. I'm told that my answer to that question really helped me get this call.
But I can tell you for sure that all I've ever written, and certainly that answer I gave almost 12 years ago would have failed my "Who is Jesus?" test.
As I considered what to write, I remembered the words from Revelation, "And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death." (Rev. 12:10-11) At that, I started to remember all that God has done for me, and how I might express that in terms of the Trinity.
And then I remembered some words from a teacher named Graham Cooke, "What God has done for you isn't your testimony, it's your history." And I knew that a lot of what I'd learned about witnessing wasn't going to get it, either.
What overcomes the "accuser of the brethren" isn't my history.
And it isn't what I know about Jesus, or the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
It is my word of my testimony about who They are to me. (Boy, am I sorry I wrote that answer down...)
I'm not really sorry, but I am a bit nervous about talking about the Trinity because it's not something I'm used to doing, and it's like trying to tell everyone about the woman you've just fallen in love with. You know the words will fail to capture the depth of feeling, and you'll probably wind up sounding like a bad, corny poet. Still, there's nothing left but to try. (It may not be "theologically accurate." I sometimes can't tell which of the Three I'm really talking about!)
Okay, Jeff, who is the Father to you?
Let me begin by citing His Word. Here is what David had to say, "The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." (Psalm 18:2) Now, those are David's words, but they sum it up pretty well. In the Father, I find myself standing on solid ground when everything around me is shifting. When I rest in Him, I feel infinitely small and yet I feel as though I encompass everything, too. Paul described himself this way, "as having nothing, and yet possessing everything." (2 Cor. 6:10) When I rest in Him, I know what David means when he speaks of finding safety "in the shadow of His wings." I am utterly safe in a way that I have longed to be for as long as I can remember.
But that isn't the whole of it. In the Father I also experience my God of unimaginable power and glory and might and terrible majesty. It is a good thing that His Presence makes me safe, because if it didn't I would die of fear, beholding Him and His Glory. I know why mountains crumble before Him as my heart cries "Holy! Holy!"
And finally (not because this exhausts the Father, but because just writing this is exhausting me) I know as I weep before Him that this terrible power is manifest in His Mercy, His Kindness. Whatever remains hidden in darkness within me turns to the light as I contemplate that Goodness. As Paul puts it, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4) God doesn't want my fear to bring me to Him, but rather, He desires that I come because of His Kindness. This fierce, jealous love He has for us, for me, is expressed through His costly Kindness.
And I suppose this, His costly Love, makes a good segue into the next question, "Okay, Jeff, so who IS Jesus to you?"
Savior?
Lover?
Lord?
Yes, all of those, but all of those words have been so misused that none of them is sufficiently untarnished to describe my Jesus.
I laugh with Him. I cry with Him. I pray with Him (not just to Him). I dance for Him, I dance with Him. I sing to Him, He sings over me. His love inspires, me. It crushes me. He grinds the shards to dust, wets them with His tears, and remakes me in His image. He makes me brave when I have no courage (truth be told, I'm pretty much a scaredy-cat). He gives me the oil of gladness instead of mourning. He pours Himself out over me as protection and shield, and He pours Himself into me as food and water without which I would shrivel and die. He gathers, he treasures my tears (Ps. 56:8) and He lifts up my head when I am cast down. He has taught me what true intimacy is.
Jesus went into hell after me. When I thought myself so far from His Presence that there was no way back, He was already in the mire with me, leading me out. I really didn't want to see Him in those days, because it breaks my heart to know that he came into those awful places with me, but He did, and I know it. He rescued me, and He continues to be the only source of my salvation.
Jesus is more than a model after which I strive. He is the giver of all that I need so that I can be and do what He needs in the world. And this might be the time when I turn to the third question. "So, then, Jeff, who is the Spirit? To you?"
Fire.
From the time I first read Jeremiah's words, "If I say, I will not mention him,or speak any more in his name,there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones,and I am weary with holding it in,and I cannot," I knew exactly what he was talking about. The Spirit is the One through whom God's transforming power manifests itself in me. Sometimes He feels like pressure. Sometimes like a burning, sometimes like a buried scream. Last Sunday, we read about Jesus crying out in the Temple (John 7) and the Greek word for crying out suggests a harsh, hoarse croak of a cry. I know that sound inside me. I think my congregation's glad I try to keep it to myself.
But that's not all either. Just as God's Might is manifest in me through the Spirit, so also is His Mercy. The Spirit is the vehicle by which the Father pours out His soothing balm over my soul when I am tortured by my own sin, or when I am consumed by His Compassion for others. The Spirit seems to suffer in my words from a certain "instrumentality." What a mistake, to describe one of the Persons of the Trinity as a means by which the Other Persons work! And yet, that is precisely what I mean, because it is God's humility that makes it possible to be both source and vehicle. The Spirit makes it a joy for me to be a vehicle as well, makes self-emptying a joy and not a reduction of who I am. "...For they loved not their own lives, even unto death."
The accuser of the brethren will be cast down. Cast down by the Blood of the Lamb and the words of your testimony. When you can tell others who Jesus is to you, you will become an instrument of that wonderful victory. If you can't yet answer that question as one who knows, rather than knows about, don't be concerned. When Jesus asked His disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter's answer, Jesus says, didn't come from within him. "And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 16:17) You and I aren't able to know this, to see it, to dance in this truth apart from the Father's disclosure. If you want to know Him, to know Jesus, to know the Spirit rather than know about them, so that you can have a testimony too, you only have to do one thing.
Ask.
Jeff K.