July 17 What Do Episcopalians Believe about Scripture?
Presenter: The Rev. Dr. Joyce Beaulieu
July 24 What Do Episcopalians Believe About God?
Presenter: The Rev. Canon Johnnie Ross
July 31 How Does Our Liturgy Inform our Beliefs?
Presenter: The Rev. Elise Johnstone
We will meet at Azur Restaurant, on the patio, at 6:30, and enjoy age-appropriate beverages and a fun evening of discussion!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Saturday, June 2, 2007
The Music of the Trinity
Trinity Sunday Year C
St Andrews Lexington
It is somewhat of a joke that seminarians are always asked to preach on Trinity Sunday, which is today, with the idea that they will be taxed to study up and present an exposition about the nature of the Trinity as a theological concept.
Well, somehow I escaped this fate as a seminarian and as a deacon, so here I am today as a priest ordained for 70 days, preaching on my first Trinity Sunday. And the joke is on me still, because, having just moved back to Lexington and waiting to have a new office at St. Augustine’s chapel on the UK campus, I moved all my professional books there. But since there is no office for me yet, the books are still in their 20 boxes. So much for theological study.
So, I think this is the good news, that Trinity Sunday will have to preached by me today with nothing more than my own personal opinions and experiences with how our God is Trinitarian.
Perhaps for us all, to keep this sermon down to earth even more, and perhaps shorter as result, it is the case for me that I never even gave the thought of God as Trinitarian much time until an encounter about 7 years ago. I was stuck in the Altanta airport waiting for the last plane to Lexington, when I saw a very good friend of mine, also a professor at the UK medical center with whom I did research and teaching. As it was midnight, and late night often opens up conversation, and we turned to ideas of God and faith. Nancy, my friend, is Jewish and she and I talked about many faith issues, including why Christians condemned homosexuality, which I was more than eager to talk about. But she really surprised me with a question about why we worshiped three gods.
That one caught me off guard.
I had never thought of it from her viewpoint. That from on outside viewpoint, the concept of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit was three different persons of God, separate individuals, that were each worshiped. From a Jewish and, I also suspect although I have not had this conversation personally, from an Islamic perspective, worshiping the One True God, Yahweh or Allah, must seem compromised when Christians talk about Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. When we talk of the Triune God and repeat the words of our faith in this triune God every Sunday.
I was taught in seminary that theology was faith seeking understanding. So if we do some theology about the Trinity this morning, what understanding do we normal human beings, not theologians or philosophers, have of the Trinity?
I have seen many preachers try to explain how God is three and one using some interesting metaphors.
One priest tried to juggle three balls. One talked about water being able to be solid, liquid, and gas. Some theologians speak of three separate personalities that have a relationship; or three states of being of one divinity equally shared.
None of this means a lot to me, and perhaps not to you either.
What I relate to is how I experience God in my life. Now this kind of theology is not acceptable by theological standards—
It is too personal, subject to the vicissitudes of my personality, my neuroses,
It’s not enough on my own, with my own misinterpretations of experience, my projections, my ego, and a lot of other psychological problems.
But when it comes down to faith, if I can’t experience God first hand, and have faith that God is my beginning and end, what can I believe.
I encourage each of us to contemplate how we experience God in all of God’s divinity, as limited as we are as humans.
So in my limited humanness, I can give some tentative words to describe my own personal metaphor for God, and it is something like music.
Maybe like singers. My sisters and I used to sing duets. Now if you know anything about singing, you know that people who are related often have voices that are very alike and blend nicely. My sister and I were once singing at a state park for an ecumenical church service. Some older man came up to us afterwards and told us we sounded just like the Andrews sisters. We smiled and thanked him. Later in the car, we had to ask our dad who the Andrews sisters were.
So, blending like singers seem to speak to me, but it is in the final analysis too simple.
So how about a symphony, where the French horn and strings play back and forth, flute blends in more complexity with the other woodwinds, percussion and brass. Where Mozart could provide us with ethereal qualities that seem like the creation itself interplaying with the incarnation and the guiding light of the Holy Spirit.
But a symphony is regularity and predictability, following a script, keeping to the score. If God is a symphony of Creator, Savior, and Sustainer, this metaphor misses in the regulated nature of movement and relationship.
Maybe the music is more spontaneous, improvisational, where the instruments come together and apart, go solo, then in a duet, then in a trio, then each following its own melody, then maybe reprising the main theme, then going solo again. That sounds more like jazz to me.
If God is music, then jazz is a more free-flowing, give and take between Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, acting together toward some final note, along some theme, but each with its own character in the same rhythm. If God is like jazz, then we see ourselves as coming into the theme, giving our humanity into the divine scheme, hoping we understand what the main theme is, trying to keep in a key that means something in the grand scheme of creation.
This music is creativity to the nth degree, it is open to its surroundings and the feelings of the players. This music creates and responds to creation itself. God the Creator sets it going, the Redeener accompanies and keeps it, the Holy Spirit gives energy and drive in the music of co-creation, redemption, and preservation.
We thank God in some prayer book prayers for our creation, redemption and preservation. We acknowledge the jazz music of God in our lives.
How we respond to God’s music is our choice. How we experience this music is dependent on how close we listen, to tap the foot of our heart, sing along with the theme as it weaves in and out; and even as we try we cannot predict where this music will go and how we will be swept along with it.
God’s music sometimes crescendos loud and we feel like we are in the same room where the music is coming from;
At other times, God is a whisper, a low thrum that we must be very still to hear.
Sometimes, God’s music may sound like Duke Ellington’s big band, loud and brash and bluesy. To some of us, it is more like Ella singing scat, or Carmen McRae, smooth and wild at the same time.
And so we hear God the way God best reaches us, in our own jazz, so that we can hear and be part of the creation.
We also hear in community, the voices and sounds of God, creating, redeeming, and sustaining us and those who we accompany on the faith journey. We come together in faith, often to share our stories of how God’s music fills our lives. Sometimes we come when we can’t hear God’s music at all, holding firm to the love that you know is present in all our relationships through divine mercy. We come to proclaim what we hear, and to be comforted in times when we can’t hear.
My metaphor of the God as three in one, in their jazz won’t speak to everyone today. But what is more important, I hope I have helped you to begin to make your own connections in whatever way helps you, with God who is at once both loving creator, redeemer of our world and sustaining spirit of love and care among us.
I pray that each of us takes time to meditate on God’s immensity, complexity, beauty and overwhelming care for us and our world.
I pray that we take this message into the world, which needs so much care, to be the bearers of the truth of God’s presence and love for us. And I hope we sing a little along the way, echoing back to God the music of creation, the symphony of redemption through the Word made flesh, and in harmony with the spirit that guides and sustains us.
St Andrews Lexington
It is somewhat of a joke that seminarians are always asked to preach on Trinity Sunday, which is today, with the idea that they will be taxed to study up and present an exposition about the nature of the Trinity as a theological concept.
Well, somehow I escaped this fate as a seminarian and as a deacon, so here I am today as a priest ordained for 70 days, preaching on my first Trinity Sunday. And the joke is on me still, because, having just moved back to Lexington and waiting to have a new office at St. Augustine’s chapel on the UK campus, I moved all my professional books there. But since there is no office for me yet, the books are still in their 20 boxes. So much for theological study.
So, I think this is the good news, that Trinity Sunday will have to preached by me today with nothing more than my own personal opinions and experiences with how our God is Trinitarian.
Perhaps for us all, to keep this sermon down to earth even more, and perhaps shorter as result, it is the case for me that I never even gave the thought of God as Trinitarian much time until an encounter about 7 years ago. I was stuck in the Altanta airport waiting for the last plane to Lexington, when I saw a very good friend of mine, also a professor at the UK medical center with whom I did research and teaching. As it was midnight, and late night often opens up conversation, and we turned to ideas of God and faith. Nancy, my friend, is Jewish and she and I talked about many faith issues, including why Christians condemned homosexuality, which I was more than eager to talk about. But she really surprised me with a question about why we worshiped three gods.
That one caught me off guard.
I had never thought of it from her viewpoint. That from on outside viewpoint, the concept of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit was three different persons of God, separate individuals, that were each worshiped. From a Jewish and, I also suspect although I have not had this conversation personally, from an Islamic perspective, worshiping the One True God, Yahweh or Allah, must seem compromised when Christians talk about Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. When we talk of the Triune God and repeat the words of our faith in this triune God every Sunday.
I was taught in seminary that theology was faith seeking understanding. So if we do some theology about the Trinity this morning, what understanding do we normal human beings, not theologians or philosophers, have of the Trinity?
I have seen many preachers try to explain how God is three and one using some interesting metaphors.
One priest tried to juggle three balls. One talked about water being able to be solid, liquid, and gas. Some theologians speak of three separate personalities that have a relationship; or three states of being of one divinity equally shared.
None of this means a lot to me, and perhaps not to you either.
What I relate to is how I experience God in my life. Now this kind of theology is not acceptable by theological standards—
It is too personal, subject to the vicissitudes of my personality, my neuroses,
It’s not enough on my own, with my own misinterpretations of experience, my projections, my ego, and a lot of other psychological problems.
But when it comes down to faith, if I can’t experience God first hand, and have faith that God is my beginning and end, what can I believe.
I encourage each of us to contemplate how we experience God in all of God’s divinity, as limited as we are as humans.
So in my limited humanness, I can give some tentative words to describe my own personal metaphor for God, and it is something like music.
Maybe like singers. My sisters and I used to sing duets. Now if you know anything about singing, you know that people who are related often have voices that are very alike and blend nicely. My sister and I were once singing at a state park for an ecumenical church service. Some older man came up to us afterwards and told us we sounded just like the Andrews sisters. We smiled and thanked him. Later in the car, we had to ask our dad who the Andrews sisters were.
So, blending like singers seem to speak to me, but it is in the final analysis too simple.
So how about a symphony, where the French horn and strings play back and forth, flute blends in more complexity with the other woodwinds, percussion and brass. Where Mozart could provide us with ethereal qualities that seem like the creation itself interplaying with the incarnation and the guiding light of the Holy Spirit.
But a symphony is regularity and predictability, following a script, keeping to the score. If God is a symphony of Creator, Savior, and Sustainer, this metaphor misses in the regulated nature of movement and relationship.
Maybe the music is more spontaneous, improvisational, where the instruments come together and apart, go solo, then in a duet, then in a trio, then each following its own melody, then maybe reprising the main theme, then going solo again. That sounds more like jazz to me.
If God is music, then jazz is a more free-flowing, give and take between Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, acting together toward some final note, along some theme, but each with its own character in the same rhythm. If God is like jazz, then we see ourselves as coming into the theme, giving our humanity into the divine scheme, hoping we understand what the main theme is, trying to keep in a key that means something in the grand scheme of creation.
This music is creativity to the nth degree, it is open to its surroundings and the feelings of the players. This music creates and responds to creation itself. God the Creator sets it going, the Redeener accompanies and keeps it, the Holy Spirit gives energy and drive in the music of co-creation, redemption, and preservation.
We thank God in some prayer book prayers for our creation, redemption and preservation. We acknowledge the jazz music of God in our lives.
How we respond to God’s music is our choice. How we experience this music is dependent on how close we listen, to tap the foot of our heart, sing along with the theme as it weaves in and out; and even as we try we cannot predict where this music will go and how we will be swept along with it.
God’s music sometimes crescendos loud and we feel like we are in the same room where the music is coming from;
At other times, God is a whisper, a low thrum that we must be very still to hear.
Sometimes, God’s music may sound like Duke Ellington’s big band, loud and brash and bluesy. To some of us, it is more like Ella singing scat, or Carmen McRae, smooth and wild at the same time.
And so we hear God the way God best reaches us, in our own jazz, so that we can hear and be part of the creation.
We also hear in community, the voices and sounds of God, creating, redeeming, and sustaining us and those who we accompany on the faith journey. We come together in faith, often to share our stories of how God’s music fills our lives. Sometimes we come when we can’t hear God’s music at all, holding firm to the love that you know is present in all our relationships through divine mercy. We come to proclaim what we hear, and to be comforted in times when we can’t hear.
My metaphor of the God as three in one, in their jazz won’t speak to everyone today. But what is more important, I hope I have helped you to begin to make your own connections in whatever way helps you, with God who is at once both loving creator, redeemer of our world and sustaining spirit of love and care among us.
I pray that each of us takes time to meditate on God’s immensity, complexity, beauty and overwhelming care for us and our world.
I pray that we take this message into the world, which needs so much care, to be the bearers of the truth of God’s presence and love for us. And I hope we sing a little along the way, echoing back to God the music of creation, the symphony of redemption through the Word made flesh, and in harmony with the spirit that guides and sustains us.
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