Trinity Sunday
I'd like to draw to your attention something taking place under the auspices of our Cathedral of the Incarnation -- a new initiative called the Center for Spiritual Imagination. I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but draw your eye again to their Tuesday evening contemplative prayer and Wednesday evening (8pm) broadcast of a class/talk in Christian spirituality. Both are available here, on their web site, here.
It may seem odd to talk of contemplation amid a week of much action taken by many people -- and, I do not mean that a retreat from the world and its ills is what is advised by 'Christian Spirituality.' But, an engaged activism in the world - working for its betterment and the revealing of the Kingdom of God in our midst - grows best when it is grounded in the fruitful soil of some form of contemplative practice... the object of all of which practice is that sense of increasing union with God that is the source of all right action, joy, and the energy to keep on going when the way toward peace and justice is not clear. Action *and* contemplation, rather than "or" seems to be the Christian spiritual dialogue.
This Sunday, the first after Pentecost - first of this long green, growing/becoming season of the Church's sense of Time - is referred to as 'Trinity'.
I mean, why not? We just added the Holy Spirit into the Christian understanding last week, with the gifts of flame and wind to the disciples. The word of divine life being understood by each person in words they could understand.
So, here they all are, together: Origin/Ground of Being; Word Incarnate and Template for our lives; Enlivening and Transforming Power (that's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of course...). It all adds up to 'God'... who is and remains a mystery. Father, Son, and Spirit are not the 'names' of God (certainly not in the ancient sense, where our ancestors in the faith would not pronounce the name of God, and some still will not...); they name a relationship. Part of the Christian revelation is that God-as-Mystery-Becoming is revealed to our history and our senses - as phenomena - in more than one way. Revelation is constant. And, these ways of revelation all relate to one another, in a grand dance.
God is revealing God's self to us, still. Daily. We are part of this relational revealing -- in our own relations, in our loving, in our struggle. This Spirit that lives in and with us is *for* us and for our lives, and "...intercedes in us with sighs too deep for words..." when we do not have our own words to align ourselves with God's purposes in the world. When we do not know how to '...pray as we ought.'
What is "right action" these days? How shall we be in "right relationship" (to name an ancient Christian understanding of social contracts) with one another and God in a time of great unrest and transformation? How shall we know when we are on the right path?
As Jesus says, elsewhere in Matthew's Gospel (ch. 7):
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
'By their fruits will you know them,' as the King James Version has it. No photo-op holding a Bible will be able to transform rotten fruit into healthy fruit. Or transform an empty gesture into a prayerful one. This is -- literally, as the kids say -- what 'taking of the Lord's name in vain' actually means. It is what 'blasphemy' actually is.
Paul writes (his letter, ch. 5, to the little community in the province of Galatia) that the Spirit breathing in and for us transforms us, letting us bear fruit for the life of the world and for our own lives.
"...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things."
Against these things, there is no law.
Think on this, as we debate what our laws do say, what we need to change in laws and in ourselves, what can be legislated and what can not, and what sea-change - legal and otherwise - we are amidst.
May the Divine Spirit dwell richly in you, perceived as close as your own breath, that you may bear good fruit from the good tree, fruit for the life of the world. And, remember, as Jesus says: "I am with you always, even to the end of the Age." Amen.