Trinity Sunday and the Cosmic Dance (The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith)

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day when theologians have traditionally dragged out every $5 word they've ever dreamed up, leaving us wondering what the hell they're talking about. Truth is, they don't know what they're talking about either. If you have any doubt about this, listen to how one theologian explains the Trinity:
In this Trinity of Persons, the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent.
So, now that we've cleared that up, let's move on, shall we?
Back in an earlier time, before everything became so wordy and obscure, the Greeks used a simple but beautiful word to describe what's going on here. Perichoresis. Dancing around. God is like three persons caught up in one big joyful dance. Their life and work are bound together. They are what they are only in relationship to each other. Perichoresis. A joyful dance.
In Jesus, the second person of that Trinity, you and I are brought into the dance, into the relationship. Perichoresis. It says as much about us as it does about Ultimate Reality.
Trudy the bag lady understands this great mystery.
She is a character in a play from the 80s by Jane Wagner and Lily Tomlin called
the Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.
Trudy is crazy. Much of the time she's waiting on a street corner for her friends from outer space to show up. One night, she looks up at the stars, and she is in awe. She has what we would call a religious experience. She realizes how vast and glorious the universe is, and perhaps even more importantly, that she, in some small way, is a part of it all. About that moment she says:
...as usual,
I felt in awe.
And then I felt even deeper in awe at this capacity we have to be in awe about something.
Then I became even more awestruck
at the thought that I was,
in some small way,
a part of that which I was in awe about.
And this feeling went on
and on
and on...
My space chums got a word for it: "awe infinitum."
"Suddenly I burst into song: 'Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee...'
And I felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I decided I would set

time
aside each day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.
Trudy is in awe realizing she, seemingly so small and insignificant, is connected to something big and grand.
This is what the mystery of the Trinity is getting at: that we are not rugged individualists charting our own separate ways through life. No, like the One in whose image we are created, we are in relationship, connected, caught up, like Trudy the bag lady, in a joyful cosmic dance.
What Trudy describes happened in a different way to the great Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. After several years in the monastery, he had come to think of himself as some kind of spiritual rock star, someone set apart from other mortals, in a different jet stream from the rest of us.
And then one day, on a trip to downtown Louisville to see the dentist, as he waited on the corner, he was overwhelmed looking around him at all the passersby. And he realized that he was not separate from them at all, that he was a part of them and they of him. He realized he was connected. It was a joyful revelation, and he cried out,
I thank you God that I am like all the rest. That I am a human being among other human beings. It is a glorious destiny to be member of the human race.
A moment of being caught up in the dance. Perichoresis.
Where did we Westerners ever get this idea that we are each rugged individualists, locked in competition with each other for things and for status and for love and recognition. How did we get so mixed up about this, when the reality is that we, like the God in whose image we were created, are all wrapped up in each other.
The hands of other people welcome us from our mother's womb into this world at birth, and they feed and bathe us and teach us to walk. Other people teach us to speak, to hold a pencil, to read, to solve an equation in algebra, to learn the skills for a job. Other people awaken our bodies to exquisite joy, care for us when we are sick, and hold us close in times of sadness and struggle. And one day the hands of others will lower us back into the earth.
Like the one in whose image we are made, we are at our core, all wrapped up in each other, all caught up in the great cosmic dance. Perichoresis. It's what we celebrate on this feast of the Holy Trinity.
It's what we remember every time we come to this table. You may be Bill and Melinda Gates or you may be homeless, Mother Theresa or Kim Kardashian, Albert Einstein or a high school dropout. You could even be a Republican. When we come to this table, none of this stuff matters. What does matter is what lies much deeper, that all of us are connected, caught up in the same joyful cosmic dance.

Here we celebrate what Trudy the bag lady and Thomas Merton both understood, that despite our apparent separations, despite the boundaries erected between us by our culture, we though many, are one—just like the one who made us.
It's time for some awe-robics. 

The Centurion (The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith)

Today's gospel includes an unlikely cast of characters who somehow manage to find themselves working with Jesus to bring about a healing.
At the center of the story is the centurion, a commanding officer in the Roman army that Caesar used to keep the Jews under his thumb. Later, this very same Roman empire will order the execution of Jesus.
Jesus, a devout Jew, has a number of reasons to resist helping this centurion. From the perspective of many of Jesus' fellow Jews, this centurion represents everything that is wrong about the world. Even to enter his house could make a devout Jew unclean.
But this centurion is not your stereotypical Roman officer, which is where the story starts to get interesting.
For one thing, he loves the Jewish people, a people who were different than he was. He had true feelings of affection for these people against whom the rest of the world was prejudiced.
But there's more: He also he has feelings of compassion, not merely for his own children or family, but for one of his slaves, someone considered at the time as a piece of his personal property. In fact, the original Greek suggests that this slave was not merely “of value” to him as our translation says, but rather was very dear, precious, to him.
During our story-telling sessions a few weeks ago, we asked what is keeping you awake at night; this is what's keeping him awake--that this slave, very dear to him, is near death.
He wants Jesus, a known healer in the region, to cure his slave.
But he doesn't feel comfortable going directly to Jesus. He is, after all, part of the hated Roman army, and Jesus is, after all, a Jew. So he sends his Jewish friends to speak to Jesus on his behalf.
Though they hate the Romans occupying their land, these Jews are happy to put in a good word for their friend. “He loves our people,” they tell Jesus. “Even though he's not a Jew, he built our synagogue.”
You know how the story ends. These Jews and this centurion, an unlikely cast of characters, work with Jesus to bring healing to the slave.
I wonder if this story is holding up a mirror to us here at St. John's. Like the characters in today's Gospel, we, too, are an unlikely cast of characters, working with Jesus, to bring healing.
I saw this the other evening in the prayer vigil for immigration reform that
Lauren Dietrich-Chavez organized. There we were in a circle outside Senator Feinstein's office: Anglos and Latinos, from Leah Forbes to idealistic young college students to baby Elena Claire, many straight people and the rest of us as queer as three dollar bills--all of us catching up on the latest developments in the law now working its way through Congress, sharing each others stories, and reflecting on the scripture that says that though we are many, we form one body. We were in that moment an unlikely cast of characters working with Jesus to bring healing to the many families that have been torn apart by our nation's immigration system.
The same thing happens in a slightly different way every Saturday morning when Jean gets up way before the crack of dawn so she can get here by 5am to open the church and start setting up for the Julian Pantry.
Eventually an unlikely cast of volunteers begins to arrive from around the neighborhood, from Noe Valley and other parts of the City. They unload the truck delivering the food, they stock the tables, and they share a breakfast, a time for check-in, and a brief reflection. Then they open the doors to welcome the folks standing in line outside.
Between 2- and 3-hundred people come through our doors each week to receive the free fresh veggies and fruits and breads provided through the Julian Pantry.
And for all the challenges of making something like this work smoothly, and there are many, Jean and her crew keep at it week after week. An unlikely cast of characters, working with Jesus, to bring healing—this time in the form of food in these tough economic times--to people in our neighborhood and the City.
Maybe you've experienced some of this healing in your own life through this parish family. Suddenly, as you're making your way to sobriety, or mourning the loss of the person you love the most, or maybe just trying to make sense of your life, to figure out what is really important—suddenly you find yourself in the midst of this unlikely cast of characters who work with Jesus. And somewhere in the various sacraments and songs, the coffee and munchies after mass, the friendships and support of this community, you find yourself slowly beginning to heal, to get back into the groove. Maybe you've experienced a bit of this healing yourself.
In many ways we in this parish are like the unlikely cast of characters in today's Gospel as we gather week after week around this table: unlikely people— ourselves often in need of healing—who work with each other and with Jesus to bring that same healing in some small way to this broken world around us.