With our routines and world upended by the Shelter in Place Order that affects all of California, we are looking for ways to stay connected during a mandate to physically stay apart from one another. This is a continuation of our time together, even though we’re in different spaces.
Opening Hymn • Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty • Page 4, Chalice Hymnal
Opening Prayer
Lay Leader: Mary Beth Harrison
God of delight,
your Wisdom sings your Word
at the crossroads where humanity and divinity meet.
Invite us into your joyful being
where you know and are known
in each beginning,
in all sustenance,
in every redemption,
that we may manifest your unity
in the diverse ministries you entrust to us,
truly reflecting your triune majesty
in the faith that acts,
in the hope that does not disappoint,
and in the love that endures. Amen.
Special Music • Pass it On • Performed by Mary Jo Renner
Tithes and Offerings
Checks can be mailed to:
Grace Community Church
C/O Rene Horton
P.O. Box 368
Auberry, CA 93602
Holy Scripture • Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Lay Leader: Mary Beth Harrison
Children’s Time
Coloring Page Based on Matthew 28:20
Gospel Reading • Matthew 28:16-20
Lay Leader: Mary Beth Harrison
Church at Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer
All are invited to email me prayer requests for next week’s prayer, or to get in touch any time during the week. We are in the midst of an unprecidented global event, and I am available as a compassionate ear if you find you need to talk through what’s going on.
Hymn • All Creatures of Our God and King • Page 22, Chalice Hymnal
The Message
Sermon Transcript
Before we launch into Trinity Sunday, I would like to take a moment and invite you to do an inventory on how you’re doing this morning. Sometimes, I find, when there is so much happening in the world around us, it’s easier to focus outwardly. Too easy, since we have every major news outlet at our fingertips, and we can follow in between breaking news stories with social media by searching hashtags of the issues close to our hearts. We can get sucked into witnessing atrocities until we realize it’s 3 am and we had only grabbed our phone to make sure the alarm was set. I mean, that’s what I do. But then, while monitoring the news like reading just one more article like I think it will hit a factory reset on the world, I know I tend to avoid checking in with how I’m holding all of this information. Do you do this? If so, what are you feeling in this moment? Name it, if possible. Luckily, we’re all doing this from home so no one has to hear you if you say it out loud. For me, what comes up if I slow down enough is a lot of emotional fatigue. Can you locate where your body holds those feelings? Take a moment and inhale deeply, and as you exhale, imagine that the breath is carrying tiny fragments of whatever might be troubling you right now out of your body and into the air. These are challenging times, so if this visualization is helpful, repeat it whenever you find yourself overwhelmed.
Today is Trinity Sunday, a day that is kind of hard to preach on. There are some memes that float around Facebook every year on Trinity Sunday saying things like “preached on Trinity Sunday, didn’t commit heresy!” or “How not to commit heresy on trinity Sunday, show pictures of kittens instead.” Because you know what? It’s a hard pill to swallow, especially in our facts and evidence-based way of consuming and sharing information. How do we one moment demand fact checkers for political speeches, and the next we are affirming our belief in a triune God, a God who is Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit all in one? It doesn’t fit. As people have tried to make it make sense, they have run into entire truckloads of trouble. The council at Nicea in year 325 met to form a unified expression of faith, and as they hashed out the particulars of a new religion that had been carried near and far by evangelists, they ran into some ideas that didn’t work. Arius argued that Christ couldn’t be as age old as God and the spirit, because we have a birth narrative for him! How could he be part of the original trinity if he showed up so much later? It’s like when your favorite band gets a new frontman, and Arius was having none of that. Arius would be akin to the guy at the concert yelling “It’s Van Halen, not Van Hagar!” and insisted that Jesus, having come in later, was subordinate to God. Arius, and the school of thought that stemmed from him, Arianism, was expelled and Arianism was named a heresy.
The thing is, before this council many of those who were practicing what would become Christianity in those foundational years, the Trinity wasn’t something most people were familiar with. There was plenty to be worked out, and the council aimed to give some shape to a religion that was teeming at the edges with different expressions. So Arius and all of his writings were not to be considered part of the canon. What did come out of this council at Nicea was a unified document, a statement of belief which we still use today-The Nicene Creed. It was updated in year 381 when the ecumenical council met at Constantinople. It holds in place the trinitarian nature of God, rebuking the idea of Christ being less than God, begotten, not made. I’ll read it for you just for a reminder of this foundational statement of church history—feel free to recite it along with me if your were raised or have spent part of your faith journey in a tradition which honors this text more often than we do in the UCC,
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Our reading from Genesis gives beautiful poetry to the creation of the earth, God and Spirit co-creating, as the Spirit rushed over the formless void, the waters dark and deep, as God whispered light into the world. The opening chapter to the bible is rhythmic, it rocks us gently into being as we count our way through the first week. When God creates humans, ah! There is a slight hint at this complicated nature that would eventually become doctrine. There is the word “Us.” Rather than saying “Let me make humankind in my image” we have an almost hidden “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” A clue that there is a more complex being who is orchestrating creation. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we are given similar creation language, “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” God created the world using words, and Christ was there, as The Word, capital W, participating in this divine making, the holy spirit moving and swirling about.
Still, it isn’t an easy sell. In the Bible, the trinity comes up in only a few places. There is no indication that it would be such a hotly contested topic among the communities that would be trying to make sense of it, it simply is. It would have saved a lot of squabbling and excommunicating if there had been an easy explanation of how it works somewhere within our holiest texts, a sacred org chart showing how “God in three persons, blessed trinity” could possibly make sense, but there isn’t. This is for us to sit with, to mull over, to believe in because it is so unbelievable. The very fact of it’s unfathomablility reminds us that God is much bigger than our comprehension.
In our Matthew reading, the line “but some doubted” rings out. As in, The apostles who walked with Jesus this whole time, who learned from him, who witnessed his work, who believed in what he came to the Earth to bring, these very men doubted. Christ had been crucified, they saw that. He had risen, and the women had encountered him after discovering an empty tomb. They knew that. They had gone as they had been told to Galilee, and had climbed the mountain, presumably the same where the beatitudes had taken place. A place they knew. And they saw him, there in front of them, and some doubted. We are a skeptical group, us humans. Even with all of the evidence needed, there was doubt among Christ’s closest companions. Doubt didn’t keep Christ from commissioning them to go out and make disciples of all nations. Jesus, the risen Christ trusted them to carry out this sacred task, even with doubt nagging at them and bubbling around in their bellies. Christ commissioned them to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and didn’t draw the line at “but only you guys who aren’t big ‘ol doubters.”
Wading in our doubt, sitting with discomfort of unknowing, and recognizing the mystery and wonder of a God we can never classify in the ways we can classify flora and fauna keeps us humble, holds us in our place as people who belong to God, who know our limits and do not try to become God. We are people who hear that we are to be stewards, caregivers, and hold dominion over the earth, not domination. In this, and in the Great Commission, we are in relationship with God, co-working toward the continuing creation of the Earth, and trusting the grace at work in our world, even when we don’t fully understand it.
And finally, to circle back to our check-in at the beginning of this sermon, God rested. On the Seventh Day, after a busy week of, oh, you know, creating something major from nothing, as metaphorical or literal as you want to take it, God knew that there was something important in sitting back, breathing deeply, and recharging. If in this time you are finding yourself running low on energy, if the work for a just society that values all Black lives gets overwhelming, remember that God rested on the seventh day. Burned out, you cannot put the energy into co-creating a world where we recognize that each of our siblings on Earth was created in the image of God if you haven’t taken a minute to reconnect and marvel at the wonder of God’s creation. There is much to be done, and we cannot afford to burn out. Find your Sabbath, rest, and even if you still retain doubt and uneasiness about the way forward, come back to the difficult days ahead ready to care for God’s beautiful, complex creation.
Closing Hymn • Now Thank We All Our God • Page 715, Chalice Hymnal