Memorial United Methodist Church

Memorial United Methodist Church
White Plains, New York 10605

It’s a Mystery. – Duh!

A Sermon by Joe Agne, Pastor
Based on John 3:1-17
June 7, 2009 (Not edited or proofread)

The earliest church had some real life experiences and they began to develop some theology to match their experiences. Many of them felt like they were in exile from their homes, their families, their communities and the way of life they had lived before they followed Jesus. Many, if not all, felt the sting of Roman oppression and they wanted to be liberated from the Roman occupation of their land and their lives. Some felt they were not living up to their own expectations for themselves as founders of a Way based on the teachings and life of Jesus. We also know these three understandings of being in exile a long way from home, of oppression and of missing the mark in our own lives.

 

Marcus Borg says these are the three main themes of our scriptures. They tell the story of people who were in bondage to Egyptian slavery and gained freedom by passing through the Red Sea. Later we see how the people, who lived in exile in Babylonia or Assyria, longed to return to their homes, their cities and their temple. Jesus even tells a story of a Prodigal child who returns home and is welcomed. Paul speaks of himself not doing the very things he wants to do and doing the very things he had set out not to do. There are hymns that can be matched with these themes:

 

Many of the members of these early churches had experiences of Jesus as they lived with him for three years. They also came out of a strong tradition of God the creator. Jesus had died and had left them but he promised that he would send an advocate to comfort them and he did. They began to put language to their experience and the Trinity developed:

God could be experience in three ways but in all ways was still God. Water, ice and steam are all the same substance, but experienced as different.

 

The Trinity is not three categories created by God and given by God for people to memorize. These come from people trying to make sense and create language about their life experiences. Three hundred years later the same Roman government wanted to co-opt the church. They chose some church leaders to develop some theology that could and would define who was in the faith and who was out of the faith. They codified the Trinity as “Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” In a sense it became categories of explication rater than expressions of life experience. What was a mystery of experience became rational explanation.

 

Seven hundred years later, the church split into an Eastern Church (Greece, Turkey and Russia) and a Western Church (Rome) over this. The Eastern Church developed icons and art work that expressed the mystery of the Trinity. The Western Church developed theology of words and ignored its own art work and the art work of the East. A half century later the Western Church split again during the Protestant Reformation. The reliance on words became even more pronounced. In the last centuries the Western Church has finally been saying the Trinity is a mystery and the Eastern Church has responded with a deeply theologically formulation, “Duh. This is want we have been saying for two millennia.” The irony is that many western Christian have been turning to Buddhism for ways of being spiritual and these same ways are hidden in the west and explicit in the east.

 

A couple of years ago we had a candidate for ordination who refused to use the traditional language for the Trinity and refused to say, “Jesus is my Lord and Savior.” I was the chair of his interview committee. His church was growing in members. It had the largest food serving program in its county. His people were excited about being church. His lay leader said their church had never been so exciting and faithful. Yet some members of the Board of Ordained ministry wanted to hear the Trinity in the traditional language and hear that Jesus was his Lord and Savior. He resisted, saying we had gotten ourselves into a word prison that missed the experience of our faith. He was ordained by one vote.

 

So Memorial, on this Trinity Sunday, do we all say that we have to believe that God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Do we have to say “Jesus is our Lord and Savior”? Some would say “yes” or we are not a church. I think the language can be stultifying. I am not wedded to historic, traditional and classical formulations. A number of years ago the General Conference voted that we had to use the phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” when we baptized anyone or we would lose our ordination. I had been baptizing for years in the name of “God the creator, the liberator and the awakening spirit.” I wanted to live by the letter of the law and still express the spirit of love and chose the language developed by The Riverside Church, “I baptize you in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit; one God, Mother of us all.”

 

Here is my point. I think the earliest church was on to something. People long to be free. People long to be home. People long to live the way they intend and know that it is hard to do so. We have a story that says that, somehow, the story of Jesus, liberates us, welcomes us home and forgives us and gives a chance to live in new ways.

 

How does all this happen? I don’t know. On this Trinity Sunday, I want to say, “It’s a mystery.” I can hear so many people saying, “Duh.”