Today is Trinity Sunday – the Sunday after Pentecost. The only Sunday named after a doctrine… which always threatens to be a particularly dry topic for preaching. 

The Trinity is the name for the church’s teaching that the God we worship is Three in One and One in Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the One who creates, redeems, and befriends. 

A late 5th century text known as the Athanasian Creed tries to put words around the paradoxes of the Trinity: 

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. 

For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. 

But the Divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. 

Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. 

The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. 

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. 

The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite…”

It has a kind of beauty… but it doesn’t exactly clear anything up! 

I feel a certain pressure every year to offer you the church’s teaching about the Trinity. But I’m also always aware that we’re trying to stretch human language and concepts around divine realities that we do not fully comprehend. 

What catches my attention about our Trinity Sunday readings this year is the way they point to the ongoing role of the Holy Spirit in forming, guiding, and teaching God’s people. Today’s readings kind of send us back a week to Pentecost – and to the Holy Spirit! 

The text from Proverbs about Lady Wisdom invites us to hear the voice of the Spirit in this pre-Christian text. The assigned portion focuses on her role assisting God in Creation, but in the full passage, she is encouraging people to heed her voice:

“I have good advice and sound wisdom;
I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just…  

I love those who love me,
and those who seek me diligently find me.”

A few verses later she’s inviting passers-by into her home for a banquet: “She has sent out her young women, she calls from the highest places in the town,
‘You that are foolish, turn in here!’
To those without sense she says,
‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Forsake foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’” 

Lady Wisdom is one of several ways Jewish thought and sacred writings have described a companion or emanation of the One God. The Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit builds on those ideas. 

I like holding that image of Lady Wisdom, laying a banquet and urgently inviting us to come partake, in my mind as we read what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel today.  

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, they will guide you into all the truth; for they will not speak on their own, but will speak whatever they hear, and they will declare to you the things that are to come.” 

I’m sure libraries could be filled with interpretations of those intriguing verses. But a plain sense reading seems to suggest that Jesus expects that the Church’s understanding of the full meaning of God’s redeeming love will grow and change. 

Jesus says, You don’t know everything now; and even what you do know, or think you know, may change in the years and centuries to come, guided by the Spirit. 

Christianity is, after all, founded on metanoia – a transformation of heart and mind that bears fruit in our lives. That transformation, change, renewal, conversion, can be sudden and dramatic and / or slow and lifelong. And as Jesus says here, becoming a Christian – a follower of Jesus – isn’t the end of that renewal, that opening of mind and heart.  It may be just the beginning. 

That’s why Learn and Turn are two of the core practices of the Way of Love offered by our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry;  and why Wondering and Turning are two of the discipleship practices we name and strive to practice here at St. Dunstan’s. 

We expect our understandings of God, humanity, self and world to change. We are cautious about it. As I said a couple of weeks ago: New isn’t better just because it’s new. But neither is old! 

In the Anglican tradition, our foundational theologian, Richard Hooker, suggested we use a threefold approach to discerning what is true and right: Scripture, tradition, and reason. 

Hooker lived in the 16th century, a time of rapid change and expanding knowledge. He believed we could best discern what is right, good, and true through holding these things in balance and seeing how they inform each other: the truths revealed in Scripture, the truths passed down to us by tradition, and the truths we discover by the use of human reason – which Hooker meant in a more holistic sense than we might think: using our capacity to think, analyze, and wonder to reflect on what our senses and our experiences have to show us. 

It’s Pride Month right now. Pride is celebrated annually in June, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The purpose of Pride month is to recognize and celebrate LGBTQ+ people, and to reaffirm shared commitments to work for equal justice and equal opportunity. 

Honoring Pride in Madison is a little weird because Madison’s Pride celebration is in August. But I’m hearing from our young people that they’re talking about Pride at school, seeing Pride-themed posts on social media and Pride products in stores. So maybe it’s important to acknowledge Pride here, too. 

Our capacity to learn, listen, wonder and turn is how our denomination, the Episcopal Church, has come to hold a fully inclusive position with respect to LGBTQ+ people, while some other churches continue to feel bound by what they understand to be the gender and sexuality norms of the Bible. (Though I would argue that the Bible’s witness on those matters is rather more complicated than it might seem on the surface.) 

Since the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Episcopal Church has been actively learning from gay and lesbian Episcopalians – laypeople, deacons and priests, and eventually bishops. In 2012 the Episcopal Church’s General Convention resolved that transgender people, too, have an equal place in the life, worship and governance of the church, including access to ordination. 

As a church we’re learning – slowly – to acknowledge and embrace people who find themselves in other places on the spectrums of gender and sexuality, as well. 

How did we get here? How did we move from being a church that asks its LGBTQ+ members – who have always been there – to live with silence, secrecy, and celibacy, to a church that – in some places, on our good days – fully includes and celebrates them? 

Well: We studied Scripture together. There’s an amazing study document called To Set Our Hope On Christ, created in 2005 by some of the Episcopal Church’s top scholars, that explores how to read the Bible faithfully and find in it support for the goodness of a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities. It’s just one example, but it’s a great starting point for the curious. 

We looked to our tradition with fresh eyes. We discovered that heterosexual marriage is perhaps not as central an institution in Christian history as we had been led to believe… and that among the boldest and brightest witnesses to God’s love down through the ages have been many saints whose gender expression, partnerships, or manner of life did not conform to the expectations and norms of their time or ours. 

And we listened to, and reflected on, experience – our own and others’. My first job after seminary was in the Diocese of New Hampshire. The bishop at the time – since retired – was Gene Robison. Gene was the first openly gay and partnered man to be elected as a bishop in the Episcopal Church. His election in 2003 was a big deal. Things got messy. In some corners, things got ugly. 

It was 2008 when we moved to New Hampshire. But now and then somebody would still tell me their story about that time. New Hampshire is a small diocese in a small state. Gene had been on the previous bishop’s staff. A lot of people knew him. 

What people kept telling me was: Of course we knew Gene was gay. We knew his husband. But we called him to be our bishop because we thought he should be our bishop. We saw in him the gifts we needed in our leader. We weren’t trying to make a splash by electing the first openly gay bishop. We were just following the Holy Spirit. 

So many versions of that story are part of our church’s journey. Leading us deeper and deeper into the apostle Peter’s epiphany: I truly understand that God doesn’t have favorite kinds of people. 

I need to say that our church has not arrived. We have a ton of work to do to live into our intentions and commitments. But that’s often how the Holy Spirit works. 

They lead you to a new understanding or conviction… and then it takes time to reorganize your thinking and your life, or that of your organization, to align with what you have come to know. 

And sometimes, beloved in Christ, sometimes the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead us to new certainties. Sometimes they lead us to new uncertainties. That can be even harder, friends – embracing the holy unknown. Loosing our grip on things we thought were fixed or settled can be very disorienting. 

And yet: Our God is a God of paradox, mystery, transformation. Much more can be mended than we know. 

I wonder what else we have to learn. 

I wonder what holy truths we’re not yet ready to bear… but might be, someday. 

I wonder where Lady Wisdom, the Spirit of Truth, has laid out a banquet, and is standing in her doorway calling out to us: “Come, and eat, and walk in the way of insight!”

 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed –

Rendered all distinctions void: 

Name, and sect, and party fall; 

Thou, O Christ, art all in all. 

That verse was written by Charles Wesley, the great 18th-century poet and hymn writer.  I came across it last week and it’s been knocking around in my head ever since. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed – rendered all distinctions void… 

In this provocative verse about Love, the Destroyer, Wesley is playing with this important thing Paul says in a couple of his letters: There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

It may be hard for us to fully understand what a radical statement this really was, in the first century. Even if we only focus on “neither Jew nor Greek”! “Greek” here means “Gentile” – non-Jews in general. The first Christians and church leaders were all Jewish, formed in the faith of the First Testament. And they initially understood the Way of Jesus as a new kind of Judaism. Opening the doors for non-Jews to join the movement – on equal terms! – was a big deal.  And like most big changes, it took time, and listening, and arguing, and praying, to get there. 

Today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles shows us one chapter of this story. When I first looked at the assigned passage last week, I felt annoyed. Because what we have here is Peter’s brief summary of a story that is told in full in the previous chapter – Acts 10. There are lots of details in that version that we miss, here. For example: The Gentile whom Peter visits isn’t just any Gentile. He’s a centurion, a leader in the Roman army that occupies Peter’s homeland. His name is Cornelius. And though he’s a Gentile, he’s a man of prayer and generosity. 

I don’t know why Peter doesn’t tell the church leaders in Jerusalem that his new convert is a Roman soldier. Maybe a Gentile is a Gentile and it doesn’t really matter. Or maybe it would have made it a bridge too far for some folks, so he just… neglects to mention it. 

There are other things that we miss in Peter’s retelling. Like the delightful detail that when the vision comes to him, he’s very hungry and waiting for lunch. Or the wonderful thing Peter says as all of this comes together for him in a lightbulb moment: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality! God has no preferences, no favorites; but in every nation or people, anyone who honors God and does good is acceptable to God.” 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed! Rendered all distinctions void! … 

So at first, when I looked at today’s lesson, I was a little grumpy. I wanted the whole story, not this little Cliff’s Notes version. 

But then I noticed what’s happening here. This isn’t just a summary of what’s happened already. It’s the next chapter in the story – and it’s an important chapter. 

Peter’s heart has been changed.  He’s come to a new understanding about whom God is calling to join the Way of Jesus. But it’s not all up to Peter. He’s a leader in the nascent Christian community; but he’s not THE leader. 

There’s a group of apostles and elders in Jerusalem who are trying to guide the movement and keep it on track and faithful to the teachings and witness of Jesus. And while God has no preferences or favorites, people do. The Jerusalem leaders are skeptical about Gentile converts. This isn’t just bigotry; it’s partly that they honor and treasure their Jewish faith and heritage, and fear that it may be lost. We may grieve what Love destroys! 

They hear about what happens in Caesarea, this group of Gentiles whom Peter has actually baptized into the church! – and they call Peter back to Jerusalem to explain himself. Why did you go to uncircumcised men – to people outside God’s ancient covenant with the Jewish people – and eat with them?

I love the next verse: “Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step.” 

What he’s doing here is actually a best practice for talking with someone with opposing views: Talk about your experiences. Don’t argue about the big ideas – Gentiles belong! Gentiles don’t belong! – but share what you have seen and heard, and how you came to understand things the way you do.

Peter tells them about what was going on outside of him, at Cornelius’s house: seeing this group of Gentiles seized by the Holy Spirit, in a way that looks a lot like what happened to the disciples at Pentecost. 

He also tells them about what was going on inside of him: He sees the Spirit at work, he remembers Jesus’ words, he knows God sent him to meet these people and witness this moment, and all of that becomes metanoia, a turning of the heart: Whom am I to hinder God? 

Peter’s conversion, his change of heart, matters. But Peter’s testimony to these leaders matters even more. Peter has some standing in this group, as one of Jesus’ closest friends, whom Jesus appointed as a church leader… But everyone also knows that Peter has a tendency to go off half-cocked, so that may work against him! 

When he’s finished speaking, the leaders are quiet for a while. Imagine the suspense in the room. And then someone says, “So God has given even to Gentiles a turning of the heart toward life.” And they celebrate. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed, rendered all distinctions void. Name and sect and party fall… 

In the vision of John of Patmos, in today’s Revelation text, the Holy One seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new.” And Jesus tells the disciples in today’s Gospel, “I am giving you a new commandment.” Our God is a god who brings forth new things and leads us to new understandings. 

It’s important to say that new stuff isn’t intrinsically better just because it’s new – just like old stuff isn’t better, or worse, just because it’s old. There’s plenty of bad new stuff in the world. But what we see here isn’t Peter seizing the new for new’s sake. He hears God nudge him to pay attention, to respond. I get nudges like that, though perhaps not as dramatically! Then Peter goes into the situation with eyes and ears open. And he weighs what he sees against the teachings of Jesus. This is a process of discernment – of seeking God’s will or God’s purposes. 

And once Peter discerns that God has called these Gentiles into the church – he doesn’t just tolerate them. He goes to bat for them. He makes their full inclusion part of his witness, his agenda. And he sticks with it for the long term. 

The question of Gentiles in the church comes back in Acts chapter 15 – which takes place as much as a decade later.  A group of Jewish Christians are telling everyone that for Gentiles to become Christian, they essentially have to first become Jews – including circumcision, a fairly drastic step. Basically, it’s been accepted that Gentiles can become Christian – but the question now is on what terms. Can they join the church as they are? Or do they have become something else, to be fully included? 

So there’s another gathering of church leaders in Jerusalem to talk it out and settle the matter. Peter is there, and he harks back to this experience and to what it taught him about God’s welcome for Gentiles: “In cleansing their hearts by faith God has made no distinction between them and us.”

There’s discussion and debate and it probably drags on for days. But finally James, the brother of Jesus, speaks up and settles the matter: “We should not burden those Gentiles who are turning to God.” The Church will be a church of both Jews and Gentiles, on more or less equal terms. 

The issue at stake in Acts is: who belongs in the church, and how. As people of the church, we continue to face those frontiers. There’s a movement in the Episcopal Church today to deepen our understanding and affirmation of transgender and non-binary people – perhaps finally coming to grips with Paul’s insight that in Christ there is no longer male and female. 

We’re working to not just welcome and include people of color, but reckon with the ways racism is embedded in our liturgies, institutions and culture. 

I think – I hope – that our larger church is beginning some real work on the the true welcome and inclusion of those living with mental illness; those with disabilities; and neurodivergent people.

I believe we will look more like the church God intends us to be when we have learned, together, to receive one another in the fullness of our humanity, without asking anyone to become something else first in order to be fully included. 

But what Peter models for us here isn’t just for church. This is a story about a group wrestling with who it’s for, and it’s an oddly timeless story – one we might find ourselves in at any time. I certainly have. 

Maybe you’re Peter, meeting someone who blows open your sense of who matters or who belongs. 

Maybe you’re one of the Jerusalem leaders, weighing the implications of changing standards and opening doors. 

Maybe you’re Cornelius, simply witnessing to your human worth to somebody who’s never really talked to someone like you before.

This oddly mundane story that’s threaded through the book of Acts, of an organization revising its membership requirements – it’s a reminder that holy work takes many forms.Sometimes it’s courageous witnessing. Sometimes it’s prayerful listening. Sometimes it’s the grind and stress of working for cultural and institutional change. Through it all, the Love that formed the universe and knows us each by name is working, working, working, beside and among and within us. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed –

Rendered all distinctions void: 

Name, and sect, and party fall; 

Thou, O Christ, art all in all. 

Amen. Alleluia.