Trinity Sunday: Creation as resistance

6/19

Amanda meets me at church and we open up together. Prepare the sanctuary for worship. The first to arrive are at least six visitors, several drawn by the concert series. But where are my folks? Amy has taken the day off, Andre not coming until nght. Of course there’s James, Hope, Rachel...but I feel the anxiety, uncertainty.

Amanda comes to the piano, plays. A prelude. Time for me to start. Amanda reminds me to connect with the people, and when its passing of the peace time, she looks at me and says, Be real, reverend..

It’s Trinity Sunday. One of the only liturgical days of tbe year celebrating a theological concept, not an event. And today I have little interest in pursuing vagaries of theological concepts.

The lectionary passages of the day leave us with three places to go...holy...what does it mean? what is holy to you? can you even be holy? Or that great phrase....some doubted....and explore our doubt together....or creation....as in the beginning...that’s where I want to go today.

I ask people wnatthe passage makes them think of. Amanda talks about how its poetry. I agree, poetry, not science. Hope doesn’t believe it, that is the whole seven day thing. And James responds that to God a thousand years is as a day.

There’s been a lot of creating going on this week...every night....women singer-songwriters, tangeros, jazz...and tonight Andre and his eclectic friends...right in the traditon of what we have always been...
Creation. Creativity. Why is it so important? I recall our night at Ground Zero. The still smoldering seventeen acres. The falling ash. The smell of burnt plastic, jet fuel, human bodies. And the dead looksof the faces of the workers as they passwd through all night long, shift after shift, blank, staring faces. How I felt the power of de-struction, of death, negation. And how I realized in that context that creation, any creative act, is an act of resistance, an act of defiance of those powers. And a partnership with God in the ongoing work of creation.

How creation is about separation. Necessary for individiation, to know who we are. Yet there is pain in that separation. How the rain is the waters above longing for reunion with the waters below. How the whole arc of the biblical narrative is back towards ultimate unity.

And how in between places are places of beauty as well. Bayous and swamps, seashores, those beautiful times at sunset or sunrise when one reality is becoming another. How I love to sit with a cold drink and watch the sunset over the Hudson.

Trinity Sunday. The creator. The breath of the Spirit bringing things to life. Pneuma, ruach. Inspiration, respiration, and my favorite, conspiracy, breathing together...But it is we, we humanity together who are the third person,the human one, the child...we together make the third person...people of differing faiths, people of no faith....

All I have to do is sit (or stand) in a subway car (and why in summer do I always get the car without airconditioning?) and look up and down at the faces...and see all humanity and say it is good...
To be here is to choose to be part of a process that is still beginning, a process of re-creation, of creation...that is our invitation, we welcome anyone who wants to join in....I feel good about what I have said. Not sure if anyone who has visited will ever come back or not....but this was good....

Amanda plays her version of Amazing Grace...we gather in our circle....the service is over....