Trinity Sunday    June 16, 2019       St Austin’s   Austin, TX

          God walks into a bar and orders a beer, a red wine and a spritzer.  [pause.   Well, it is Trinity Sunday!] 

          Now that is – of course – not only ridiculous, it is theologically all wrong.  God is one.  There are not three separate wills and intellects in God.  We say there are three persons in God, but we don’t mean ‘person’ in the modern psychological sense of three separate individuals. 

          We Christians are monotheists.  We believe there is only ONE God.  Like the Jews and like the Moslems, we believe there is one and only one God. 

          But then of course we are not content to leave it there.  We make it more complicated.  We go on to say that while God is ONE, God is a Trinity of three “persons” defined by their relationships.  The Trinity is all about relationship. 

          In this we are quite different from Moslems.  For them God is ONE and God is totally other.  God is completely and entirely different from us, or to phrase it differently, God is all Holy.  God is God, and we can never comprehend nor touch God.  God is always distant and different.

          We Christians take a different approach.  Yes we believe God is all Holy, and entirely different from us, but then we also believe that God is total and complete in God’s own self as a community of relationships: God the Creator or Father, God the Beloved Son, and God the Holy Spirit who is the Love breathed or “aspirated” between the Father and the Son. 

          That is not only nice for God, so that God is not lonely in God’s self, but from all eternity God is a community, AND it also is very important for us.  Because of the Most Holy Trinity, God, without ceasing to be all Holy and Wholly Other, also became one of us in the second person of the Trinity.  God got deeply, intimately, no-holds-barred, involved with us, with our hopes and dreams, our disappointments and failures, our grime and our beauty and our love.  God not only came for a visit, not only dressed up in a human person like in a costume.  Rather, God truly and irrevocably became a human person, Jesus Christ. 

          It is pretty mind-boggling if you think about that.  The creator of all the billions of galaxies each with billions of stars and God knows how many planets, and then all the dark matter and dark energy which is even more, and who knows what else we haven’t yet discovered; that very same God truly became a human, born of Mary, exactly like us in all things except sin.  He lived and preached, healed the sick, died on the cross, and now lives in glory.  His name is Jesus.

          And Jesus did this so that we could be joined to Him as members of His body, and so we can share in God’s own life.  WOW!

          We experience that life already in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier.   God lives in our hearts through grace.  God is not only totally Other, God is ALSO closer to us than our own breath.  That is a great mystery, a mystery of the infinite God in relationship with you, with us. 

          The feast we celebrate today, of the Most Holy Trinity, is all about relationship:  relationship within God, and our relationship to God, invited in Jesus to enter into the very life of God.  But it doesn’t stop there.   Because that amazing reality, in turn, has very definite implications for our relationship to each other.  So, that crazy driver who cut you off on the way to church this morning is not just some idiot.  That driver may very well be part of the Body of Christ.

          We are called to relationship with each other as part of our relationship to God.

Because, as the second reading from St Paul today affirms:  “the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Happy Trinity Sunday. 

HOMILY PENTECOST SUNDAY Cycle C June 9, 2019

HOMILY   PENTECOST SUNDAY      Cycle C  June 9, 2019

Red.  How do I look in red?  Would I not look good as a Cardinal??  Maybe not.   What do you think of when you see the color red?  Watermelon?  Firetrucks?  Why are firetrucks always red?  No blue firetrucks.

Or perhaps you think of a stop light, a red traffic light?   

Or do you think of something more political?  Red states vs. blue states?  Or if you are older, The “Reds”?  Red-China?  Anyone remember “Better dead than red?” 

Or do you think of the opposite, as in “red-blooded American”?  And the “red, white and blue”?  Why is red always first?  Why not the white, blue and red????

For our Asian brothers and sisters red means joy and happiness.  Some years ago I did a wedding in South Carolina.  The bride’s mother was coming from Hong Kong, and the young couple asked me to wear red vestments for the wedding, since in Chinese culture white signifies death, but red signifies joy.  So I wore red for the wedding.

In church we wear red for several different occasions.  Red signifies blood; but not blood as a sign of death, like in some Hollywood horror flick with gallons of fake blood over everything, but rather blood in the scriptural sense as a sign of life.  We wear red on the Feast of the Martyrs, like Sts Peter and Paul and John the Baptist.  Also for the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. 

But today we wear red primarily for the symbol of FIRE.  In the first reading we heard that tongues as of fire came to rest on the disciples, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. 

The result is that the disciples went from frightened and confused people hiding in fear, to bold and effective proclaimers of the Gospel, of the wonderful things God had done in Jesus Christ. 

The symbols of fire and the “strong, driving wind” are signs of energy, of life, of vitality: and that is what the Holy Spirit brings to us.  Just as when God formed man out of the clay of the ground in the Book of Genesis, and blew into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being, so in the Gospel today the Resurrected Jesus breaths on the Apostles and says “Receive the Holy Spirit” and so they came alive. 

As an aside, did Jesus give the Holy Spirit to the Apostles on Easter Sunday night, as in our Gospel from John, or did the Holy Spirit come on the Apostles 50 days later, at Pentecost, as in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles?    What do you think?

Well, similarly, did you receive the Holy Spirit at your Baptism, perhaps as a baby, or did you receive the Holy Spirit at your Confirmation, when you were in 8^th grade like me, or in high school, or some other time? 

          The correct answer to both questions is YES.  In our religion the correct answer is usually “both/and” instead of ‘either/or”. 

          Is Jesus divine or human?  YES.  Is God one or three?  YES.  Is the Bible the word of God or the words of humans?  YES. 

Human logic is often too limited and inadequate to hold the mystery of God.

           Anyway, back to Pentecost:  The Spirit is all about life: just like when you have team spirit or school spirit, the school is exciting and vital and energized and alive, so also the Church, God’s people, when the Holy Spirit is present the Church is vital and energized and alive.                 “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.” St. Paul assures us in the second reading today.  St. Paul is not talking about physical words, but rather to make this statement with conviction and sincerity and deeply lived faith. “No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”  The life of faith comes from the Holy Spirit.    

So when you see faith-filled Christians who are alive, and filled with concern for others, and generous, and actively putting their Faith into action, who look like they have heard Good News and so radiate the joy of the Gospel, you recognize that these are Spirit-filled Christians.  Amen!  And you praise God for that.

But when you see Christians who look grumpy, and are stingy, and think of religion as all about rules, and “don’t”s, and radiate an up-tight, constricted sense of narrow-mindedness and small-heartedness, you recognize that they are Spirit-lacking Christians.  The life is just not there.  They are dead in the Spirit.  There is not that burning flame of faith and love.      The upsetting, disruptive, strong wind of the Spirit that overturns our neatly laid-out tables of rules and regulations and proper expectations is not there.  The Holy Spirit is messy. 

Spirit filled Christians are bright, brilliant, bold, red Christians: so red it hurts your eyes: you need sunglasses in their presence.  The Spirit-less Christians are nothing but dingy, insipid, beige Christians.  They make you yawn, and put you to sleep.

Today, on this Pentecost, we are called to be RED Christians, to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit that we received at our Baptism and were sealed with at our Confirmation.  People should be able to see the Spirit of Christ at work in us. 

Therefore, Look and act like you have heard Good News, not bad news.  Act with courage in living the way of Christ.  Proclaim boldly by your deeds what you believe.  Jesus is Lord!

May you be on fire with the Holy Spirit!  Happy Pentecost!