Memory

Trinity Sunday

30 May 2021

It had been a number of years since I went to visit the family gravesites; during my childhood it was a Memorial Day ritual to go to either the graves of my maternal or paternal grandparents. I did not even associate the origins of the holiday to military service until I was much older. In visiting the graves of grandparents I was recovering memories about people I really did not even know. Both grandmothers were deceased prior to my birth; and I was age 3 and age 5 when my maternal and paternal grandfathers died. Virtually everything I know about them is a story, a memory, from someone else. With my parents it is different; I hold so much in my heart (and bound in those tangible items from our life together) that I do not need to recover time or place. I have only gone once to the cemetery where they are buried.

Place, however, lies deeper within me. I have felt a need to actually see and feel the places where my ancestors lived, as if I would meet them and converse with them when I went where they had lived.

Several years ago I went to Overton County Tennessee, the home of my fourth great grandparents and third great grandparents. Seeing the place where they lived and raised a family, where they walked and where they are buried was deeply moving for me. I sensed their presence.

Just yesterday I went to the area where my father was raised. As a child when we went to visit family he would point out every neat farmstead and tell me which ones were built by his father or grandfather. All that is left now are the gravesites. I went to the cemeteries and looked until I had found all the graves of my relatives. I read the inscriptions on old headstones of folks I did not know; born in a time and place far from where they were buried, or less than a mile from where they were born. Infants and children, young women who may well have died in childbirth, and very old men and women. Even in a cemetery on a road that isn’t maintained in the winter the graves of veterans all had flags marking them. Lest we forget.

The Eucharist is part of the memory. “We remember his death” “We celebrate the memorial of our redemption”, “Remembering now his works of redemption.”

Anamnesis: the recollection of God’s saving deeds, of Jesus’ sacrifice.

Trinity Sunday is no longer about trying to “explain” the inexplicable; it is running headlong into the mystery and the memory. I do not care about the fine academic theses on the nature of the Trinity and on the Triune God; I care about God at work in your life and in mine.

The psalmist proclaims the raw power and majesty of God; this is the God we see with blizzards and tornados. This is the God of floods and fire. Omnipotent. Yet this is the same God who chose to be in communion with us, not merely over us. The God who creates redeems and sustains us; walks with us and walks for us.

This is the God who calls us as family. We belong in the very primal and basic sense of belonging. We belong to a family that stretches over space and over time. If you were raised in a family where love and care were the norm, understanding the family that God is creating comes much more easily. If you were raised where those basic human needs were denied, it could be very hard to understand God, our God; the God we call Trinity. God is who God is so that we are part of creation and part of the eternal family and the eternal story. We can, as humans, do much to try to define ourselves in the world. Some want to stand out; some want to be invisible but we all want a place. We are invited into the family in our uniquely Christian way: creator, redeemer, sustainer. This Sunday speaks of that way. It is not just about some theological explanation of what is frankly not explainable but rather about how we are part of a family. God is called “Abba” which is the familiar form of father, telling us that God is not a rigid authoritarian figure, but, despite being God, an entity that delights in relationship with us.

This is, if you will indulge me, the magic of Trinity Sunday. We are celebrating, celebrating the relationship of our God to us. You have heard the hair splitters talk about the impossibility of one God in three natures. What does it really matter?? What matters is that God is doing her best to try to reach us. She tells us that the reign of God is going on right now, not in some far and distant land or place that we will see after death. God offers us our unique triune way of being in the world. There are other ways but this is ours. Steven Charleston, a Choctaw and former bishop of Alaska, speaks of the relationship of God, the world, and the spirit in our lives.

What we so often miss are all the clues that surround us every day. Nature provides us with constant reminders of God and the beauty of creation. Sunrise and sunset; the smells of flowers and of fresh earth; the overwhelming sense of awe when you see the Tetons for the first time; the first cry of a newborn baby. We are redeemed by the friend who helps us through a rough spot; by a spouse or lover who understands and cares for and adores us; by our own work in making this world a more caring place. We are sustained by the spirit who inspires us and nudges us and guides us through dark valleys and to the highest mountains.

This is what we celebrate on Trinity Sunday. In a world that so often seems hopelessly flawed, we can find the workings of the Spirit.

Today I awoke and felt the light of the sun call to me. The clouds beckoned me to follow; the wind nudged me. There is both work to be done and sabbath in which to be renewed. The Trinity, the glorious manifestation of God, is there to show all of us the way, the uniquely Christian way, to be in the world.

When we celebrate the Eucharist today, listen for the wind as it sways the prairie; listen for the sound of thunder and the visceral feeling you get from lightening. Don’t fail to let the soft sounds of the bees escape your hearing. Link it to the past, to your own and your ancestors experiences, and let it guide you to a kindom of God that is bigger and more inclusive that you thought possible. The Eucharist is not for pardon only, but for renewal. The Trinity is not for worship only but for leading and guiding us in our lives and in the world.

And may the blessing of our glorious and trinitarian God be with us all from the rising of the sun to its setting and from our birth to our death.

Amen