Sermons at Saint Mary's

Trinity Sunday

June 7, 2009

Friends, let me ask you a question this morning.  Where is it that you encounter God in your life, and where is it that God encounters you?  Where is it that you see the face of God?

In recent years, as many of you know, this place of encounter for me has happened in Ireland.  And it brings to mind a story from my most recent visit.  Three Sundays ago, before Mass at Holy Hill Hermitage, I rose early to climb Nac Acree, the deceptively steep mountain that overshadows the monastery and its surroundings.  It was one of those misty, moisty mornings in the West of Ireland, but the sun was already sneaking through the clouds, refracting its prismatic light in the gentle rain.

I followed a sheep path up the mountain, and as I climbed higher, a strong gale began to blow, stopping me in my tracks.  I made headway by following the deep ravines cut by streams coming off the mountain.  The walls of peat were as deep as I am tall.  I watched as bewildered ewes and lambs fled from this clumsy footed interloper.  In front of me was a standing stone, no doubt left by some megalithic worshipper, who eons ago, had followed this very route.  At each turn, there were ruins of foundations, that might have been 100 years old, or 1000 years old.  You never know.

The sun became brighter, the wind fiercer, the earth beneath my feet turned dark and thick, and there was water everywhere.  All of it conspired to weave together the verdant blanket luring me forward.  I sat down and turned to face the vista, the alluvial hills descending the sea.  Beneath my hands, I touched the delicate flora, and as I leaned over, I noticed ferns, and succulents, and bromeliads, tropical plants whose spores had wafted up the Gulf Stream to find root in these high places.  Hardy little plants able to withstand torrential rains and gale force winds, yet fragile enough to be crushed in my footfall.

And in that convergence of elements, as I stood squarely between fire and water, earth and wind, I had a revelation.  Like Isaiah, for whom the heavens parted and the voices of six-winged cherubs shook the earth; like the Psalmist who discerned the Almighty in peals of thunder and the writhing oak trees; like the Apostle Paul who felt in his heart the imprint of God’s holy name; or like Jesus who likened the coming of the Spirit to a mighty wind, I sensed this was the place to take off my shoes.  This was the sacred ground where the name of God is spoken.  This was where I encounter the Triune God.

On each of my recent visits to Ireland, I have returned somehow singed by the experience.  Each time, I have shed a little more of my religious beliefs and become a little more turned toward awe and wonder.  And, with the passage of time, I have become less interested in dogma, and more interested in practice.

Take for example this Doctrine of the Trinity we celebrate in our liturgy today.  For years, maybe like you, I have speculated about the meaning of this central dogma of Christianity, in which the One God exists in three persons in one substance.  In seminary, I learned about the councils of the 4th and 5th centuries, religious scholars all who labored to give a rational explanation to an irreducible mystery.  I have waxed and waned in my allegiance to the creeds of the church, which seek to name the ineffable being of God.

But ever so slowly I have discovered over time that God ultimately is not encountered in the dogma.  God is not encountered in the doctrine.  God instead is encountered in the elements.  For ultimately God is in everything.  And if God is in everything, God is in you, and God is in me.

When St. Patrick first encountered the High Kings and their druid priests in Ireland in the 5th Century, he did not dismiss their beliefs or practices.  Rather he incorporated them into his distinctively Celtic Christianity.  To Patrick, the universe itself is the Great Sacrament, written large in his stirring hymn the Breastplate.  To Patrick, Christ was aflame in all things.  And so he would write:

I see the blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes.
His body gleams amid eternal snows
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower
The thunder and the singing of the birds;
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His  cross in every tree.

The Doctrine of the Trinity itself, to the pagan Irish, Patrick explained by holding up a shamrock, three leaves but one in kind.  For God to St. Patrick was to be in seen in all things, or God was to be in seen in nothing. 

One of my favorite Irish balladeers, Van Morrison, gives a modern rendition of this Celtic spiritual understanding in his song In the Garden.  Here are some his words:

And we felt the presence of the Christ within our hearts
In the garden.
And I turned to you and I said
No guru, no method, no teacher
Just you and I and nature
And the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost
In the garden, wet with rain.

In a few moments, we will be going into our own gardens for our Rogation work day.  To rogate, in the Latin, means to ask.  So what might we ask for this Trinity Sunday? What more could we ask for than to encounter God as God desires to be encountered,  or to see God as God desires to be seen?  For surely, the eye with which we see God is the very same eye with which God sees us.   What better thing, then, to ask in our rogation, than what William Blake asked in his immortal poem The Auguries of Innocence…

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

 

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