Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC)

For the text of the readings go the end of the sermon.

I’ll bet that most of us have a welcome mat at our front door. And there is an array of styles and messages that can be found. Of course, the simplest is “Welcome.” Right now, Su and I just have a plain mat with no message. It’s there for people to wipe their feet. But, survey your neighborhood and you could well find mats with biblical messages, animal-lover messages, funny messages, or warm-hearted messages. I once found my all-time favorite (long enough ago that it’s been worn out and discarded for several years now).

Su and I used to enjoy attending the Water Fowl Festival held one weekend in November every year in Easton, Maryland. The crafts and artwork can be amazing. One year as we ambled through one of the crafts display areas we came across a table of door mats and hearth rugs. We found some mats that featured the artwork of Art LaMay, famed painter of wild fowl. One featured five mallard ducks and was entitled, “The boys.” Another, of Canada geese, was a Christmas theme. The geese were each wearing a Santa cap. Then we came across another mat. It had no art work. It was just a plain beige little rug. It had just two words written in blazing orange: Go Away. I had to have it! And we did use it as a “welcome” mat. If I recall, Su wouldn’t let me leave it out all the time. But for special occasions I laid out my “Go Away” mat to greet our visitors as they arrived. They usually got the joke. A few wished they could take it!

That “neighborly” message can be heard in today’s gospel lesson. Jesus says, “It is necessary that I go away.” Imagine that: “Jesus, Go away!” But, I believe that is precisely the message intended in this lesson. And, it is precisely the message disclosed in the Christian theological notion of Trinity, the liturgical focus of this first Sunday after Pentecost. Go away, Jesus. How in the world does that have anything to do with Trinity?

This notion of the Trinity has vexed and perplexed generations of theologians. With a not-so illustrious string of councils, anathemas and counter-anathemas, accompanied by imperial banishment of dissenters from the latest theological formulas, we have inherited a doctrine of Trinity that tries to balance the notion of monotheism with that of three divine personas. I think that for most of us we’ve not lost much sweat or sleep fretting about the hypostatic union of Creator and Christ. We probably haven’t spent much time worrying, much less fighting, about whether the Spirit proceeds from the “Father” alone or from “Father and Son” (to use the traditional language of the Nicene Creed).

Nevertheless, if we refocus from these arcane debates of years gone by to the images in today’s Gospel lesson we might discover some very contemporary relevance to the notion of Trinity for progressive Christian spirituality. Reading today’s lesson, cast in the farewell discourse of Jesus to the disciples while sitting at table with them, we do well to recall the theological foundation of the entire gospel. The Gospel begins with that famous hymn extolling the work of Logos (the Word) in creation. It rings the same tone as the lesson from Proverbs today, the hymn of Hokma (Lady Wisdom). This feminine cohort with God is the creative energy of the world and of humanity. Yet, John extols the Logos, that divine agent of creation, as doing even more. “And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” One cannot grasp the significance of this without catching the metaphoric tie to the Tabernacle constructed in the wilderness at Sinai. The tabernacle is the place where God chose to dwell with Israel. The Greek word for “to dwell” used in John’s Gospel is the same one used throughout the Greek Old Testament for Israel’s Tabernacle— where God lived with Israel. Think about it. No longer is God’s presence to be looked for in a place, on a throne, or in any nation’s halls of power. God’s not even located in heaven! Instead, God’s “tabernacle” is now in a human being. It is flesh and blood. It is human.

For John the incarnation means that to see Jesus is to see God. For this reason John deviates significantly from the other gospels in its concentration on Jesus’ “I Am..” sayings. The God revealed to Moses as “I Am” is the same God revealed IN Jesus (Exodus 3:14). But, in today’s lesson Jesus says, “I must go away.” The one in whom God tabernacles must go away! Why? Because if he doesn’t go, Jesus’ disciples won’t be able to receive the Spirit — the Advocate or Comforter.

Fast forward to Easter Sunday. Mary Magdalene weeps at the tomb of Jesus. Jesus meets her there. When she recognizes him she tries to grab him to worship him, but Jesus says, “Don’t hang on to me!” Instead, later in the day he breathes on the disciples saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” His breath becomes their breath. His spirit is now their spirit! And there’s the revelation: Jesus most go away in order for us to recognize that God tabernacles, not just in Jesus, but in humanity! We mustn’t hang onto Jesus. Instead, we can receive and breathe his Spirit.

Christians have tended to ignore this central, yet vital, implication of Trinity. For many having a special, personal bond with Jesus Christ is the essence of spirituality. Jesus is said to be in their hearts, their best friend, or their guide. Indeed, Reformed Protestant theology — of which the United Church of Christ is an heir — has emphasized the necessity for one to have “a personal relationship to Jesus Christ.” But, while I have no need to negate or minimize that theological and spiritual tradition, I believe that the notion implicit in John’s gospel actually takes us in a different direction.

Jesus must go away in order for the Spirit to come. And Jesus assures his disciples of all time, that everything that Jesus had, everything that Jesus was is now borne by and in the Spirit that is with us. All that Jesus was is now realized in our communion together, because it is guided by Christ’s Spirit. God’s tabernacle is forever human. God is embodied in us. And, in today’s passage from John Jesus has already revealed the bottom-line. Do you want to know what really matters? Do you really want to know what Christian Spirit is all about? “All people will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

It is not so much how we relate to Jesus that matters. After all Jesus is gone. He went away! Rather, right here, right now, we discern and discover God embodied in us. This is the meaning of incarnation, that through Jesus God’s primary identification is from now on with humanity. Incarnation unseats a heavenly omnipotent ruler of the universe seated above the earth. Incarnation radically relocates God here, now, among us. Listen again to Hokma’s (Divine Lady Wisdom) song, “I rejoice in the inhabited world and delight in the human race.” Where humans love even the unlovely and welcome the outcast, there God’s tabernacle is disclosed.

It is way too easy to get so focused on “heaven” that we lose sight of God’s home — earth! It is too tempting to get so focused on trying to see Jesus that we miss one another, or we neglect the stranger in our gates. Our testimony about Jesus is that God is here with us. Wherever the Spirit of Jesus moves, there God tabernacles on earth. Wherever humans are more motivated to offer loving welcome than to define articles of Christian belief, there God tabernacles with them in the Spirit of Jesus. Wherever, we abide in communion with one another, not despising our differences but embracing them, there the Spirit is guiding into all truth.

Jesus must go away so that we can realize that God is here with us; and that we are the image of God. Together, in communion, in fellowship, and prayerful discernment we reveal the Spirit of Jesus living here. Is that not what’s revealed in the sacrament that we celebrated today? In the life of this new human being we have encountered a new creation, we have met a son of God. Finnian Zinger’s baptism is a sacrament for us all — a ritual demonstration of a mysterious reality. This life has been conceived in and is now surrounded by love. He is embraced in affection and welcomed in joy. Not for anything he has done or will do. But, in this loving act of embrace by this community, we have breathed the life of Christ’s spirit. God has tabernacled among us. We have heard the voice of the living Jesus by the Spirit of Christ who is always with us.
Amen.

(Both of the Scripture quotations below are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted, 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.)

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
1    Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2 On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4 “To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.

22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
 

John 16:1-15
1   “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3 And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4 But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11 about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

12   “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.