The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins at the
Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, June 7, 2009.
I once asked my great-aunt Gladys if there was anything God couldn’t do.
She said, “Actually there is one thing God can’t do… Please everyone.” Later I
would read a quote by Bill Cosby that says, “I don’t know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
On close examination, our scripture readings today actually have something
to do with people feeling satisfied, and how that can happen. It can’t happen
by expecting others to make us happy. In fact, the more we place our happiness
in the hands of other people, the more we wind up disappointed. Then we tend
to blame them for not agreeing that we should be in charge of the universe,
when in fact we simply forgot that we are responsible for our own happiness.
It’s no one else’s job to make us happy, and anyway, they can’t.
Let’s begin with the passage from Romans today. Slavery was part of the
Roman economy. Paul knew personally people who had been enslaved. And he
contrasts the experience of slavery to the experience of freedom that one has
with healthy, life-giving spirituality. “You did not receive a spirit of
slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.
When we cry [out to God] it is the spirit of [belonging] bearing witness with
our spirit that we are children of God.”
To be slave is to be dehumanized, but to an adopted child means that you
were chosen… an adopted child isn’t in the family by accident of birth, but
was chosen by one who wanted to be her parent.
So imagine the empowering image Paul is trying to offer his readers. In the
world where greed, injustice, and violence can cause so much pain, one can
turn within and discover the very spark of divinity, or Spirit. That spirit
isn’t like the systems of the world where slavery, war, poverty, and injustice
can dominate. That indwelling spirit is the mark of belonging to the Source of
all life. The spirit of All-Life is part of us, within us, and longs to
express as us. The spirit of belonging, of empowerment, not of despair… that
is the spirit is ours to experience and express.
When we operate from our fears, our ego-selves, our sense of littleness or
separation, we deny the reality of this presence in and as us; but when we
operate from an awareness of this divine spark within, or as Paul put it, when
are led by the Spirit, then we recognize our sacred value (and the sacred
value of others).
We aren’t outcasts in God’s view; we are the children of God… we belong, we
are loved and those moments when we allow ourselves to truly believe that are
the moments when we are the most noble, the most generous, the most gracious,
the most able to act with integrity.
You see, if we need outside circumstances to go our way in order for us to
be happy, we might never be happy. In Paul’s world where people are being
imprisoned, executed, enslaved, their land occupied… if they are looking
outside themselves for happiness where will they ever find it?! But there is
within them a spirit that offers optimism and joy regardless of circumstances.
Of course, we do what we can to confront injustice, to ease suffering, and
to promote peace and fairness in our world. In fact, that’s what ministry is!
But we need not wait for the outer world to conform to our desires before we
experience peace, hope, and joy. Those feelings are a matter of attitude, and
attitude is a choice. We can’t control the world around us and we can’t make
people play by our rules, but we can choose to have hope and happiness no
matter what. That’s the power of the Spirit.
When Paul says “We aren’t given a spirit of slavery but one of belonging”
he means we can choose our attitudes; in fact, we are the only ones who can
choose our attitudes. God doesn’t want us to feel like life’s victims; God
wants us to have hope and joy, and God has given us the power to choose the
more joyous path, the spirit of belonging.
The message we read in Matthew’s gospel today is very similar, isn’t it?
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the [Creator] and of the [Chosen One] and of the holy Spirit, and teaching
them to observe everything that I have taught you. And remember, I am with you
always…” (Matthew 28)
Now I don’t want to get into all the debates about the Trinity. Those who
claim that the Trinity is not outlined in scripture are technically correct.
We have this Trinitarian baptismal formula at the end of Matthew. We have
Paul’s benediction in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians: “May the grace of
Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the holy Spirit be with
you always.” And that’s pretty much it for scriptural references, and none of
them define the Trinity or even suggest that the Sovereign, Savior, and
Sanctifier are actually united in any sort of mystical unity.
However, since the Fourth century, the Trinity has been one of the divine
images in Christian theology. Since then, the Trinity has appeared in
Christian art, music, and liturgy; and of course, in the Christian imagination
and experience.
Some pre-Christian traditions also offer triune images of the divine. And
in our human experience, we find ourselves being a unity of mind, body,
spirit, just as we experience the sun in multiple ways.
There is the mass of the sun (too hot, too large, and too far away for us
to experience directly, but we can know about it intellectually). There is the
light of the sun (which we can see) and the warmth of the sun (which we can
feel). There is one sun, but we experience it in a trinity of ways… in our
thinking, in our seeing, and in our feeling. Likewise, there is the divine
Reality which we ponder but can never fully understand; the light of God which
we see in Jesus and other enlightened teachers, and the warmth of God’s loving
presence which we feel in moments of prayer and contemplation… We call these
experiences Creator, Christ, and Comforter… One reality, but too big to be
contained in a single image.
So even though Trinitarian theology isn’t spelled out for us in scripture,
if we find it useful, it is certainly one of many images that are available
for our use.
God is love. Love affirms (redeems) us. The experience of loving and being
loved is life-giving, like the very breath of life, or spirit. The Lover, the
beloved, and the love itself… the Knower, the Doer, and the Action… the
Infinite Mind, the perfect Idea, and the Expression of It… The Author, the
Word, and the Interpretation… The Creative, Redeeming, Sustaining Principle…
Trinitarian imagery lends itself to endless possible understandings, and that
may be exactly the point.
There are many names and images for the divine in scripture, and none of
them are meant to be carved in stone; in fact the diversity of images is so we
won’t let any one of them become an idol. Whenever we find a name or
experience of God, that isn’t the end of the story; God is always more!
We see God in scripture as a Mother, Father, Rainbow, Whirlwind, Fortress,
Light, Cloud, Flame, Eagle, Dove… No ONE image is big enough! God is
encountered in storms, on mountains, in water, in the words of the prophets,
and of course in Jesus. No one image is enough to limit, contain, or
understand the divine. Whatever your understanding of God, it isn’t big
enough! Whatever you believe about God, the truth is, God is more.
Trinitarian imagery is a way of saying, God is more. God is like the Love
which creates all that is Good… and God is more. God is like a friend who
affirms our sacred value… and God is more. God is like the experience of
empowerment… and God is more. God is Creator, but not just Creator. God is
also Redeemer, but not just redeemer. God is sustaining spirit. And even that
doesn’t exhaust the ways God can be experienced. The Trinity isn’t an argument
that limits God; the Trinity is a challenge for us to let God be more.
And here’s where it gets really exciting: WE are made in God’s image. If
God is More, then we are more. God is more than we have imagined, and WE are
more than we have imagined.
For those who need encouragement, for those who need to feel loved, for
those who need to have their hope renewed or who have never heard that they
are a beautiful part of God’s glorious creation, Jesus’ commission to us is a
mission of mercy: Go everywhere and immerse all people in the message that God
is more than they have imagined, and so are we.
This is the good news. Amen.