Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021 – Celebrating the Unfathomable Mystery of God

Sing : We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
I went to lunch a couple of months ago at the home of human rights activist Ruby Sales. When it was time to say grace, she and I and her partner and her beloved roommate all held hands and bowed our heads. The three of them started singing that song. I knew the song because I grew up in Washington, DC., home of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the group that sang it. But I hadn’t heard it in years. We sang these first two lines and then someone said the grace. But the song has stayed with me.
Sing: We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
As a teen Ruby Sales was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ruby, who is Black, was with a group protesting in Alabama in 1965. A local white man shot at the group, a young white seminarian named Jonathan Daniels pulled her out of the line of fire and was mortally wounded. Ruby was gutsy then and is gutsy now. She testified against the killer. But he was acquitted by an all-white jury.
So it is understandable why Ruby sings this song. And why she continues the humanitarian work she believes in, work that Jonathan Daniels might have done if he had not been killed, saving her.
What happened to Jonathan is the kind of thing that makes me especially restless, and I find myself asking, “God, Why?”
On today, Trinity Sunday, we sensitize all we have celebrated over the past months—God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in Jesus Christ; Christ’s death and resurrection for us; and last Sunday, the Pentecost, God the Holy Spirit becoming our Sanctifier, Guide, and Teacher.
In a way today is our transition to the part of the year where Sunday by Sunday we are called to observe the unfolding of God in our everyday lives. In today’s reading from John, Nicodemus, a prominent, learned and respected leader among the Jews, is baffled when Jesus tells him a person must be born from above. The Message says Jesus explained, “Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
And when Nicodemus questions Jesus more, Jesus explains, “Unless a person submits to this original creation—the wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.”
This is the process some people call being born again. But I think of it more as Brueggemann describes in his prayer, “a relocation of holiness.” See, in our humanness I believe there are times when we slip and fall away from God. Times when a difficult challenge makes me demand God answer to me.
For Nicodemus, Jesus compares the process of being born again to a baby being born of flesh but becoming a living spirit only after being shaped within by “something you can’t see and touch.”
During our lifetime, we will experience and witness traumas and horrors, real gut-wrenching pain. We may falter and lose our way. But there is a process that allows us to be reborn each time, to find our way back to God. Brueggemann says we do this through worship, which he calls our “human vocation.” It requires we accept and yield to the mystery and palpable power of God.
In other words, in our worshipping we let go of the humaneness that blocks us from our divinity, that humaneness that requires answers and rationalization. We give in to the something we can’t see or touch.
But it can be a challenge.
After the killing of George Floyd, I needed to find my way back to water and spirit. My search led me to attend a virtual inter-denominational prayer gathering held each morning from Minneapolis. I sat at my computer and listened along with hundreds of other people. I joined the virtual prayer tent just as the trial of Floyd’s killer began and I attended until it ended this week, the day after the year anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
I laughed, wondering if Jesus’s disciples would have attended a virtual prayer tent after his crucifixion?
I listened to poets, Imans, rabbis, pastors, bishops, high school students and activists. This is some of what I heard:
That refugees in Syria stood on the rubble of war- torn fields and drew beautiful murals of George Floyd.
I heard: Hate is anger not filtered through love.
From a young Black woman: Black people live with discomfort every day.
From a young white pastor: “It is time for white people to sit in discomfort. Not to run from it.” He called this a “sacred discomfort that had the power to heal.”
A woman pastor said: We are all just dressed-up dirt. We should recognize each person has been called from the dust by God.
A male Bishops said: We have taken sides. One for the elephant, one for the donkey. But who is for the Lamb of God?”
As I listened, I began to feel more hopeful, less restless. We worshipped together.
Brueggeman says that today, Trinity Sunday, is an occasion for engaging with and responding to God’s mystery on terms other than our own.” On my terms, I needed God to explain George Floyd’s killing. I was stuck at Jesus on the cross. I had to be reminded that the crucifixion of Jesus was not a defeat but a rebirth, a new beginning. Things are not as they seem with our human eyes. Listening to the members of this prayer community I let go of the humaneness that was blocking my view.
I was made anew, rearranged by God’s holiness. Refilled with the Holy Spirit.
In worshipping, I was reborn. I yielded to the overwhelming and extravagant presence of God. I will not rest until my work is done; but I am not restless. Strong again, I can open my arms and say, “Here, I am Lord, Send me.”
Sing: We who believe in Freedom cannot rest.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
Until the killing of black men, black mother’s sons
Is as important as the killing of white men, white mother’s sons
We who believe in freedom cannot rest.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
This sermon is approximately 9:29 seconds long, the amount of time it took Derek Chauvin to choke the breath of life out of George Floyd. But you can see what else can be done in that time. A rabbi at the virtual prayer tent said, “For Jewish people, the scariest sound in the world is that of murderous silence.”