Preaching text: None
I’m building a wall, a fine wall.
Not so much to keep you out.
More to keep me in.
Those are the lyrics to the chorus of a Pet Shop Boys song. The song is titled “Building a Wall” and appears on the pop duo’s 2009 release, “Yes,” which I’ve been listening too pretty regularly in my trips to and fro as your pastor (It’s in the car’s CD player.) Although it was released in 2009, there was a part of me when I listened to this song that thought it was rather timely, since walls have been in the news a lot lately. Most of that, of course, is due to statements made over the past few years by our President. Regardless of how you or I might feel about those statements and the potential public policy that may result from them, there is one thing we can agree on: what walls are for. As the song states, they are meant to keep you out or me in. They create division, a barrier. They are meant to separate, to keep us apart from something perhaps threatening, or keep us away from something because we are a threat to them.
And what do walls have to do with the Trinity on this Sunday?
Well, there are a lot of ways I could have preached today. I could have attempted what would likely be a futile attempt to make some sense of the Trinity doctrine, that is to say explain how it works. That would be foolish. The Trinity is another paradox, another divine mystery, something that is true but makes no sense from a logical or rational standpoint. Better instead to talk about what the Trinity is meant to tell us about God and additionally about ourselves. What does it mean?
Well, at the core, the Trinity is about relations. The Trinity is relational. The Father is parent to the Son. The Son is child to the Father. The Spirit is the connective tissue between them and also between them and us. They’re all apart of one another and we too, as believers, are a part of them and they a part of us. All interconnected. All in relationship. All together with no division or separation.
In other words, the exact opposite of a wall.
Everything about God is about relationship. God’s relationship within and with himself, the Trinity. God’s relationship with humankind. God’s relationship with the Church. God’s relationship with you and yours with him. And your relationship with one another and the rest of the human race. All interconnected. All together. All meant to be in relationship with one another. None of us, not even God, lives in isolation.
Scripture bears this out. Many point to the first creation story where Word and Spirit come from the Creator to form the universe. All together, all working to create what is, seen and unseen. But also it is found in the second creation story in Genesis, where God looks down upon Adam and declares “It is not good that the man is alone. Let us make a companion for him.” And so is made woman and families and the whole human race. Created specifically for us to be in companionship with one another.
As you trace through the stories, what upsets and unsettles God the most are the times when his people is NOT living in companionship with one another. The Egyptians enslave the Israelites, and so God sends a liberator to set things right. The Israelites in turn abuse and neglect the poor, so God sends prophets to call them back into right relationship with one another. Jesus himself comes to unite and to embrace, and gives no greater example than when he brings prostitutes and tax collectors into the fold in defiance of social convention. Jesus likewise prays, as we saw a few weeks ago, for the unity of his people: May they be one as we are one. That unity is relationship.
And, of course, we cannot forget Jesus’ own sacrifice on the cross and his rising again on the third day. Nothing separates us from one another more than death. Each one of us here can point to someone in their lives that they give just about anything to have by their side again: a parent, grandparent, spouse, child, friend, etc. God knows that desire and thus he sent Jesus to bring death to heel and to give us hope that the partings we have endured due to death will only be temporary. Your most precious relationships, even if touched by death, will not be gone forever.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Long have we claimed these are the most important words in all of Scripture. They highlight God’s intention to bring the world (and all of us) into right relationship with himself through Christ, an intention that saw fruition when Christ died and rose again.
But there’s another piece to it. Since we are given this right relationship with God through his grace, we are now called to have that right relationship with one another. This is why I preach the way I do. We spend so much energy, time, and resources on walls, both physical and metaphorical, that are always divided from the people we are meant to love. Yes, the world is a scary place, but do you know how we make it less scary? By reaching out to our neighbors, to those who are strangers, even to those who are our enemies, and developing relationship with them. When we see the world through their eyes, by listening to them and walking alongside them, we can come to understand. And if we understand, we do not fear. And if we do no fear, then we can embrace. It all starts and ends with love. Full circle. Kind of like the Trinity. Amen.
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