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Homepage >> Ministry >> Worship And Music >> Sermons >> The Trinitarian God: Past, Present, and Future The Trinitarian God: Past Present, and Future
Good Morning, St.
Chrysostom’s! I’m glad to be with you on this occasion when your Associate (and
my wife) Terri is at this very moment involved with the 26-mile Avon Breast
Cancer Walk; and Ray Webster is at his fortieth anniversary celebration at Princeton. It’s good to be with you. And I bring greetings from all 12 of the Episcopal
Charities agencies, and especially Lawrence Hall Youth Services, where I serve
as Chaplain. Lawrence Hall is the oldest and largest of the 12 Charities
agencies, having just celebrated our 142nd annual meeting just two
weeks ago. Started by Fr. Van Arsdale in 1865, this agency has grown and
changed over this long history. In
the early 1900s, we received the piece of property on the corner of Lawrence
and Francisco, from which our name is derived, Lawrence Hall
School for Boys, as it
was known back then. In 1988, Lawrence Hall merged with Judge Mary Bartelme
Homes and Services, becoming co-educational and one of the major youth service
agencies in the state of Illinois. Today
we see over 500 youth and their families every day in our four service areas –
residential care, foster care, independent living services and our Therapeutic Day School. We are now in the middle of
a $35-million campus re-building program, looking to open our new residential
facility in December of this year. I want to thank you here at St. Chrysostom’s
for all your prayers and support of our work, and indeed, the work of all 12 of
our Charities agencies. Through the Charities agencies and the efforts of all
our parishes, the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago is making a significant difference
in our communities. Although a large agency, our motto at Lawrence Hall Youth
Services is “making a difference to last a lifetime” and we do that one child
at a time. Anecdotally, what seems to make the difference in the success of our
kids is when they connect with some staff member, volunteer or teacher who
takes a special interest in them. That child will blossom because they know
that someone is there for them, caring through thick or thin, good behavior and
bad. It is in the context of relationship that healing and wholeness begin to
happen and progress can be made. This healing taking place in the context of relationship
brings me to the central point and theme of this Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday
is the only Sunday of the church year named for a theological concept – not celebrating
what the German language calls in that wonderful, sturdy word, “heilgeschicte”
or salvation history. But as we go back into the history of our liturgy,
“trinity” is derived not because of an academic or intellectual interest, but
rather the church bearing witness to an experiential understanding of what they
knew and understood. God was and continues to be radically manifest in three
ways: God as the source and creator of all being; God as manifest in our Lord
Jesus the Christ and experienced as our redeemer; and God as the continuing
leadership of the church and of God’s people in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Three forms of working and being manifest, but one and the same God. The author, Luke, captures this understanding best in the
way he structures his two volume history, Luke and Acts. This kind of history
is not something ancient and removed, but something radically active and
empowering for his day, and now even down to our own day. Luke sees the God of all
creation working through the people of Israel, then most concretely in the
life, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ; and then and now in the
life given by the Holy Spirit, manifest both in Luke’s time, but continuing
down through the ages into the church today. That same Spirit, manifest in the
breaking of the bread, the Scriptures, and the work of the church, is working
in and through us to show God’s love and power to this world which God has
entrusted to our care. You’ll note in this morning’s gospel from John, when
Jesus talks about the Spirit of truth, who was coming to the disciples, Jesus’
directional focus is to the future: “…the Spirit of truth when he comes will guide you into all truth…[and]
he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 6:14). Jesus, here,
is not merely predicting what will come, but the kind and quality of the
ongoing relationship that Jesus has with the Father, and with his disciples. Such
a relationship is ongoing, ever-expanding, and always inclusive. It is a
movement and a process, not a static and fixed formulation, as some would see
discussions of the Trinity. In this season of graduations, I was reminded of one of
my seminarians from Seabury-Western some years ago who had done his parish
internship at Lawrence Hall, just like Matthew has done his here at St.
Chrysostom’s. I had the opportunity to meet Brian’s family, and they thanked me
for helping Brian grow through many rich, varied, not always easy, and
sometimes even painful, growth experiences at Lawrence Hall Youth Services. One
of his family members said, “It must take a special kind of person to work in a
setting like this. What do you look for in a seminarian to work at Lawrence Hall?” I quickly replied: “Someone who loves God and loves kids. The
rest can be developed.” Teaching faith to kids, and I would suspect to all of us,
is relational, and not propositional. Yes, one needs to think right and
understand properly, but our learning and our comprehending is based on the experience
of being deeply loved. That is at the heart of any proper understanding of the
Trinity and the nature of the relationship in the godhead, manifest to us in
our own salvation history, and continuing in our relationship with the Spirit
and with others. Let me tell you a story that illustrates this for me. It
comes out of the life of one of our kids, named Scott. Scott had been rejected
by both his mom and his dad, and had come to Lawrence Hall through The
Department of Children and Family Services. Scott was both an attractive, lovable
kid, and a royal pain in the neck. Schoolwork was definitely not his strong
suit, and he continued to fail miserably and act out in the classroom
environment. That is, until the day when one of our teachers discovered his
love of cooking, and together, they, and several other kids, began a cooking
class, the results of which turned into a delicatessen for both staff and kids.
With that positive, motivating activity, Scott finally graduated, and with help
from the Bishop and several trustees, got into culinary school, but the ghosts
of his past and voices telling him that he was “just no good” caused him to
drop out and disappear. Three years later he reappeared. But now he was in the
Evanston Hospital Hospice Unit, dying of AIDS. His father came up from
Texas to visit him three
days before his death, but left quickly when he found out that he might be
liable for the funeral expenses. Instead, a group of Lawrence Hall girls from
one of our group homes, and probably the closest family Scott had, came
together to sit with him and support him in his last days. And when he died,
they came to me to help organize a funeral service at Lawrence Hall. That service was a powerful testimony to the depth and
importance of faithful, loving relationships over time. And today Scott’s
spirit is still present in our “Try-Me’s Delicatessen,” and central to our new
building and to our programming for Scott helped us learn that every child
needs a chance to be productive, and to give of themselves, and to love and be
loved in ways that makes sense of and respects the uniqueness of each
individual. Today, I keep this statue in my office, given by Jackie Krause, a
volunteer who worked with Scott. We call it Scott’s angel and it stands as a
reminder of the vital importance of caring through relationships. Now I doubt that any of the young people involved in that
memorial service could articulate a Trinitarian formula, but they bore witness
to the God who had created them, who was working out God’s purpose of
redemption, and whose spirit was strengthening them. They could talk about the
faithful and loving relationships which made a difference in their lives. People sometimes ask what I do in a situation like that. One
way I respond is to say that I help people with a sense of hope. Yes, our kids
have had some terrible situations in their lives, but they are also just
adolescent kids, like all kids, trying to make sense of this world we live in,
and to grow up and find meaning and purpose for their lives. Isn’t that true for all of us – looking for meaning and
purpose in our lives? The joy of working with these kids is that they are
teaching me to discover the God who is not only redeeming their lives, but my
life as well. For the truth of Trinity Sunday, and indeed of the
spiritual life as well, is that God is relational. And God has given us a
common destiny. We are all in this life together. As one person put it, “we may
have come to this country on different ships, but we are all in the same boat
now.” If we can begin to get a hold of this idea, our lives and our communities
may become dramatically transformed. As strange as it may sound, their
salvation may be our salvation, too. The Spirit continues to push, and lead and guide us. And
along with the God who created us, and Jesus who redeems us, we celebrate today
their unity, One God, now and into our promised future. Amen. (This
sermon was preached by the Rev. David Stanford in St.
Chrysostom's Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, June 3, 2007, Trinity Sunday.)
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