First Sunday after Trinity, June 14 2020

Lectionary Readings for the First Sunday after Trinity

Exodus 19: 2–8a

They had journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness; Israel camped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God; the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.’ So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one: ‘Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.’

Psalm 116: 1, 10-17

I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my supplications.

What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.

You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord!

Romans 5: 1-8

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Matthew 9: 35-10: 8

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity

I’d like to talk about animals this morning.

Many times during these beautiful Spring days my son Michael and I have gone for a long walk together in Hyde Park. We have had time to linger, and to look out for things. Over the past three months we have watched several families of ducklings hatch, and grow, and become so large we can no longer tell them from their parents. The babies are so fragile-looking, so small and fluffy, that we want to reach down and scoop them up, cradle them in our hands, and hold them close. But, even though we lean down, and fix our eyes on them, and almost, almost, reach for them…we don’t. We can’t. We know that they are protected in that Pond; we walk on and let them live out their lives as they were meant to do.

The Springtime, each year, is full of new-born animals—-all fragile, perfect in their newness, miraculous, even, we might say—-life delivered before our very eyes, though most of us in this city parish don’t have the chance to see more than ducklings being born. Of all the animals being born in this beautiful cycle of birth and re-birth, I think that there is a reason why the new-born lamb has always been the symbol of Jesus, from the earliest times of the church.

Symbols, as I have said before, are powerful things. They embody abstract concepts that our brains cannot ever really comprehend in words on a piece of paper.

The Trinity is one of the hardest concepts to grasp, and so, for it, we summon the most powerful symbols. Today is the first Sunday after the Sunday we celebrated this mystery of the Trinity: that God exists for us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer——there are many ways to talk about the Trinity.

But I want to go back to animals.

Animals are powerful symbols: they call forth from us a response of pleasure, of joy in just the looking at them, of seeing them so beautifully wrought. They call forth from us a desire to be with them, like beloved dogs or cats that become intimate participants in the rhythm of our days. They call forth from us compassion, if they suffer and are in need. They are more vulnerable than we are; they need our care.

The powerful symbol of the lamb came to stand for Jesus because, of all the prophets and teachers of all the faiths of the world, Jesus, born among us, made himself uniquely vulnerable to the love of his fellow human beings, and also to their rejection. Jesus offered himself to others in purity of heart, like a lamb. Jesus came into the world open to the person he would become, fulfilling the destiny God had laid out for him, like a lamb. The love that was outpoured from Jesus’s life was like that of a lamb in the care of a good master. And in the end, Jesus was sacrificed, like a lamb.

The lamb on the altar, but also the Shepherd of the sheep. A lamb that was slain in order to become the shepherd of the souls of the lost and the broken. Love poured out without limit, in order to manifest the limitless love of God. This is a paradox of the faith we hold, a faith that is so rich and so deep that words fail to contain it: we have to resort to symbols.

Jesus ascended to heaven at the end of his human life, his human destiny having been fulfilled. But he left with us the Holy Spirit, the inrushing, embracing, allencompassing reality of God’s Spirit that will never leave us.

The powerful symbol of the Holy Spirit is the dove. Sent from God at Jesus’s baptism —-white, ethereal, descending from on high. Speaking then and in the ear of prophets and holy persons since—-counseling, consoling, supporting us through every darkness.

The dove. Like the lamb, a symbol of purity, holiness, and peace.

And so we come to the eagle.

God said to Moses: Remember how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

God—-the most holy, the indescribable. Words fail most when we attempt to speak about God. The first numbered hymn in the Baptist hymnal that I grew up with is Holy, Holy, Holy, for good reason—-and it is always sung on Trinity Sunday. But what words suffice for God, what symbols serve, for God?

Of all the animals that God created in the wild exotic profusion of creatures populating this earth, perhaps the most untouchable, the most supremely beautiful, is the eagle. Soaring high above all the rest of creation, the eagle has come to be the symbol of power, of might, of majesty. Of rescue and redemption.

This image of the eagle from Exodus echoes in Psalm 103:

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. …who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

And in Isaiah 40:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles….

God reigns on high, above our sight and our understanding. But God sees us and knows us, even better than we know ourselves. God knows our needs and our wants. God has fashioned the destiny of each one of us, and like an all-seeing eagle, carries us through to the end.

The Lord of the Rings has been my son Sam’s favorite book. In this, his inspired and marvelous epic, J. R. R. Tolkien, a man of profound Christian faith, embodied qualities of the Christ-figure in three characters: in the wizard Gandalf, in the King who is to return—-Aragorn, and, above all, in the character of Sam, the homely companion of the Ring-bearer, Frodo. Having borne the increasing weight of the Ring for so long toward Mount Doom, physically exhausted, Frodo collapses, unable to complete his great task. He would have failed. But Sam, loyal and unswerving, bends down, reaches to hoist him onto his own shoulders, and carries him on his back to the end of their shared journey. The Ring is destroyed and its power is broken.

But as Frodo and Sam attempt to return home, they are stranded on the precipice of a chasm, with the molten lava of the Mount Doom rising up ever higher to engulf them. There is no way out. They have saved Middle Earth, but they cannot save themselves. They are about to despair. But then, but then, as they have before, the eagles come. And they carry Frodo and Sam to safety.

The Trinity is a word we use for all that we might say about God. In the end, it is not enough: we have to resort to symbols—-the eagle, the lamb, the dove.

They help us grasp the power of God to be with us and to redeem us from whatever mess we may have made of our lives—whatever imperfections, shortcomings, disappointments, failures we may have known. We have all known these: it is what it means to be human.

In the end, in faith, we surrender ourselves to the overarching love of God that holds us up and holds us close even in the darkest of times.

That love, the outpouring love of the overflowing Trinity, will never fail us. Amen.

The Revd Dana English

The United Benefice of Holland Park June 14, 2020