Invited In

A sermon on Psalm 8, Romans 5:1-5, and John 16:12-15

[for and audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash]

There’s a poem I have long loved by American poet Edwin Markham.

It was written more than 100 years ago, but I did not know that until I looked it up this week.

Because these 4 lines of wisdom remain intensely relevant: speaking both a word of truth about the corrosive malignancy of prejudicial hatred and a word of hope about the power of loving inclusion.

The poem is called Outwitted. It goes like this:

He drew a circle that shut me out—Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.But Love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle that took him in!

I first discovered this poem soon after I had arrived in my first inclusive Lutheran congregation, after a winding faith journey that started in the (big E) Evangelical church.

As deconstructing/reconstructing faith journeys go, mine was fairly gentle, but I have nevertheless had my moments of being labeled a heretic, or a rebel… especially as a woman who stepped out of her place by partnering (rather than submitting to) my husband, and having strong opinions about theology that were grounded in my own biblical study, and (gasp) going to Seminary.

So, there was something really healing for me about the reframing that Markham offers: a reminder that whether or not others seek to shut me out and denigrate my faith, I don’t have to match their vitriol and division.

I can choose inclusion… especially if God – who is Love – is my ally in drawing the circle wide.

I have to confess, though, that these days I’m finding it harder to find as much hope in that wide circle drawn to take in those beliefs and behaviors make them enemies of the way of Jesus as I understand it.

Because it’s not just a matter of name-calling anymore.

It’s a matter of a burgeoning wave of Christian Nationalism that celebrates mass deportations of our neighbors, and threats to my child’s gender-affirming healthcare, and the deployment of marines on American streets…

And my inclusive circle feels like a pretty ineffectual response.

Not to mention… I’m not entirely sure I want everyone inside my circle anymore… I’m not sure I feel safe with them in my circle.

My view of humanity has taken some hits. So much so that I want to stop the Psalmist at verse 4 of today’s chant and say, “that’s a good point.”

God, “What are humans that you are mindful of them?”

Do you think maybe you should rethink this whole “giving (us) dominion over the works of your hands” idea?

Because, from where I’m standing, we are making a colossal mess of things. I think you might have miscalculated.

Not the most uplifting thing I’ve ever said in a sermon, but I think we have to start with honest in order to get to any truly enduring hope.

So, my honest truth is that I don’t trust my own circle-drawing to be either effective or healing.

But… what if it’s not my circle?

What if, instead, it’s God’s circle?

Not just in the sense of “Love” drawing the circle with me, or Jesus directing us to be united in love as last week’s gospel admonished.

What if the circle, the inclusive, healing, boundary-erasing circle that outwits human divisiveness and hatred is actually who God is?

And what if God is the one drawing us in?

That possibility is what makes Trinity Sunday feel like it matters to me.

Because if “the Trinity” is just about a theological idea… if it’s just about wrestling with various ineffective metaphors to try to describe the infinite and unknowable totality of God’s reality, then I can’t get very excited about that task.

Mostly it just makes me anxious about actually committing heresy…

And for no very good reason, because I’m not realistically going to help anyone to actually comprehend the three-in-one and one-in-three…

So, if the point is just to understand God, there really is not point.

But if the point is not about what we understand, but rather it’s about what we are invited to participate in; if it’s about recognizing that God’s very being is the inclusive, division-dissolving circle…that does matter. That’s something worth exploring.

Debi Thomas wrote a wonderful lectionary essay on this Sunday’s readings entitled “The Trinity: So What?”[1]

This essay is her effort to explore the consequences of God being Father, Son, and Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer… all somehow existing in perfect unity but with unique identity.

She asks, “so what?” and her answer is that “the whole truth of who God is” changes who we are because, “The truth of God will always confront, convict, and remake us, even as it soothes and affirms us.”

Who God is matters because of what that reality invites us into…an invitation that transforms us AND comforts us… an invitation that STARTS with God’s nature, meaning that our part is just to join.

And Thomas has some powerful ways of exploring the invitation that we find in God’s reality as Trinity:

The Triune God is dynamic: ”always on the move, always spilling over, always organic, always a surprise.”

If we step into the circle of such a dynamic God, we cannot presume to have a lock on a truth that we can then use to bludgeon anyone who disagrees with us.

We need to watch for God’s movement… to be awake for the new thing that God is doing.

The Triune God is also diverse: within God’s goodness, there are different forms of expression, an “intrinsic plurality,” to use Thomas’s phrase.

She asks, “If God can incarnate goodness through contrast and tension, then it’s worth asking why we can’t. Or won’t.”

Our communion with such a God will naturally challenge and convict our fear of difference.

And, speaking of communion, the Triune God is communal: “God is relationship, intimacy, connection, and communion.”

The individualism and autonomy that are so deeply prized in our culture are fundamentally antithetical to who God is, because there is no this is just me and not the Father or Spirit now, with Jesus. They have identity without independence.

Which means we need to carefully interrogate our own assumption that we have the right to separate ourselves and our well-being from the plight of any other human soul invited into the circle of grace that is God’s being (which is everyone).

The Triune God is also hospitable: exuding openness to include others in the joy of their communion.

Thomas says it so clearly when she writes, “The point of the Three is always to add one more, to extend the invitation, to make the holy table more expansive and more welcoming. In fact, the deeper the intimacy between the Three grows, the roomier the table grows.”

And she follows this description up with the consequence for us: “the closer we draw to the adoration of the Three, the wider and more hospitable our hearts grow towards the world.”

Finally, the Triune God is love: We know this one; it’s not surprising.

But I wonder, sometimes, if the familiarity of the claim that God is love robs it of its impact.

It is an astonishing claim that the source of all life and power in the universe is defined not by domination, but by self-giving… by existing for and finding selfhood in the good of the other.

Which means that’s what we were made for as well: creatures made in the image of Love.

Dynamic. Diverse. Communal. Hospitable. Love.

It doesn’t explain how the whole One-in-Three/Three-in-One thing works…

But it explains why it matters.

A God whose very being challenges the ways that we draw our circles to keep others out…through rigid ideas, or fear of difference, or individualism, or suspicion, or the desire to dominate.

If that is what Trinity means, then we have to see those ways of behaving as antithetical to God’s way of being

But also, if we worship the Triune God, we worship a God whose very being invites us to embrace the hope that God draws the circle to take us in.

And that is an unconquerable hope. Thanks be to God.

[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2251-the-trinity-so-what