Rector's Sermon - Sunday, June 6, 2004

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31	Psalm 8:1-9	Romans 5:1-5	John 16:12-15

    If you have not seen it, I would like to recommend renting the movie Big Fish. The story concerns the relationship between a father who is dying and his estranged son. The father is known as someone who through his entire life told enthralling stories, but the son was embarrassed and alienated by them, only seeing them as gross exaggerations and lies. The movie becomes an intriguing interplay of the stories the father was famous for, how the son interpreted them, and how we the viewer interpret them. Gradually as we begin to understand the underlying truths of the stories, the son also begins to truly understand his father. I won’t give away the rest of the movie except to note that at the end, the stories all connect with reality and illuminate clearly the great legacy of the father.

    We know about Jesus mainly through stories. Jesus himself loved to tell stories because that is the way people learned and remembered teachings about God. As we read the stories of Luke, Matthew, Mark or John we realize that the Gospel writers told different stores about Jesus from various perspectives and we are all much the richer for their depth. Church history tells us that different people in different places and at different times interpreted even the same stories quite differently. Properly understood that is a great blessing.

    What is true for the four Gospels is also true for the entire Bible. The Bible is such a wonderful book precisely because it is filled with stores about God, written and complied over centuries by myriads of people of faith. For example, our first lesson is from the Book of Proverbs, a genre of writing termed Wisdom literature that mainly flourished in Israel’s culture for a thousand years from the reign of Solomon up to Jesus’ own time. The specific passage read from Proverbs this morning was probably composed a few centuries before Jesus was born. Wisdom is portrayed as an attractive and competent woman who helps God in the continuing process of creation. The wonder, delight and even playfulness of the whole creative process comes through. Creation is not only work, it is also fun. No portrayal of a dour or stern God here. The literature as a whole, that includes Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, values the joy in the varied gifts of God’s creation. I suspect this passage is read on this Day, known as Trinity Sunday, precisely because Wisdom is portrayed in a close and friendly relationship with God. The long tradition of Wisdom is never distant or independent from the process of creation.

    Stories tend to pull us together and to connect us with one another. The more we are connected the better we are able to understand things in perspective and maintain a balance when challenges come. In one sense Trinity Sunday is like a container that gathers up into a large salad bowl a huge storehouse of stories. Together, in all their variety, they affirm the oneness of God. History tells us that unfortunate things happen when a Christian community develops a one-track mind, or becomes a single-issue people with only one fixed version of the truth. The language of the Trinity, despite its limitations of language, at its best conveys a living, dynamic relationship that is changing, growing, revealing, and is never simply fixed in one place.

    In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus could confidently tell the disciples that they would continue to grow in fellowship together. While there were many things that Jesus never was able to teach them, they will be well served. Like the first disciples, God in many forms continues to come to us, and we will not be left behind and deserted. We are invited to take a look at those old stories, discover their new insights, and examine those stories we have passed over, ignored or scorned.

    You will never understand the movie Big Fish by hearing only one of the father’s stories just once. As you view the movie you have to balance several perspectives and continually revise your own perspective. Again, the last five minutes of the movie are critical.

    In the same way, the many stories of God function to inspire and awaken the dynamic relationship between God and humanity. Trinity Sunday invites us to meet the living Christ again, to hear the Holy Spirit in a different tongue, to perceive the wonder of God in fresh ways, and to sing to God a new song.

    And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.