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Video version of this sermon and the worship it was part of, can be found by scrolling down to the bottom.

Soren Kierkegaard made the observation
about our ordinary human insanity,
that we could only understand life backward,
but we can only live life gong forward.

Likewise, we declare and grant
”Yes” and “No”
to so many life-altering events and decisions
without blinking an eye –
never knowing ahead of time what we
have accented to or denied,
and most of the time never knowing the implications
of our saying no.

The readings today
take us down that rabbit hole
and lead us along a twisted path.
I am going to do the same.

Let’s go back to the beginning of another century –
the turn of the 20th century – just for perspective.

In 1900
a massive hurricane swallowed Galveston, Texas whole
and killed 8,000 people.

In 1901
President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo.

In 1902
a volcanic eruption on the island of Martinique
killed 38,000 people in a single moment.

In 1906
San Francisco had its famous earthquake and fire
that killed 3,000.
That same year an earthquake in Colombia killed another 1,000.
Still in 1906 an earthquake in Valparaiso, Chile
killed 20,000.

The bookend on that half-decade of devastation
was a famine in China
during which 20 million died in one year.
We could add to this woe by mentioning travails in Africa,
Australia, the Middle East or Siberia
in those first few years of the new twentieth century.

But one crucial difference
between then and now, is that now
their is a sandstorm  of information
about every and all disasters, wars, genocides,
economic meltdowns and even the death of unnamed individuals
who die from noteworthy causes
two continents away.

You and I are standing in the middle
of what might be the collapse of US capitalism,
and at the same time
we are inundated with horrendous details
about god-awful fires,
hurricanes, autocrats
poisoning or chopping up members of their opposition,
the North Korean nuclear program,
global warming witnessed one chunk of ice at a time,
and a global pandemic that has revealed
the astounding negligence and incompetence
of the current federal leadership.

We are drenched with disasters in great detail
whether or not we experience them personally
and whether or not we can exert any personal influence
upon solving them or caring for their victims.

Add to this gruesome storm of devastation,
threat, and calamity
any personal trauma, crisis, or grief
and our perspective on the world,
on life itself,
and on our own circumstances,
can be utterly distorted.

In fact, even if everything is going along well for us personally,
all that information
about things utterly beyond our control
can change our perception dramatically.
And we ought to know by now
that “perception is reality.”

In other words, how we perceive things,
whether we are accurate in our perception or not,
shapes our actions and responses.

So…in a moment like this one,
when institutions we have come to depend upon
are cracking if not collapsing,
and the vault of our trust in elected leaders
is more bankrupt than Pier One and JC Penny,
and the strange disconnect between
economic reality and the stock market
feels like thin ice,
we have less certainty than ever
about what to say “Yes” or say “No” to.
It is a good time to take a step back.

In times like these
we need to step back and name
what is most important to us.

We need to step back and name
who is most important to us.

We need to step back and name
who and what we have in our lives
for which we are most grateful.

We need to step back and name
who and what we need to reach out and hold onto –
for their sake and for ours.

It is in times like these
we need to step back from the fury of information
raining down on us like acid,
and filter it out
so that we can see our own situation more clearly.
We need to be like a dancer affixing her gaze
so she can retain her balance
while spinning furiously on her toes.

We likewise need to affix our gaze
on a single point –
on a single point that we trust…
on a single point that we love…
on a single point that we know
is more solid than anything else we know.

I won’t tell you there is only one single point
in the vast array of our spiritual wisdom
upon which to affix our gaze.
Our tradition has multiple points
and a long history of guides, mystics, and teachers
who offered different tethers in a storm
that work differently for different people.
Abraham and Sarah;
Moses and the Exodus;
Ruth and Naomi;
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah;
the parables and teachings of rabbi Jesus;
the mystical, resurrected Christ;
the wisdom of Paul;
the female and male mystics
of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries;
the social prophetic martyrs of the 20th century…

In one sense
they are all part of one giant pier
upon which to tether ourselves in turbulent times,
but it is too big to hold onto the whole thing
and so we must choose a piece of it for ourselves.
We can wrap ourselves even around just a solid branch
of the giant tree that is most familiar,
most comforting,
most solid for us in the moment.

Knowing you surely have your own tether
or focus point for tumultuous and painful times,
I am going to share where my gaze is affixed just now.
Or to put in in terms of the readings,
where my “Yes” is declared and tethered.
For me personally,
the point on which to affix my gaze is trust –
trust that no matter what, no matter what,
it will be okay – because of God.

Now I don’t mean magical thinking
in the sense that because of God no one gets hurt
and everything turns out like Disney in the end.
I mean because of God, whatever happens,
I trust it will be okay.
Whether or not I survive
or those I love survive,
it will be okay because I trust God
is merciful.
I trust God to be God,
and therefore whatever happens will be grace.

What that really means
is that I am able to grab hold of a perspective
that it is not really about me
and not really about those I love,
rather, it is a perspective about something much bigger
and greater than myself.
To trust God to be God
is to gain the perspective
that it is not about me or mine,
or the nation or the church I belong to.

To trust God to be God
is to gain the perspective
that it is about so much more
than I can see at any given moment,
nor will I ever have the perspective
to judge the final outcome.

To trust God to be God
is to keep my vision affixed
on my core knowledge about God
and to hold onto it with determination and faith
rather than with fear and anxiety.

To trust God to be God
allows me to reach out
and hold the hands of people I see reaching toward me,
but also allowing them to hold me.

Trusting God to be God
means strengthening our connection
to others in community
at the very moment our knee-jerk reaction
is to recoil, pull away, and nurse
our hurt or fear in isolation.

I mention all of this,
not only because of the disintegration
of the financial system
or the fires
or need for face masks
or people who refuse to wear face masks
or any of it,
but because of that parable from Matthew.

It is an image of the tether
to which I affix my gaze in difficult times.
God is like the generous employer
who gives everyone the same pay
regardless of when they began working.

That pretty much preaches itself.

It’s great news to anyone except
those who have been working all day.
It’s great news to anyone except
those who nurse on resentment when someone gets more than they do.
There is something in this parable
that is very much like the story of the father
whose generous love and embrace
of his very derelict boy
fills the oldest and dutiful son
with nothing but bitterness.

There is something in this parable
very much like the story of Jonah
who complains angrily to God
that the whole reason he ran away in the first place
was because he knew, he just knew,
that if he really went and warned Nineveh to clean it up,
that God was going to grant them leniency.
It just burned Jonah up
that late in the game God was going to be merciful
instead of stingy with a kind of justice
that would punish them for not being good enough.
Jonah’s was a resentment
that revealed his deeply self-centered perspective.

And it is just not that difficult to identify with Jonah,
the Prodigal’s oldest brother
or those who worked the whole day for the same pay.
Everyone of us has sucked on that toxin before.
Everyone of us knows the bitterness of that bile.

Everyone of us knows the perverse pleasure
of nursing resentment
years and years after the perceived offense.

But resentment and bitterness are not
the primary disease,
they are the only symptoms.
The primary disease is a gaze that is affixed to the self.

The primary disease is being fatally rooted
in “me and my own.”
The primary dis-ease is a self-orbit
that knows no higher ground.

These parables and stories
that consistently come at us from out of our tradition,
push our gaze upward and outward
toward a perspective
that is much bigger and greater than ourselves.

That does not mean we don’t matter.
It does not mean our needs are unimportant.
It does not mean that our losses and pain
are not grievous and debilitating.
They are.
But rather, it means
we are a small part in a much bigger story
and our meaning is derived,
not from our part in the story,
but from the story itself.

Get it?

The rock solid meaning
to which we need to tether ourselves,
is the meaning of the story
– not our little part in it.

When we can affix our gaze
at difficult and painful moments
on our trust that the kingdom of God,
and this life we are living,
is part of a bigger
and more meaningful story than our own self-interest,
then we find ourselves able to unclench our jaws.

So I don’t really know what that means
for the long-term health or demise
of American capitalism
or global warming
or the fight for the soul of the nation,
but I do know
that I can see and hear
and comprehend much better
when I hold onto trust in God.
It helps me to unclench my jaw
and loosen my grip on the rope
and start reaching out to hold your hand.
Sometimes then, I can even allow you to hold mine.

Well, thank you so much for listening today,
and being part of this community across time and space – whoever you are
and wherever you are.

Peace be with you.

https://trinitygenevany.org/2020/09/20/1179/

14 A Pentecost, 2020: Jurassic Jesus

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Video Version

 

Sermon Text

Matthew 18:15-20

Matthew made an editor’s rookie mistake.
He has Jesus say,
about those who don’t listen
“even to the church”
that they will be as “Gentiles and tax collectors.”

Well, guess what,
Jesus hung out with Gentiles and tax collectors.
Jesus melted the boundaries between
him and them.
So this ever-so-famous proverb
probably does not come from the lips of Jesus,
or at least not in exactly the way
Matthew quotes him.
Instead, this is a proverb of the very early,
fledgling church.

I want to tell you how Matthew’s imaginative
rendering of Jesus
is so much like us and COVID-19.
But to do it,
we need to begin with a very brief historical vignette.

Thirty years after the Romans executed Jesus,
there was an horrific war.
You’ve heard me talk about this before
because it is such a major event in our history –
the kind of major, world-shattering event
we didn’t learn and never talk about.

It began in 66 CE
when there was yet another Jewish uprising.
It was instigated by Judeans and Galileans
that believed God
wanted to purge the Promise Land
of the dirty, filthy,
pig-eating gentile Romans.

These revolutionaries believed
that if they started the war
God would finish it.

Many of them believed that a Messiah
would be involved in the final outcome –
either in the midst of the war
or at the end
to usher in a New Age.
In either case, the Romans would be crushed.

Not so much.
The Romans decimated them.
The Roman legions methodically
hunted down
any and every remnant of resistance
and mercilessly,
hideously,
quashed them.
For example, it is reported that the Romans
burned local children alive in Torah scrolls.
Symbolically, as well as literally,
eliminating their past and future in one violent act.

When all was said and done,
by the year 70 CE,
just three years after it started,
the Romans completed
their scorched-earth strategy.
The temple was leveled and burned,
the only remains of which we see today
as The Wailing Wall.
The only Judeans and Galileans to survive
were those who fled to other regions.

The original generation of Jesus-followers
who were mostly Jewish,
also perished or fled.

They took with them
the future of what became Christianity.
The Jewish-Roman war is why,
instead of remaining a small,
concentrated sect of Judaism,
the virus of Christianity
as Romans would come to know it,
escaped and spread across the empire.

This is the context in which to read Matthew.
Around the edges of the smoldering Holy Land
a remnant of Israel huddled.
The religion could have easily died out
right then and there.
The line between survival
and extinction became razor thin.
Consider this too:
The very purpose and focus of Israel,
as it had evolved to that moment in history,
was centered on a specific place.

The Passover story,
a piece of which we heard today,
concludes with the people entering the Promise Land.
The Promise Land was fulfillment
and physical evidence
that the Covenant
between God and Israel
was true.
Take away that land,
take away that temple,
take away that king,
take away that priesthood,
and there was nothing left.
So was the Covenant true?

It was a crisis,
a hollowing out of the religion and hope.
How could there be a covenant
if there is no land and no temple,
and the filthy, pig-eating Romans
continue to occupy and desecrate the promise?
Here is how close they were to extinction as a religion:
Even the Hebrew language
almost disappeared in that historical moment.
After generations
of living within other people’s empires
and being required to learn other people’s languages,
Hebrew was a fading tongue.
Most of the people were illiterate anyway
and what kept it alive were scribes and priests.
They were then killed in droves.

From the year 70, when the war ended,
to the year 100 or so,
Judaism was reborn
out of a small, vulnerable remnant
in villages just beyond the edges
of Judea and Galilee.
What we know today as rabbinical Judaism
was born among those ashes.

In the midst of all that chaos and tragedy
a community of Jewish-Christians
made their case for Jesus
to become the new Moses,
and Christianity
to become the new Israel.
What we know as the Gospel of Matthew
is not one person,
and was not written by one person.
It represents a community of believers
who took great pains
to tell the story of Jesus
in the image of Moses and Israel.
The Matthew Gospel
is quite different
from the other three that way.

Well, why should we care?
What has this little insignificant history lesson
have to do with us?
Just this:
Christianity became what it did,
and has continued to take root in new soil
all over the globe
precisely because Jesus-followers –
often in very small groups –
brought the stories and teachings of Jesus
to life in their time and place,
and with a relevance
to their particular circumstances.

Whether in Africa,
Central and South America,
among Native Americans
and slaves or freed slaves in North America,
and all along the Pacific and Asian continents,
Christians did not simply
and literally
adopt what Romans,
and later British, Spanish, and Dutch Colonialist
inflicted upon them.

Rather, they heard in the Gospels
their own stories
and their own circumstances
and their own wisdom.
They adapted what they heard
to their cultures
and their myths
and their interpretations
and their rituals.
In short, like Matthew did,
they made the stories and Jesus,
their own.

We’re in a tough spot though.
The stories that are in the frontal lobe of our brains
are Black Panther, Mulan, Wonder Woman,
Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Lion King,
Good Night Moon, Peter Pan and the like.

Remember,
the frontal lobe is the computer dashboard
of our brains – where the controls
and decisions for rational thought,
problem-solving,
how we emote,
memory, language,
even sexual behavior
all get made.

There are other stories of course,
elves, ferries, and whisperers
who populate the overgrown back-forty in our brain.
But the big, culturally embraced stories
shared by the herd
and that move us more or less
down the cattle chute,
are now digital, splashy,
bigger than life,
animated special effects we love to watch
whether we believe them or not.
In the moment,
if done well, they are believable
because we suspend our critical judgment
while engaged in
or engrossed by
the movie or book.

Jesus not so much.
He is still appearing nightly on parchment.
To my way of thinking,
every movie made with Jesus in it,
is a caricature:
somber faced,
humorless,
preachy,
above reproach
and without the complicated motivations
that real-life humans get tangled up in.

Because writers and directors
feel compelled to literalize the gospels
and suck all the imagination out of those stories,
Jesus doesn’t compare well to Simba,
T’Challa, or Ariel.
He seems, well, he seems like a decoupage –
an antique character pasted on a modern surface.

From all those other stories,
movies, novels,
and bedtime books
we can easily absorb the wisdom
or moral conveyed within their plots
or by their characters.
But Jesus –
as a living, breathing,
big-time story in our lives –
struggles for freedom.

For us, Jesus has been under lock-down
for a very long time.
He is under quarantine inside
17th, 18th, and 19th century redaction.

Not only is he safer there,
we are safer keeping him there.
Letting him out might cause a Jurassic Park moment.

Hey, that is actually a very apt metaphor.

The movie Jurassic Park
depicted an island paradise
where people could be transported,
and from the safety of their safari vehicles
could observe dinosaurs
brought back to life via cloning.

The Church has been Jurassic Park –
with our lovely liturgies
and spectacular buildings and windows,
and rarefied music.
Just really lovely.

And we could gaze at Jesus
encased in amber
and feel good about the whole thing.

What if Jesus got out?
Now there is a story worth telling!

What if Jesus got out of quarantine
and somehow appeared in the frontal lobe
of YOUR brain?
Would it be like the Velcirators
or T-rex busting free
and wreaking havoc in your life?

That is our challenge.
Bust Jesus out of lock-down
and allow him to be powerful
in the ways that he might exercise power
in our world.

Here and now, not in the first century,
but in pandemic-riven,
racially erupting,
politically cataclysmic
United States 2020.

Jurassic Jesus.
Let him loose in your life
and then tell the story about what happens.
Now there is a spiritual practice to get behind.

I almost stopped there.
But let me just add that the story doesn’t tell itself,
and Jesus doesn’t just roll off the page
and make sense.
WE have to reel him in,
re-interpret him,
re-imagine him,
and re-create him for our time,
in our circumstance,
and within the language and parlance of our culture.
It is not Matthew’s Jesus we need to hear and tell,
it is OUR Jesus that needs to be spoken here.

Well, thank you for listening.

I invite you to animate your Jurassic Jesus
and share with the rest of us
the story that ensues.
In the meantime,
the peace of God,
which, as the old hymn says, is no peace,
be with you and us each day.

 

13 A Pentecost 2020: The Beginning of God (according to Exodus 3:1-15

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Sermon Video

Sermon Text

We are Christians,
but the reason we talk about
the Judeo-Christian tradition
is that we were Jews first.

Jesus, who is the central figure of our religion –
the Wisdom Teacher, Gautama, or Messiah…
the HUGE One at our center – was a Jew.
If we desire to know where Jesus was coming from
then we need to know and feel
the biblical narrative that lived under his skin.

If the empty tomb is the primal Christian moment
then the burning bush is the primal moment in the Hebrew Testament.

There are other rival primal moments though,
unlike in the New Testament,
but Exodus 3:1 through chapter 4:17
is the core primal narrative to which Jesus was rooted.

WWJT – What Would Jesus Think?
Whatever it was, he would have
thought it
through the lens of Exodus 3:1-15.

Now the ancients of many cultures throughout history
believed that a story had power:
If you tell the story,
and you tell it well,
and you tell it often,
then it becomes your story.
Then – then – YOU become part of the story,
and the STORY shapes you
and the story SHAPES those who live with you.

In other words, life becomes shaped
in the image of the story.

On the surface of it,
that sounds ridiculous – we’re too sophisticated
to believe that a story has power
when we know darn well that life is shaped by bacteria,
DNA, and physics.
But be that as it may,
we also know in our bones,

in the muddy and gritty experiences of our lives,
that the ancients were right.
The story we tell shapes life.

This could be a sermon about getting in touch
with whatever story we have hitched our life to –
the story or stories that are shaping who we are and life around us.

That is a pretty big deal,
and discovering our story
is an essential chore of spiritual practice.

But I am sticking to THE story today
because the one evangelical bone in my body –
the mandible bone of the preacher –
thinks this story needs to be the core story
of our primal narrative as Christians.
As I tell you about it,
it will become obvious why it was also
the primal narrative of 18th and 19th century slave theology
in the United States.
We would do well to re-enter this story ourselves.

Anyway, just remember that the story we tell
shapes the life we live
and shapes life itself.

In the story of Exodus 3:1-15,
we learn right up front, at the very beginning,
what the differences are
between God and human beings.

Understand please, this is the very first appearance of God
in the whole of the Biblical narrative.

We heard about a few things that God did in Genesis
but until this moment with Moses,
God has been behind the curtain.
It is here that God inserts godself
smack dab in the middle of things.

Also understand
that while we are used to thinking
that the Book of Genesis
is the beginning of the bible, it is not.
Genesis is a prequel –
like the three Star Wars movies added to the first trilogy
to explain how it all began.
Genesis came later,
much later in historical time
and was then added as a preface to the Exodus story.

But the biblical story
really begins with Hebrews in slavery in Egypt.
The story begins by telling us about
an increased cruelty and oppression
heaped upon the slaves
because Egyptians lived in fear of the Hebrews
who had grown to out-numbered them.
All tyranny lives in fear of the oppressed
rising up to overthrow the tyrants.

We read about the same fear among white slave owners
in the colonial United States
and in the pre-Civil War South.

So 3:1 is the first appearance of God in the bible.
First impressions make a big difference.
Let’s look at what we learn about God
right from the beginning.

What strikes me is that, unlike us,
God knows how to create heat and light without fuel.
We, on the other hand, are consumers
from the first moment we slip from the dark.
Our fuel-efficiency is pretty poor too.
But we learn that with God,
as with all energy,
it changes form
but is never destroyed.
Isn’t that the First Law of Thermodynamics or something?

Right there in the burning bush
we have an example of God adorned
in a basic law of physics.

So we, who are consumers of energy
meet God, who is the source of energy.
And then we learn that God,
making a first appearance in the bible,
has in fact been around for a long, long time –
even longer than the story:
“I am the God of your fathers and mothers,” God says.

But now, here, in the second paragraph,
is where we learn the most important things about God –
most important to us human beings, that is.

Right up front God tells us what happened:
First, God says, “I saw the misery of my people.”

Second, God says, “I heard their cry
as they were being beaten and whipped by their taskmasters.”

Third, God says, “I know their suffering.”
I want to stop with this one
and just stare at it for a moment.
Think.
”I know their suffering” means
that God suffers too.
How did our story ever come to include a god
that was impervious to pain and above it all?

Fourth, God says, “I became present to them
so they might be delivered from their oppression.”
And finally, fifth, God says, “I acted,
so that they could be liberated
and be given an abundant alternative.”

I saw
I heard
I knew
I became present
I acted.

Going forward,
whether in Exodus, Ruth, Matthew, or Paul,
we will find one or more of these five characteristics of God.
If we don’t, then it is a different story
we are reading.

This is NOT the story of a god that just hangs out
up there or out there
as an amorphous energy –
that is the story of a different god
from the God in the Exodus story.
We know right up front
that God is a god who sees,
hears, knows,
is present,
and acts.

Now enter human beings.
Moses is the original Prophet –
a religious leader who is equal parts social critic,
political activist, and spiritual guide –
and he is also the prototype of human relationship
with God.

We notice that Moses does something smart
straight off the bat – he hides his face.

He knows, as we all know,
that being in close proximity to God
is like Icarus flying too close to the sun.
We can’t survive such intimate,
unadulterated holiness.
So Moses covers his face and turns away.

But Moses goes downhill from there,
and that is part of the beauty of the narrative:
Story don’t lie.
It is actually a very funny conversation
that gets lost in translation.
It goes like this.

”Moses, I want you to go back to Egypt
and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.”

We have to picture the look on Moses’ face
because Moses is an escaped assassin
with a price on his head –
put there by Pharaoh who felt personally betrayed by Moses.
It was a personal vendetta thing.

God could probably have knocked him over with a feather.
Moses finally responds:
Uh, you know, I am not really up to the job.
I am not powerful enough to face Pharaoh like that.”

Objection number one.

“Not to worry Moses,” God retorts,
“I will be with you and I am powerful enough for both of us.”
“Well that’s nice, O burning bush, but exactly which god are you?
I’m I dealing with a Sun, Rain, Fertility, Earth, or Wind god?
I mean, Pharaoh is a god too,
and he has lots of gods working with him.
I can’t go up against all of that power
without knowing who has my back!”

Objection number two.

”Aw, go on Moses, just go back to Egypt,
gather all the elders around you
and tell them that “I AM” sent you.
You can tell that to Pharaoh too.
Tell him I am is not ‘a’ god
but ‘I am’ THE God.”
“Well, I certainly appreciate you your ‘I AMness,’
but somehow I don’t think they are going to believe
that I am on a first name basis with THE God.”

Objection number three.

If we use our imagination, we can almost see
Moses backing away slowly from the bush
a little more with each objection.
This is where we run out of story
in today’s reading.
But because it is THE story
I am going to tell you how it ends.
God says, “Oh, don’t worry about it,
I’ll give you lots of powerful magic.
Here watch – “
and God does several very cool magic tricks.

While Moses must have been impressed
he may still thought he could smell a rat.
After all, why doesn’t God deal directly to Pharaoh.
Was this I AM god unsure it could prevail over Pharaoh?

Moses surely had plenty of survival instinct like most human beings.
He didn’t make it out of Egypt in the first place
by acting as anybody’s fool.
So Moses says, “Oh Lord, I would love to do what you ask
but really, I have a speech impediment – a very disturbing disability –
and clearly you need someone more articulate than me.

The fourth objection.

At this point God might be getting impatient
and wondering about what kind of partner Moses would be.
”I told you,” God says, “I will be with you
and I will put the words you need
right on your very tongue.”

Moses is running out of excuses.
”Oh Lord, you are so generous,
but why don’t you send someone else?”

The fifth objection.

This time there is anger in God’s voice.
”Look, you little weasel,
I will send your brother Aaron with you.
He has the gift of gab enough for both of you. Now go.”
All five objections are over-ruled so Moses finally has to go.

The whole thing ends up pretty well
following some dramatic moments of suspense.
But this beginning,
which may have been written
as a liturgical recitation of some kind,
is the core of the narrative.
It presents a pretty clear contrast between God –
who sees,
hears, knows,
becomes present,
and acts –
with us human beings –
who fear,
connive,
make excuses,
second-guess,
manipulate,
and resist.

It seems pretty obvious to me
that we have forgotten the power of the story we tell,
or been convinced that we live in a universe
that only has one story to which everything is subject –
a kind of story bubble.

Capitalist economics is one such story bubble –
we’re in a dog-eat-dog world,
and greed is the invisible hand
moving all human behavior,
so the best thing we can do
is be a winner.

Fundamentalist religion is another story bubble –
we have the truth and those who do not believe our truth
are enemies of God.
Our task is to be powerful enough
to make human society conform to truth
and so bring about God’s blessing.

Scientific determinism may be the biggest,
most powerful bubble yet today – it says that since
there is a cause or causes for everything in nature,
whether known or unknown,
and we exist in nature,
then all human action is likewise determined.

So what is your primal narrative?
It really does make a difference
because conscious of it or not,
you and I are acting out the story we have been given
or adopted.

The story we tell,
the one we see ourselves as living in,
is hugely powerful.
And not to put too dark a tone to it,
we better know what story we are in
or which story we want to be in
because there are a whole bunch of people
telling us which story we are in –
and doing so, to appropriate our stories
into theirs.

It seems to me that if our spirituality
actually has any meaning or importance to us,
that the Judeo-Christian story
is one we would want to lean into –
to see it as our story.
I do not mean literally – I am not a fundamentalist.
I mean to understand what that story tells us
about God, ourselves, and the kingdom
that God dreams for us to create on earth.

It is a story that has power
and could have more power
should we opt to live into it.

Well, as they say,
it’s just a story –
a story that each of us is living one way or another.
But it truly matters how we read it
and what version we embrace because,
under the power and influence of story,
it will become the world we live in
and the people we become.

I appreciate you being with me
and listening.
I hope it offers a fertile place for your own thoughts.
Peace be with you.

Trinity in Time of Pandemic

Our vision…a Trinity Church known in the community as a welcoming home to everyone, responding effectively to the needs of our community, in collaboration with fellow Episcopalians and other faith communities

Our mission…to strive in our daily life and parish life to respect the dignity of every human being, and to treat each person entering our doors as if that person is Christ.

We are striving to be as open as the table Jesus hosted, in solidarity with the people of Geneva, and an accessible partner to others who share our sense of the gospel.

It also means we have opened ourselves to the future, and not only moved but adopted a new way of being church from the more traditional model. Join us at Trinity Place, 78 Castle Street in downtown Geneva, NY.

 Trinity Place, An Open Space for Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts

“Open Space” means open and inclusive, welcoming the Geneva and FLX community to use our space, and to partner with us in building an inclusive community for spiritual inquiry and wellness. 

“Growth, Wellness, Healing, & the Arts” means we are pointed toward a particular dimension of life, specifically that which strengthens the relationship of body, mind, and spirit. 

Trinity is a Christian community of worship and spiritual practice welcoming all, and an Episcopal Church in particular. However, we welcome all spiritual traditions and those who have no particular spiritual background but are engaged in a mission consistent with ours. We are looking for partners in mission not members (although we love to welcome new members too).

Trinity’s historic building and our adaptive reuse plan has been named and embraced by The Landmark Society of Western New York. Among thousands of worthy historic sites and projects, Trinity’s was selected. Follow this link to read more: https://landmarksociety.org/2019-five-to-revive-announced/

Visit “savetrinity.org” which tells the exciting story of historic re-use striving to be born. You can help us save this magnificent building by visiting savetrinity.org and signing a letter of support! Thank you.

https://www.savetrinity.org

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