A Trinitarian Farewell
by the Rev. Sara Fischer
I love this morning’s opening hymn—mostly, I love the tune, which has been used for several hymns in our hymnal, but I also love the words praising God’s work of creation, God’s power and presence in creation. The creation story for the first reading on this Trinity Sunday reminds us that our God who is three-in-one, one-in-three has been there from the beginning, in time and outside of time, creator, redeemer, and sustainer.
The creation story on this Sunday reminds us of the holiness of all of creation—we honor God’s creation here at St. Aidan’s in our beautiful grounds, of course, and in our care for all creatures. I will miss the gardens, the sacred burial places, and the bunnies, especially the bunnies. As you steward these spaces, remember that God is present in all of creation, not just in nature. Or, that all is nature, whether it is transitional housing or a community garden or an after-school program or a hygiene center or a food pantry.
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The Trinity as theological doctrine evolved in the early centuries of the Church as a way of explaining the divinity of Jesus. Statements of faith like the Nicene Creed and phrases like “begotten, not made” took years—centuries—to be worked out by more theologically eager minds than mine. What I always like to say about the Trinity is that what it means to have a three-person God is that our God is a relationship, and we are invited in.
Priest-blogger Alison Burns LaGreca writes this about the Trinity, and it might be one of my favorite things on the subject:
It’s not a math problem about persons and substance, or divine algebra, but something more elemental. The God who breathes over the formless deep in Genesis, the Christ who gathers doubters on a mountain in Matthew, the Spirit who bends through history the way the wind bends trees, this is a god whose very nature is movement toward the other. Relationship as origin. Love as structure.
If our God-who-is-a-relationship holds all things, God holds the comings and goings of church goers and church leaders. These comings and goings, which tend to make some of us anxious, are part of life.
Probably those of us who have been part of a church community for a long time have either heard someone say or have ourselves said about a priest: Priests come and go but I was there when they got here and I’ll be here when they leave. (Often this is said when discussing a priest someone doesn’t like. Someone here probably said it about me.) I recently heard a story about a much nicer way to express this. A wealthy woman in a large well-resourced but perhaps troubled parish sat down with a new rector and said “Young man,”—he was probably 45 or 50—"I’ve been here for 80 years. You’re my seventh rector. I want you to know that I consider you an honored guest.” I love that: honored guest.
It has been my honor to serve here for a short time. These past few weeks I have spent a bit of time reflecting on all the things I didn’t accomplish while I was here. But this Trinity Sunday, the readings remind us that all is ever becoming. In our three-in-one, one-in-three God’s eye view, I am like a drop of water in a river. The river is God’s mission passed on by Jesus which will, I hope, go on forever.
As I was thinking of what to say this morning by way of a farewell sermon—never an easy task—I imagined Jesus on that mountain, speaking to the disciples, including those who doubted, and offering them the great commission. What would his commission be to us? Making disciples of all nations was a political statement in a particular context. What might making disciples of all nations mean to St. Aidan’s, in our context?
Preach the gospel of love. Make disciples who will protect the vulnerable. Welcome everyone: noisy children, people who speak other languages, people who have been shunned by churches they grew up in, immigrants, people who will stretch you, people with different kinds of abilities. Welcome them, protect them, be transformed by them. The world does not need more church-goers. The world needs more people with hearts transformed by Jesus’ vision of a kingdom where all are welcome and all are fed. Making disciples is not about inviting people to church, it is about sharing together the call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the outcast.
St. Paul closes his second letter to the Corinthians, that letter that begins full of tears and complaints, “Finally, siblings, farewell. Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. (And when I read that part, I hear the lovely hymn: “the peace of God it is no peace.”) All the saints greet you. The grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
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We would be here for hours if I were to talk about all the things in this place that I will miss and all the things for which I am grateful. So I want to tell you about just one of my top 100 favorite things about this place:
There are a lot of behind-the-scenes things that happen here on Sunday mornings. Sometimes there are changes at the last minute. Sometimes I learn about something or remember something about the service that we didn’t plan for, and I need to course-correct. More often than not I don’t figure this out until we’re well into the intro of the opening hymn. Or maybe half-way through the Peace. That’s not one of my top 100 favorite things.
My favorite thing is that when something unplanned happens, when someone throws a wrench in the liturgical works—and usually that someone is me—Jimmy will say “We got this.” We got this. We all need someone in our life all the time to say, “We got this.”
As you move into a new chapter of life here at St. Aidan’s, a chapter that I hope will bring good change—because remember, change is the only thing we can count on—I hope you will always remember to say to one another, as Paul says to the Corinthians, we got this.
