Trinity 31 May 2015
Grace Church, Newark NJ

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

I met a couple of remarkable young people last week. Both are survivors of some of the worst that the world can throw at a person. One was kidnapped from school as a child and forced into what is effectively a giant gang war. He was held and trained as a soldier to murder the enemy, and he spent years in the killing fields. Today he works with kids the age he was at the beginning of his deadly detour. He attributes his deliverance to the love he learned from his parents and his church as a child. His rebirth had its beginning long before the end of his warring.[1]

The other is a young woman who has awakened to the suffering of many of her sisters in this world. She noticed girls married off too young to much older men, some of them beaten by drunken husbands, even while living next to a convent. No one would come to their aid, and no one would tolerate discussion of the violence. She saw and experienced teachers who demanded sexual favors from their students. She found her voice and is helping others to find theirs. Today, she prods the churches and builds bridges between them to make a difference in the lives of girls and women, to help affirm their equal dignity and creation in the image of God.[2]

Both these young people found their paths in the midst of the violence and war of eastern Congo, but the realities of their lives are not so different from the violence of inner cities here. Gangs recruit children to perpetrate violence as a mark of belonging. Girls and young women are treated like playthings and commodities to be sold to the highest bidder. The devaluation of human life and the exploitation of human beings continue to pervade the world. Life is counted as cheap today as it was in Pharaoh’s day or in first century Palestine. Yet human beings continue to be surprised by hope and possibility even in the face of the world’s ancient evils.

Moses had violent encounters as a young man, too. Exodus tells it as an act of righteous defense of his countryman, but he murdered an Egyptian, and then fled lest he be discovered. He wanders into Midian, and comes to the aid of a band of sisters trying to water their sheep. Their father invites him into his household and he ends up marrying one of the boss’ daughters. And then comes the call from the holy fire. He hears God speaking from the burning bush – ‘Go and deliver my people, they’re crying out for mercy in the midst of their suffering, go confront Pharaoh and lead my people into a land of milk and honey.’[3]

Moses had several encounters with threat and deliverance, beginning in the bulrushes soon after his birth. The God of his ancestors keeps turning Moses around, finding safety and nurture for him among the Egyptians, and later sending him to plunder the King of Egypt and take away all his slaves. This God who says “I am who I am” uses enemies and ruses and rushes and bushes to snatch new life out of the jaws of death. Those rebirths keep coming – when they’re least expected.

This feast of Trinity is meant to celebrate the otherness of God, God’s ineffable (indescribable) and unknowable nature, and it’s also meant to keep us growing into the image of the One who created us. Christians understand God’s nature as community – three persons in one essence, one being. The very nature of God is social, and some of the early theologians speak of the Trinity as a cosmic, holy dance.[4] Quantum physicists use similar language to talk about the mystery of the smallest particles of matter – we can say something about what they are or where they are but not both at the same time. The Godhead is something like that – persons dancing in whole and holy being, beyond what we can ever fully comprehend.

Yet we keep trying to understand and define, a yearning born of our hunger to reconnect with divine reality. That’s the rebirth Jesus is urging on Nicodemus: get out of your little box, your limited understanding, let go and open up to the otherness of God, discover that overwhelmingly abundant love and find life that endures. Those two Congolese young people have had a taste of that rebirth. The trauma and violence they’ve endured are birth pangs, the labor of transition that brings transformation and new life. That greater love will indeed transform us and the world if we give our hearts to it fully.

We are connected like the members of the Trinity – so intimately and so thoroughly that we cannot be parted – even by death. Yet how often do we really recognize it or live as though it’s true? We are created in community, for community, in spite of the death and violence around us. Believing that we are gathered into God and one another as our ultimate reality is what it means to love God with all we are and all we have and love our neighbors as ourselves. When we give our hearts to that, we begin to discover that love will have the final word, not violence or death. Junior Nzita is teaching children that peace is their destiny, rather than war. Olga Kangaj is empowering young women and others to see human relationship as partnership rather than slavery.

We are all connected as God is connected, by solidarities not of our own choosing, as Rowan Williams put it. The gifts Joseph Arndt has shared with you over these seven years will continue to bless you after he moves west.[5] He’s evidently seen a burning bush of his own, and he’s off to Oklahoma for a new chapter in his life, and yours, and the folks in Tulsa. The connections you have may change, but the bonds will not die.

Those unchosen solidarities are the spirit of God at work in our lives – nudging, calling to us out of burning bushes, surprising us with bonds of affection not recognized before. Often the discovery comes out of the midst of pain and suffering. I understand that Jim McGreevey has spoken in the forum here. His painful journey and rebirth have become a gift in his ministry with prisoners. Your work with HMI: Newark[6] is solidarity work that gives incarnate evidence of our interconnection. The whole community is learning to see the variety in which the image of God is present in this world – with more creativity and diversity than many have ever dreamed! We are made for community, created in the image of God, who is both wholly other and as close as our breath. Give your heart to that reality, and find life abundant and beyond human limitation. Our lives are found in God and one another, steeped in love. Thanks be to God.

[1] Paix Pour l’Enfance https://paixpourlenfance.wordpress.com/author/paixpourlenfance/   http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/25/us-congodemocratic-childsoldiers-un-idUSKBN0ML2DS20150325

[2] http://www.umcmission.org/explore-our-work/missionaries-in-service/missionary-profiles/kangaj-olga

[3] Exodus 3

[4] Perichoresis

[5] The music director and organist is departing: http://www.gracechurchinnewark.org/arndt-announcement.php

[6] https://www.hmi.org/ and http://www.hmi.org/NewJersey