07.06.20 Service Sermon (English)

Trinity Sunday 6-07-2020 What do I preach on a Sunday in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a social justice uprising, in the midst of a fascist threat of a Government that reminds me too much of Hitler’s gradual takeover of a democracy?

What do I preach when the bible is being misused as a prop and the church as a backdrop after this political leader calling tear gas and force through the military against peacefully protesting citizens?

What do I say about the Trinity in these days where the pain of many generations of African Americans has come to a tipping point? The veil has been pulled to the side. The evil and naked truth of policy violence, injustice, the lynching of innocent persons based on the color of their skin?

What do I preach?

I feel speechless.

Initially I wanted to run away and hide. Just like Jona.

Then I went out and protested, together with my bi-racial children.

I wrote a statement against racial violence.

The past 23 years, every night I anxiously listen for the garage door to open, for my African husband to make it home safely, without being stopped by police.

What do I preach?

What is there to say other than we are in “liminal” times. A liminal theology is a thinking of God in the midst of uncertainty and transition. Consequently, this is not so much a position or a method as it is a perspective, one that takes seriously the mysterious nature of society, culture, and everyday life.

Being in the liminal space as we are today means being “in between.” It means exploring the boundaries, paying attention to the transitions, and the in-between times. Liminality is a threshold state where all we know becomes questionable. It lies on the boundary between the known and the unknown —with either being possible.

A liminal space like ours can feel like chaos. It brings much trepidation and uncertainty. Maybe just like the anticipation of a birth. The pain has set in, yet the new shape of life is still hidden and unknown.

What do I preach?

What do I say in such a liminal “birthing” time. A times where through much pain the future is being born.

As a preacher, I do not want to give “cheap grace” or “cheap hope”, as I do not know what the future holds.

Will it be a still birth?

Will evil take over and the American democracy as we know it die and not survive these waves of attack?

Or will a social justice movement be born again in this country, stronger than ever before? Will the American democracy be preserved by the people rising up as one, and become stronger and more inclusive than ever before?

I do not know, as I share with you all these painful liminal time experiences.

With tears in my eyes, with knots of fear in my stomach, with the desire to run and not look back, or the desire to fight, and be part of an uprising that this country has not seen before.

What do I preach in these liminal times? Times of great injustice and division and times of great protest and unity?

And so I really cannot preach today, as I do not have much to say as a human swept up in the same wave with everybody else.

At the same time, we preachers have to preach, even when we cannot preach.

And so I am asking the Holy Trinity to help me this morning. Thankfully Juergen Moltmann has been my teacher when I was in my mid-twenties. His passion for God as Trinity has ignited in my a love for talking about God in this way.

And yet, I felt a great challenge: How can the Trinity talk to us going through this time in history. I cannot just close my eyes to what is happening in this

World and talk as if theTrinity is only a removed concept or a theological idea. I have to ask: How in the world can God in the form of the Trinity tell us anything about where we are today? How can the Trinity speak to us during this liminal time?

Juergen Moltmann began one of his sermons about the Trinity with a verse from 1. John 3:3: „Whoever remains in Love, remains in God and God in him/her“. And this mystery of love is also what summarizes the whole mystery of the Trinity. In God, in the Trinity of God, we find a new community that transcends all boundaries of class, race, gender and culture.

Some Christians think that the Trinity is something that is hard to understand, and that it is pure speculation and only something for theologians, and among those only for experts. That is not so. The Trinity is very easy to understand: The belief in Christ has three dimensions. For living the Christian faith means living in the Christ community. What does this mean?

Jesus becomes my Lord and my Healer, my brother and the role-model and leader in my life. That is the first. Jesus came into this world to seek all who are lost, and so he has also found me, when I felt abandoned by God and by all good Spirits. He took me with him on his journey towards resurrection and New Life. In his community we experience how we are being dignified and elevated as sons and daughters of God, just like he, as the son of God is the Firstborn under many brothers and sisters. (Romans 8:29) This is the most wonderful that has happened to me, and that can happen to you and probably has happened. We call this first experience „The grace of Jesus Christ“.

And the second experience is when Jesus called God »Abba, dear Father«.

And so we as well are praying with Jesus: „Abba, dear Father”. This means: I believe in the God of Jesus Christ and in no other God. Personally many of us probably would have remained or become Atheists. For looking at nature alone and at the tragedies of human history alone, we would have never thought that there is a God and that this God is love. This we have only learned through Jesus and have experienced it in his community. Because of Jesus and in his name I am trusting in God as my „Abba, dear Father“.

And thirdly in this community with Christ I am experiencing on the other hand how „his grace is new every morning.“ I am experiencing life giving energy through the godly Spirit. This energy makes me come alive or comforts me, just like mother makes alive and comforts. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Life. Its life energy is flowing into me. They flood me with light and they create in me clear thoughts. This energy flows through me as warmth and it makes my heart beat faster: The Spirit fills me weak strengths with new energy. The are awakening me, and I am getting up and I hold up my head and walk strongly through my day. In the Christ community we experience the life giving energies of God‘s Spirit.

And so, these three: the community with Christ, „Abba- dear Father“ and the Life giving energies of the spirit – those are the God experiences of the Christian Faith. That is the whole Trinity. I experience God in his closeness as love and the Holy Spirit as my life’s strength. I am beginning to live in the unique community with Jesus, the son of God,and with God, the Father of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. I do not believe „in“ the trinitarian God, but I love and I die „in“ the Trinitarian God. With Christ, I am living in God. And so, Christian Faith is a life in the community of Christ. Nobody is alone or lonely as a Christian. In the community of Christ we are finding the brothers and sisters in the Christ Community. We are finding a community that transcends all class, race, gender and culture. We are celebrating our worship „with all of Christianity all over the world” This community is one that overcomes all divisions. Why is that so?

In the Gospel of John Jesus prayed in 17: 21: „So that they all may be one, just as you Father are in me, and I am in you. So that they may be in us, so that the world may believe.“ In this Prayer of Jesus we are already one, however we call ourselves: proestant, catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Orthodox, non-denominational or however. The unity in the prayer of Jesus is what counts. And how does this community looks like?

We are with each other and for each other and through the intercessory prayer we are even in each other present: „just as you, Father are in me, and I am in you.“ The community of Jesus with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit are the archetype, the original community- and the community

with Christ and our community with each other is the human image of the same, surely imperfect and yet honored.

Where though does the strength come from to such a God like community of so many different people as we are? For that we need to look at Jesus‘ second part of the prayer: „that they may also be in us“.

God the Father opens through Jesus and in the strength of his Spirit a wide open space for us to live. It is the space and the atmosphere in which we meet each other, know each other and respect each other, hold each other’s hands and embrace each other (currently in the Spirit). It is the energy field of love, in which all suspicions and fear of each other are being overcome and we are strengthening each other. In the community of Christ all fear of losing out and all greed disappear. The constant competition fight of society comes to an end. Judgment and jealousy don’t belong here. We become a community of friends, and sometimes we experience what the first Pentecost community experienced: „They were one heart and one soul” (Acts 4: 32) What impressed me personally the most in the first Pentecost community that Acts is talking about is this: „There was not anybody among them who was lacking anything.” They were putting their community and their relationships above the individuum and the securing of private goods. In their community of mutual support in body and soul nobody lacked anything.

They had enough in everything, more than enough. Why? Because they shared with each other and cared about each other. The early Christian communities did not just care for their children, their sick and aging and poor, but they also care for the whole city, the people of the time reported.

They were not only worship communities, but also living communities. Some have said sacastically that this original „Christian Communism“ did not last very long in Jerusalem. They fail to see that the Christian communities of Orders and radical reforming communities, the Hutterer and Mennonites and the Bretherens always lived like that and still today live like that. In the new grassroots communities in Latin America, the poor are becoming rich, rich in human relationships and mutual support. Therefore these church communities in Brazil write onto their posters inviting to their meetings: „The Trinity is the best grassroots community”.

Wherever a community is on its way there, it becomes a symbol of hope for a new, peaceful world in the midst of the existential struggles of the old World. When last week here in Atlanta after a violent and destructive night of demonstrations many church communities came out into the inner city in order to help clean up and restore the buildings, I felt some hope arise inside of me, that the violence will not have the last word.

When I hear that in many countries, in many cities and communities the death of George Floyd has become the reason for public demonstrations, then hope arises in me.

We, who live with the Trinity of God, we do not become God ourselves. That means, we do not know what the future holds. But with Ralph Abernathy, a close friend of Martin Luther King’s we can say: “We do not know WHAT the future holds, but we know WHO holds the future.”

Yes, we do not become God, but we live within God and God lives within us.

In this anxious and liminal boundary and transition experience, in this “in between” time, God as Trinity becomes our Life space, and we become the life space for God. God’s love surrounds us from all sides in three different ways: There is the grace and unconditional acceptance of Jesus Christ for us and for all humans, and the love of God, the Father, for all of humanity and for creation, and the experience of the Holy Spirit that is with all of us, most of all in the experience of unity and the call for justice.

In God, in the Trinity of God, we find a new community that transcends all boundaries of class, race, gender and culture. That is the whole mystery of the Trinity. In these chaotic times, this is what gives me Orientation. “We do not know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future.”

Amen