Last Sunday I said that asking the question ‘what does the Bible say?’ about something often doesn’t have a simple, quick answer because the Bible speaks in many voices which do not necessarily agree. It is particularly difficult this morning, Trinity Sunday, since the Bible says nothing explicit about the Trinity, and yet it is a central part of our understanding of the nature of God.

The Bible does not say anything directly about the Trinity because it is a way of thinking about God that gelled in the years after the New Testament books and letters were compiled.

Jesus talked about the Father, and himself as the Son and he promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. In his prayer for his disciples in John 17 he said, ‘I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’

Early Christian philosophers and theologians wrestled with how this unity could exist, how three divine persons could be one God. They did not agree and at times the debate was as acrimonious as today’s partisan political divide.

The debate went on for over fifty years before the church in the Roman Empire was declared Trinitarian. Of course there were Christians outside the Roman Empire, and they did not necessarily believe that the Christ was of the same substance as the Father. We use the Nicene Creed to remind ourselves that our ancestors were Trinitarian and that is how we have come to understand God.

By now you’re probably wondering why we care about this ancient history.  When I googled “Christian Heresies” to remind myself of the details of the debate, the listing at the top was for Amazon and its heading was “Early Christian Heresies – Keep Yourself Entertained.”

So we could keep ourselves entertained by talking about early Christian arguments about the nature of God, but what is really important is who is God for us today?

This is a vital question because the way we understand God is reflected in the way we live and love and pray.

If we think of God as hierarchical – as a solid triangle of authority - we will tend to have a rule-based approach to our spiritual lives. If we think of the Trinity as a dancing circle of light then we will be more organic and perhaps more playful in our approach to living with God.

It will come as no surprise to you that the dancing Trinity is the way I like to imagine God. This is no more Biblical than a triangle but I think it reflects the way our understanding of the cosmos increases our understanding of God.

As I understand it, at the atomic level there are tiny things that are in constant motion and their motion looks rather like a dancing sphere. At the other end of the scale, there are planets and galaxies who are also moving in relation to one another. The ancient people imagined that there were celestial spheres in which the stars and planets were embedded. Today we think of orbits through which the heavenly bodies move in space. So there’s been a shift from thinking of solidity to understanding movement as the fundamental nature of matter.

It makes sense then that our understanding of God becomes more fluid. Yes we still want and need God to be the bedrock on which we stand but now we know that that very bedrock is made of particles in motion and so we can think of God as more like water, constantly flowing in and through and around everything.

So I just threw in another metaphor – a few minutes ago I was thinking about God as a dancing sphere of light and now I’m talking about God as water. Which is it? Yes both, and neither because God is God but we can only grasp ideas of God through our own experience, by saying God is like…

There is a story of an old Rabbi who was dying. He was surrounded by a large crowd of family and followers all eager to hear his last words. The old man suddenly spoke and whispered, “God is a donut.” The people behind asked “what did he say?” “God is a donut” Finally the whisper reached the edge of the crowd, “God is a donut”. Then someone asked, “What does that mean, God is a donut?” the question was passed to the front of the crowd, “What does that mean?” “What does that mean?” “What does that mean?” The rabbi’s son bent over and said into the old man’s ear, “What does it mean – God is a donut?” There was a long silence and they all waited. Finally the old rabbi sighed and said “Maybe God is not a donut.”

So how can we know that our ideas of God are true, or at least as true as we can get?

As followers of Jesus, whenever we think about God we do so through the lens of Jesus’ teaching, life, death and resurrection. Jesus Christ is the revelation of God in human terms – in 1st century male human terms. And what we see and hear from Jesus is love. Jesus healed on the sabbath, Jesus ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes. Jesus was not caught up in the rules of society, who was in and who was out, Jesus demonstrated love for all beings.

So that is fundamental. God is love. If it is not deeply loving, it is not God.

Regardless of whether God is like a triangle, a dancing sphere, running water or even a donut, God is love. And God is peace.

This has been a new understanding for me this month. God is peace. God is not worried about the things that worry me. God is not worried about the Middle East or the climate crisis or the coming El Nino. God is not worried about suffering and despair. It is not that God does not care about these things, I think God cares very deeply. But God’s peace is before and under and beyond it all.

Today we heard the first story of creation. God created it all and God saw that it was good. And God is working towards the redemption of creation when we will all be reconciled with God and all things brought into balance. And God is perfectly peaceful and relaxed about that process. It is all OK.  God is love and God Is peace.

That doesn’t let us off the hook. As the people of God, our calling is to be clear channels for the blessing of God to bless Creation. We are called to love, to pray, to act as if the Reign of God is here right now. We are called to be God with flesh on. We are called to speak and to act and to vote as we believe God would have us do.

We have a human tendency to make God in our own image. We imagine that God is like us and so we think of an angry vengeful God. We think that God is on our side when we attack other countries, especially if their people are predominately Muslim or Hindu or anything other than ‘Christian.’ We imagine that God wants us to have guns so we can defend ourselves and we can fight the enemy, whoever they may be.

This is not the God we see in Jesus. Jesus was ready to call out hypocrisy and corruption, but he did not fight even when wrongfully arrested; he reminded us that even the despised non-Jewish Samaritan was our neighbor; his compassion extended to lepers and social outcasts.

This is the God we worship. At this time in history our images of God will be more organic, more tied into the web of life than they were in the 4th Century. But whatever images we may use; Mother, Father, dancing Spirit, energy of the Universe – however we imagine God – what is important is that we allow ourselves to be transformed by God rather than transforming God into us.

If your imaginings of God do not pull you closer to the Abba God of Jesus then it is time to change your thinking. Because God is always challenging us to let go of our little ego ways and to be transformed into the Christ-like beings we were made to be. God holds out her arms to us and gathers us to her bosom.

And there we find love, peace and the courage to be more than we ever thought we could be.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall

People sometimes ask me, “what does the Bible say about heaven?” or “what does the Bible say about sin?” or whatever. And most often there isn’t a simple answer because the Bible is a collection of writings written at different times for different purposes by different people and those writings don’t always agree. We can’t use the Bible like an instruction manual, it is far too fluid and complex and demanding.

Today’s readings about the coming of the Holy Spirit in a new and personal way are a good example.

In the first reading we heard from the Book of Acts.  It was written to show how the gospel was spread from Jerusalem across the mediterranean world to Rome, the center of the Empire. In today’s exciting account, the Holy Spirit comes to the disciples in wind and fire on a festival day when Jerusalem is full of Jews from across the known world and the disciples go out into the streets speaking in different languages. Then Peter gets up and preaches his first sermon putting the whole thing into the context of God’s Spirit being poured out. This is no inner mystical experience but an exuberant outpouring of God’s energy that touches every life present.

I love this story and I love the kind of Christian experience which is described here and in in our second reading. Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, giving them practical instruction for worship. He writes, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.”

In the mid 1970s there was a charismatic revival in the Anglican and Catholic churches, starting down in Van Nuys.

For me those were exciting times with healing and prophecy and speaking in tongues. I have often wondered why that didn’t continue – why those of you who speak in tongues only do it privately at home and why we no longer lay hands on people and expect them to be healed and why we are almost apologetic when we see visions and dream dreams.

But then I think abut the gospel reading from John. This is also an account of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit, but a very different one. Jesus appears among the disciples with his customary greeting of “Peace be with you” and then shows them the marks of the crucifixion almost to prove it him just in case they thought he was someone else. Then “he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” You can’t get much more intimate and personal than that. No rushing into the streets, no-one accusing them of being drunk, no speaking in tongues, just the quiet breath of Jesus.

So we have two quite different accounts of what happened and they just sit side by side with no scriptural attempt to compare and contrast or to sync them in some way. Perhaps they happened on different days to different disciples, perhaps the people who wrote these things down were reflecting their own experiences several decades later. We don’t know.

So what does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit?

In the psalm we were reminded that the Spirit was there at the very beginning of creation and continues to be active in renewing the face of the earth.

The Spirit was there at the very beginning, but at Pentecost the Holy Spirit was made available to all followers of Jesus in a new and different way. It empowered them to take on the work that Jesus had been doing. Which is why it is the birthday of the church. On Pentecost the church was born with the mission to be the manifestation of the Christ in the world. Jesus is no longer physically present, but his work continues.

His work has continued through the centuries and continues today.  We are the ones who get to continue Jesus’ work of healing and reconciliation, we are the ones who get to be God with flesh on, and we are given the power of the Holy Spirit to do just that.

But let us not fall into the trap of thinking that the Holy Spirit powers our work like gas or electricity powers our cars. We don’t come to church on Sunday to get our tanks filled with the Holy Spirit and then go off to do God’s work during the week, because the Holy Spirit is not a fuel but a person. And the Holy Spirit is renewing the face of the world outside the walls of the institutional church as well as within it.

We are empowered by the Holy Spirit as we work and live and love in relationship with Spirit. We renew the depth of our relationship as we gather together to worship and praise God, but it is as we work together with the person of the Holy Spirit that miracles happen.

Often we get it the wrong way round. We come up with a plan and ask God to bless it. I’m sure you’ve heard the rather cynical saying, ‘How do you make God laugh? Tell her your plans.’ I don’t believe that God has some fixed plan for creation, or for you and me, or for St Peters – I believe that God’s plans develop in cooperation with what we are doing and thinking – but since God’s plan is to renew the face of the whole earth, we are only part of it.

So the place for us to start is not in a committee meeting, but in deep relationship with the Spirit.  The deeper our relationship with Spirit, the more we are empowered. Now that relationship may be dramatic and filled with miracles or it may be quiet and contemplative or even both. But it is a relationship that brings healing and new life. It is a relationship that as it grows and deepens will demand everything you have and at the same time will fill you with the life of Christ.

For over a year we have prayed every Sunday for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in this time of transition. And we believe that the Search Committee and the Vestry have received the guidance of the Holy Spirit in calling Ollie as your next priest.

This is a time of significant change for this congregation; a time of loss as well as a time of joy and hope. People who were worshiping with us regularly eighteen months ago are no longer here. Some have moved, some have stopped coming and some have died. This week we mourn the loss of Bob Swanson and it seems likely that Dorene Hughes will be slipping into her next life very soon.
Pentecost was also a time of significant change for the disciples – they were still integrating Jesus’ death and resurrection and the death by suicide of their friend Judas, and now they get hit with the Holy Spirit to enable them to continue Jesus’ mission. A mission that would lead some of them including Peter to martyrdom.

Yet in Acts 2 we read, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

They devoted themselves to spiritual teaching, to fellowship and prayer; they were filled with joy and gathered together praising God.

May this be our guide, at a time of change, yet another transition; at a time when we alternate between grief and hope; at a time when we long to see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our life together, let us emulate the early church, devoting ourselves to spiritual teaching, to fellowship and prayer; let us be filled with joy and gather together praising God.

As the psalmist said,

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; *
I will praise my God while I have my being.
May these words of mine please him; *
I will rejoice in the Lord.
Bless the Lord, O my soul. *
Hallelujah!

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 

Every Sunday we hear three passages of Scripture and a psalm. I wonder how you listen to it? Do you listen carefully trying to understand the meaning of each passage? or do you let it flow over you listening for a few words to stand out? or do you just marinade in it, not too concerned about making sense of it all? I think I do a bit of all three.

This morning as I let it flow over and through me, there was one phrase that stood out. I was struck by Paul saying, “he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” 

I love the idea that God put different people into specific times and places “so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him.” Last week Canon Katherine reminded us that we beloved of God and we are enough. This seems to take that idea a bit further. We are the people whom God has called to be here in this time and place – the people of St Peters by the Sea in Morro Bay in 2026 – and God has put us here so that we might ‘search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him.’ And if we are the ones who are called, we are up to the calling, we are enough.

I can’t do much without my glasses and the first thing I do in the morning is to grope for them. I love this image of us groping for God – in the fog of the early morning myopia, we search blindly for God. And God has placed us in a time and a place where we might be successful, where we might find God. These are difficult times. They are difficult times for all creatures on our planet. And our hearts are broken by the pain and suffering we see. And our minds are frustrated by our sense of helplessness. Yet this is where God has put us so that we might ‘search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him.’ And this is where and when God has placed us so that we might show God’s glory and love to the world.

Jumping now to the gospel reading, we are not alone in this time and place. Jesus promises his disciples that although he is no longer physically present, they will still know him. And that promise is for us as well. The Spirit of truth is with us and in us and around us and teaches us about God. Teaches us about God not in a dry academic sense but teaches us to inhabit our place in the inner cosmos. Jesus said, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Let’s try and rephrase that so we get how amazingly personal it is. “Jesus is in the Creator, and we, St Peters, are in Jesus and Jesus is in us.” Or “Jesus is in the Creator and I, Caro, am in Jesus and Jesus is in me.” It’s almost like nesting dolls – Jesus is in the Creator and we are in Jesus – but here’s Jesus again, Jesus is in us.

That’s what the Holy Spirit is here to teach us – as we search for God, groping for the living divine, and finding him so too God is coming toward us because God is already around us and in us.

One of the things I dislike about John’s gospel is that Jesus seems to keep going round in circles. I prefer a good logical linear thought. But now I find myself circling - these things cannot easily be expressed in straight lines. As the poet T. S. Eliot wrote,

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Groping, searching, finding, abiding, loving, then more groping, searching, finding, abiding, loving.

This is our individual spiritual journey. It is also our journey as a faith community. We often interpret Jesus’ words as speaking to us as individuals, and indeed they do, but most often he was talking to his disciples as a group. So, we can also interpret them as meant for us, the Body of Christ whom God has placed in this place, in this time. We are the ones who are called to do the searching and the groping and the loving.

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And he has two great commandments – to love God with everything you’ve got, and to love your neighbor as if they were your very self.  And we all know that the journey towards a mature, self-giving love takes a lifetime. And in faith community we get to love each other as we go through that journey of joy and heartbreak.

We are the people whom God has placed at this time and in this place to be the ones with whom the Holy Spirit abides. We are the ones who are enough for this moment. We are the ones who are called to be God’s heart and hands in this community.

We are the ones who are called to love our neighbor. And unfortunately, Jesus made it very clear that by ‘neighbor’ he didn’t mean the people you like. By ‘neighbor’ he meant the people you have difficulty with, the people you are prejudiced against, the people who don’t like you. This is so counter-cultural that it’s difficult even now, after 2000 years, to wrap our heads around it. And what better moment to practice this God-inspired loving than when we are living in a deeply divided society with a leader who generates division and hatred.

People of God, this is where the rubber hits the road. In a world rife with anger and fear we get to have peace. As the letter of Peter says, “Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

Do not fear what they fear. We do not need to fear because we know the peace of God. God’s peace is not the absence of conflict, nor is it the peace of conflict resolution, it is the peace which is the very nature of God. It is the peace which underlies all things. It is the peace which we know as we understand that we inhabit the nesting dolls - Jesus is in the Creator and we are in Jesus – yet Jesus is in us. The love of God IS peace.

So our circling is not the anxious pedaling of a hamster in a cosmic hamster wheel, rather it is joining in the ever circling, ever dancing life of the Trinity. Because my friends, that IS our place, just as this is our place, this is our time to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. And we are enough.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall