The life of the Holy Trinity. June 7, 2020. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Matthew 28:16-20

Trinity Sunday

Go therefore and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

There is just no escaping it: from the very beginning, the Church has understood God as Trinity. Long before there was a creed or any formal doctrine, there was an experience of God that could only be described in Trinitarian terms. It’s a dynamic experience of God as One who is always moving, in whom and through whom flow endless life and love. This Gospel today sheds light on that dynamic. And as I describe it, I want to show you one of my favorite images for the Trinity.

In this passage, which comes at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says these remarkable words: All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. That is amazing: God the Father, the Creator of the Universe, pours out all power into Jesus, the Christ. And Jesus in turn does not cling to it, but imitates his Father and gives that power away: he feeds the hungry and heals the sick and serves the poor. He washes his disciples’ feet. And here, after the resurrection, he pours out power and authority on those same disciples to baptize and teach. The giving of the Holy Spirit is the outpouring of God’s power on all of us: the Spirit is the very flow of love and power from the Father through the Son, and we are baptized into that flow, made to swim in that stream. Self-giving love is the essence of God; it’s the very nature of God to give power away. I’m not just being mystical here: this is our faith — the Bible and the Prayer Book say it over and over again. We are made one with Christ so that we can share in the life of the Holy Trinity. That’s why I love this photo: the Trinity is like an unending waterfall, a continuous outpouring of power for the sake of love, cascading in the Spirit from the Father to Son and into the world. To enter into that flow is to live fully and forever.

So Jesus is being true to all of this when he tells his followers elsewhere in the Gospel, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. Like Jesus, like God, his followers, and that includes us, are to give power away in service to others. There are many, many ways to do that, and I will focus on just one today. Our parish is composed almost entirely of white people, and in our society, we have a lot of power just by virtue of being white. But as recent events have shown so starkly, we really do need to give that power away in service to others. We need to surrender some of our power for the sake of those who have for too long been powerless.

And one immediate way to do that is to listen to African-Americans as they speak and take what they say to heart. Rather than dismiss them or try to explain away anything they say that makes us uncomfortable, we need to hear their pain, just as Jesus heard the pain of people wherever he went. Being black in America really is very different than being white. Black people are discriminated against in systemic ways, often resulting in poverty, incarceration, and despair. It is harder for black people to achieve success in our society. People in power do not always look out for the interests of African-Americans. Black communities are underserved. Black people do fear the police. I have listened to black clergy in Charlottesville talk about being followed in department stores by security personnel or being pulled out of their cars and frisked for routine traffic violations because they’re black. These things really do happen. That needs to change, but change begins when people in power, people like us, listen and take the voices of the black community seriously.

One of the things that those voices have said for years is that Confederate monuments on public property, which have long served as symbols of  white supremacy and racial hatred, continue to hurt African-Americans. I will be joining a march this evening in peaceful support of removing those statues in Charlottesville. That is one way I can give power away. But whether we march or not, there will be other ways that we as white people can use our power to work for justice and racial reconciliation, and to promote the welfare of all people.

God would have us do no less. We are followers of Jesus Christ: we share in the life of the Holy Trinity, a life of continuously pouring out power for the sake of love. On this Trinity Sunday, I can think of no greater way to honor the God we love than by finding ways to be like God and give our power away.