Two people meet at a conference.
The first person says to her new acquaintance, “So, do you believe in God?”
The reply is, “Yes.”
She says, “Me too. So are you Jewish, Muslim or Christian?”
“Christian.”
“Wow, me too! Protestant or Catholic?”
“Protestant.”
“No way, me too! What kind of Protestant?”
“Baptist.”
“Oh my gosh, me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
“Northern Baptist.”
“Me too! Northern conservative Baptist or Northern liberal Baptist?”
“Northern liberal Baptist.”
“Me too! Northern liberal Baptist council of 1879, or northern liberal Baptist council of 1912?”
Her potential new friend replies, “Northern liberal Baptist council of 1912.”
The first person yells, “Heretic!” and walks away.
It doesn’t take much, does it, to convince us that we’re wildly different from one another. We humans have an amazing ability to seize on the smallest, most minuscule amount of difference, and turn it into a threat. We are very good at denying our oneness.
Look at this week.
Another mass shooting.
One hundred years since the Tulsa massacre.
One year since the murder of George Floyd.
Violence in the Holy Land. Islamophobia and anti-Semitism here at home.
A gap that’s widening in the fight against the coronavirus— a fight being won in much of the West, and lost in many of the poorest parts of the world.
We are so easily captivated by the illusion that we’re separate from one another.
Thomas Merton said, “My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine we are not. [Our task is] to recover is our original unity. What we have to be, is what we are.”
Today is Trinity Sunday.
That’s why we have this Gospel passage that mentions the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It’s interesting that this Gospel tells us about the disciples, “they worshipped, but they doubted.”
That seems fitting, for Trinity Sunday. We begin and end every liturgy with “in the name of our loving God, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit”… it’s a part of our worship. We worship… but we doubt… We doubt whether we can really understand this. We doubt whether it has practical meaning for our day-to-day lives.
Which is why I was trying my hardest NOT to mention Trinity Sunday today. But the more I thought about it, throughout this week, the more I realized that it IS something we need. Richard Rohr, whom many of us like to read, talks about the Trinity as a divine dance— God, Jesus, and the Spirit, and the constant flow of love between them, and among all of us.
What does this really mean?
It means the deepest truth of life is UNITY, but not UNIFORMITY.
Difference, and oneness, at the same time.
If only we could live into that! If only we could remember how much we belong to each other— and see our destiny as tied to everyone else’s— without trying to erase our differences; without insisting that everybody be like us, that we all be the same.
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This Gospel passage begins with the disciples standing together on a mountaintop. Jesus has called them out beyond their usual places of worship, beyond the towns that were familiar to them— called them out of their comfort zone. And now they find themselves in this high place… which gives them a different perspective. They’ve gone up higher, literally— but also spiritually. They’re in a higher consciousness.
Apollo 8 was the first spacecraft with a crew to reach and orbit the moon. It was launched in 1968: the height of the Vietnam War, a year of violence and unrest at home; the year Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King were killed. On Christmas Eve, as they made their fourth pass across the moon, the Apollo 8 crew became the first people ever to look down and witness the earth emerging over the moon’s horizon. This is called “earth rise.” They looked down, and saw the green and blue ball of our p
