Homily:
Trinity Sunday Year A
Christ
Memorial Church, June 15, 2014
Sr.
Constance Joanna, SSJD
Genesis
1.1 - 2.4a Psalm 8
2
Corinthians 13.11-13 Matthew 28.16-20
I
remember when the Sky Dome first opened in Toronto in 1989 – hard
to believe that was 25 years ago. (I realize that it has officially
been known as the Rogers Centre since 2005, but most people still
think of it as the Sky Dome.) I was lucky enough to go to some of
the Blue Jays games because I was working at St. John’s Rehab
Hospital and the staff were occasionally offered free tickets.
But
my first time at the Sky Dome was the most memorable – it was the
150th
anniversary of the Diocese of Toronto in 1989. It was one of the
first events to be held in the Sky Dome and there was even some
question about whether it would be finished and opened in time. But
it was. All the Sunday-morning church services in the diocese were
cancelled, and busloads of Anglicans from as far away as Cobourg and
Orillia came to join in the Sunday-morning celebration of the
Eucharist with nearly 50,000 other Anglicans, including a massed
choir of 1500 singers from church choirs all over the diocese.
It’s
just hard to imagine if you weren’t there, but there was such an
amazing sense of the Spirit moving in that place as we sang hymns,
listened to scripture, and celebrated communion together. Clergy and
chalice-bearers carried the bread and wine from the altar on the
stadium floor to strategic locations in the stands. And we knew that
the Spirit had gathered us together as a witness: a witness to the
love of God in a secular society, a witness that we are each created
in the image of God but forged into a Christian community sent out to
bear witness to that truth. All of this in the Sky Dome, not in a
church or cathedral – in the midst of one of the greatest symbols
of our secular society. I believe our presence and our prayer there
blessed the Sky Dome and blessed our city in ways we will never know.
And we were sent out from there to spread the good news everywhere.
Do
you know how the Sky Dome got its name? The Toronto Sun ran a
contest and 2,000 different people suggested that name. When it was
chosen, one of the officials remarked, "The sky is a huge part
of the whole roof process. The name has a sense of the infinite and
that's what this is all about."
The
infinite – God – is indeed what it is all about. What our lives
are about, and our mission as Christians. Both the creation story
from Genesis and Jesus’ commissioning of the Disciples from Matthew
are directly related to this.
The
account of creation in Genesis is a story we are all familiar with
and don’t always notice the details. Let me read you the
beginning:
In the beginning when God
created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and
darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept
over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”;
and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God
separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and
the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was
morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let
there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the
waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the
waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the
dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening
and there was morning, the second day.
Every
time I hear that passage read I think of the Sky Dome. “God
called the dome Sky.” The official who explained the Sky Dome’s
name said “it has a sense of the infinite.” As in the scripture,
the dome of the sky separates heaven from earth, the infinite from
the finite – and God said “that is good!”
Notice
how each day has the same pattern: God says
something – “Let there be light, “let there be a dome to
separate earth from heaven,” and on the third day, “let
vegetation appear.” God speaks
creation into being. And each time we are told “And God saw that
it was good.”
By
the time we get to the fourth day, God says “Let there be lights in
the dome of the sky” – and God creates the Sun and the Moon. The
Dome of the Sky continues to be the separation between heaven and
earth, creating a safe place for living things. And so on the next
two days God creates birds and sea creatures, mammals, and
vegetation.
And
finally on day 6, God says “Let us make humankind in our image”
(he’s using the royal “we” here!). After each other day of
creation, God says “it was good.” But after creating humans, God
says “it was very
good.” We are all created in God’s image – how good is that?!
We are embued with the creativity, the love, the joy and peace of
God. Other things get in the way (and that’s part of another story
in Genesis). But our destiny is to live in the image of God. We are
separated on earth from the heavens, by the Dome of the Sky. But in
the fullness of time, God sent Jesus, who opened that dome and
brought heaven and earth together.
That
is one reason we listen to the creation story on Trinity Sunday,
which is the day of the church year when we celebrate the three-fold
nature of God. One God, but in three manifestations: God our
creator, God who comes to earth in the person of Jesus, and God the
Holy Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost as our comforter and
advocate when Jesus returned to heaven.
And
the Holy Spirit was also there on the day of creation. In older
translations Genesis begins “the Spirit of God moved over the face
of the waters.” In our modern translation it reads “a wind from
God swept over the face of the waters.” The words that we
translate wind, breath, and spirit all come from the same Hebrew
word, ruach.
The
Spirit is a creating Spirit. This whole reading from Genesis is
about the creative activity of God, and God’s desire to create.
And we are created in the image of God – that is with the ability
to create, to invent, to dream and vision a world in partnership with
God. That means that creation is not just something that happened
once upon a time – it continues to unfold. God’s vision of the
universe continues to unfold, and we are partners in that creative
process. In the language of the New Testament, we are building the
Kingdom of God.
And
that brings us to the gospel reading for today. It is the account of
Jesus commissioning the disciples to carry on his mission just before
he ascends to the Father. It’s interesting to notice where they
go. First, it is in Galilee. Jesus’ public ministry began in
Galilee. On the day of the resurrection Jesus told the disciples to
meet him in Galilee. And so this gathering on the mountain in
Galilee brings the story of Jesus full circle. He is about to leave
the disciples, and after he ascends, the Dome of the Sky will
separate him and his friends once again. But they have the
commission of Jesus to become his body in the world. And they have
the presence of his Spirit with them as well. He says:
“All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.”
The
Sky Dome represents the infinite, we are told. And in scripture the
Dome of the Sky
On
this Trinity Sunday, let us remember that our commission is to make
disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That commission is for all
Christians not just the clergy.
So
I will leave you with a question: What can you
do to open that dome between earth and heaven and give someone a
glimpse of who our wonderful God is?
