A Jazz Eucharist
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Genesis 1:1-2:4a + 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 + Matthew 28:16-20
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
That could be the Sermon for Trinity Sunday right there. But, lest you get your hopes up… there is more.
As we were having coffee earlier this week, I said to the dean, “I think I will preach on the ineffable mystery of the One we worship as the Triune God.” The was an extended silence into which finally I said, “At least the congregation will awake refreshed and ready for the lively music of the Jazz Band.” At which point he let out his breath and relaxed. But the question for the preacher remained, “What do you say about the Trinity?”
Saint Augustine, one of the greatest minds of the Western World, put his head to thinking about the Trinity. Augustine, a master of words, took fifteen volumes to write his treatise “On the Trinity”, fifteen books that took him over a decade to write.
So what do WE say about these things in just a few homiletical minutes? I want to tell you what I think is the single most important learning about God – and ourselves – that comes from the Trinity. And I will do it this way:
First, a question and a clue: What was the first thing Jesus did when he came out of the desert wilderness after his 40 days learning his identity – that is, besides getting a bath and something to eat?
He called disciples and gathered a community around himself, and except for his final act of sacrifice, he lived in that community and counted on that community his entire ministry. We know that to get the best insight into the nature of God we look at Jesus, so what do we learn about God here, with Jesus in community?
Many years ago, Bishop Mark Dyer and I went one noonday to a regional clergy gathering for bible study. One of the clergy was waiting for him to tell him that he could not stay that day. He had to meet his wife and daughter at the doctor's to hear the results of some tests his daughter had undergone. If he could come later he would. He went off, the clergy gathered, Bishop Mark told them about the reasons for the absence, and the first thing we did was to hold that family in prayer - for quite some time. We then went on with lunch and bible study and sharing.
The priest came back 2-3 hours later, looking totally drained. The diagnosis was leukemia, in ad¬vanced stage, in his 22-year-old daughter. Devastating news. It is worthy of noting that after being with his wife and daughter in their shock and alarm he came back to his clergy community to share the news. There was shock, there were tears, there was prayer, there were hugs, there was advice from experience offered by a priest who had been an oncology nurse, there were stories of healing from two others whose fam¬ily members had leukemia. There was hope. There was even some healing from the shock for him, there was strengthening for the family; there was God there in that community.
The God who creates us, and loves us, and strengthens us for the journey is found in community.
And every person who was there left that gathering thanking God for the gift of relationships and community.
Today there is a new or renewed awareness of the Trinity - of God as Being in Communion, which is the title of a wonderful book by Anglican Bishop John Zizioulas. He writes of God, the Trinity in whom there is no hierarchy, no subordination, nor use of power to exert control over another.
If God’s self is Being in Communion and we are made in the image of God, then we too are to be in communion with our God, and one another and all creation. Our identity is “to be in communion with…”
The gift we have received is the gift of relationship. We have been given one another.
We are learning that this truth is woven into the very fabric of creation. Ever since the 17th century and people like Isaac Newton, we have understood the nature of creation to be an assembly of parts. We have used machine imagery to try to understand God's creation.
In the machine model, things can be taken apart, dissected literally or figuratively as in compart¬mentalized institutions and corporations and vestries, and then put back together again. The assumption has been that by understanding the parts, the workings of each piece, the whole can be understood. The Newtonian model is characterized by a focus on things rather than relationships.
What the New Science has done in the words of Albert Einstein is to help us "see the world anew”, and I would add, to see God anew. The New Science has discovered that the basic building blocks of creation do not exist except in rela¬tionship to something else. It was from the mind of God, in the creation act of God, that relationships are a fundamental element of all creation. No “Unmoved Mover” here.
Nothing happens without something encountering something else. Nothing is independent of the relationships that occur. It is a world in process. It is a world of relationship. It is not a world of disparate, separate parts. It is a world in communion. It is a world of communities.
Another example: So many people have participated in the creation of this jazz Eucharist today, even more in its presentation and production, and even more than that in the acts of worship it inspires and enables. This Offering today culminates in the experience of being in God’s presence, of living in the midst of the God’s kingdom, of being in the community of the God who is at one and the same time the Lover, and the Beloved, and Love, itself.
As wonderful and Samuel Martin’s trumpet work is, and we heard last week just how wonderfully he plays, it is even more wonderful when it is played with the trumpets of Stephen and Alan and Jamie. And their trumpets are even more wonderful when they are joined by the instruments played by Charles, Emily, and Ed, Josh, Mary, Isaac, Henry, Chris and Jim, and James and Carl all led and blended by Carol and supported by the singing of Jenifer and Eve and Laura and Catherine and this congregation, and the heavenly chorus with whom we join – and then all of a sudden we are in that space where we are one with one another and one with the One who created us and the One who redeemed us and the One who sustains us in this life. In the presence of the One God and we make one wonderful communal Alleluia of Adoration and Offering.
And we will go from here created a new people, each of us chosen and sent and empowered by the Triune God in whose presence we have worshipped. Into a world full of his glory.
It is in community, in relationship, that we are most fundamentally true to our identity as God's creation. And in commu¬nity, in relationships, we share who we are in ways that enrich the Other and thereby we find our own true selves and we are enriched as well..
Thanks be to God the Father, and to God the Son, and to God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
