Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Trinity Sunday (Year A), May 18, 2008
Mark Lloyd Taylor 

After the emergency C-section necessitated by a brain aneurysm, my daughter and her husband labored more over naming their son than almost anything else during the hospital stay. “Have you filled out the birth certificate?” nurses started asking on day two. On day four, they were more insistent: “Don’t forget to finish that form!”

But Rebekah and Neptali had not forgotten. They were trying to decide which story they would tell with the baby’s name. For names tell stories.

My daughter and her husband wanted to tell the story of a man and a woman possessing equal dignity and showing mutual respect. So they had to negotiate the complexities of modern family names: one or two? in which order? to hyphenate or not to hyphenate? But they also needed to tell the story of parents from two different countries, speaking two different mother tongues. So they sought a first name that would sound good when pronounced both in English and in Spanish. And Rebekah toyed with telling something of the story of her adult return to Christian faith; maybe using the name of a favorite saint as the baby’s middle name. Many stories. Many possible names.

On day five, an hour before the new family was to go home, the rest of us finally left the parents alone in the hospital room with their child. They soon settled on a story and finished the birth certificate: Tristan (or Tristán) – Taylor (as a middle name) – Rodriguez (no hyphen). They intentionally left room for Tristan to grow into the name and tell his own story.

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Today, on Trinity Sunday, I do not think we gather to contemplate a doctrine or decode some sacred arithmetic. I have no visual aid to help you capture the three-in-one; no icon; no shamrock, no egg. Instead, let me suggest, we learn God’s name, the name we use every time we gather: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and we hear God’s story.

One name, not three. “Baptizing them,” Jesus commands, “in the name” – not in the names – “of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

One complex name; more like a traditional Native American sentence name – Wind in His Hair or Stands with a Fist – than a name like Tristan Taylor Rodriguez. The Apostle Paul expands God’s name into a sentence, in today’s second lesson, when he blesses his readers: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Corinthians 13:13). Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love, grace, and communion. God’s care for and devotion to us beneath our feet and above our heads. The gift of God’s presence right in front of us in human form. The fellowship of God’s Spirit among us, bringing us together as community.

One complex ancestral name whose ancient spelling we honor, even if we choose to pronounce it in other ways to avoid making an idol of our failure to accord women the same dignity and respect as men: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yes; but also, Source of all being, eternal Word, and Holy Spirit; or, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Names tell stories. What story does God’s name tell? Listen again to the account our Hebrew ancestors give. “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. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good” (Genesis 1:1-4).

I hear three themes in this one complex story. The first theme. Before any beginning we can think – God already is. Beyond any horizon we can imagine – God is there. The origin of our universe, of all universes, rests not in cosmic battle or random chance, but in the self-giving love of one Mother, and she is God. Then after all results we can calculate and all consequences we can predict, God sees, God evaluates, and God declares all good. One eternal source. One eternal home. Our Hebrew ancestors said Elohim; we might say Father Almighty.

A second theme. Mother-Father God, uncontained and uncontrolled, before, beyond, and after all, speaks, moves out from Godself, and comes near. God’s Word creates, defines, establishes order by separating and gathering together. When God expresses Godself outwardly, beauty, variety, and fruitfulness result. First light, then sky; dry land and seas; sun, moon, and stars, plants, sea monsters, and human beings.

Third, and I believe this theme contains particularly good news. Even before God utters God’s Word and creates the new, the ordered, while the universe is still only a formless void, God is already present and active in another guise. Our Hebrew ancestors called it ruah. A wind from God sweeping over deep waters, moving them, energizing them. The breath of God sighing gently in the darkness, stirring life. God’s Spirit hovering over chaos like a mother caressing the unborn child in her womb.

God over us, God for us, God in and around us, this is the story God’s name tells.

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Four people have been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit since January here at St. Paul’s, and so into the story God’s name tells. Whether an adult like Matt or a child like Lucie, we baptize not to make God’s story their story, but because it has always already been theirs. The sacrament of baptism makes real and tangible; it does not make true. We immerse them, adults and children, we bathe them in what has been true from the beginning: the story of God’s motherhood, God’s creative Word, and God’s sweeping wind.

Baptism sometimes reverses the roles of adults and children. At that font back there, we have seen adults kneel, bend over, lie down, and cry unashamedly at their baptisms. And we have seen little children remain quiet, stand upright in the water, and even applaud themselves along with the rest of the assembly.

As in baptism, so sometimes also in life. I continue to marvel at the mystery of my grandson Tristan’s birth. Looked at one way, Rebekah’s unborn son placed her in mortal danger. If she had tried to deliver him normally, the intracranial pressure would likely have burst the aneurysm and killed her. On the other hand, if she had not been pregnant and under medical supervision, the aneurysm would likely not have been discovered at all. It would have lurked an invisible, but constant, threat. Maybe Tristan – even as an unborn child – saved his mother’s life. I wonder what form his future might take given such a beginning.

And this is why God’s story as we hear it told in the first few verses of the book of Genesis is such good news, such a gospel lesson, this morning. The story names our deepest human fears and offers to relieve them. Children fear the darkness and want a light left on. They fear deep water and shrink back from the edge. They fear chaos and retreat into themselves. Adults get afraid when we cannot see what lies ahead – the next job, living in a new city, replacing lost relationships. Adult get paralyzed by fear when we feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities, when we lack support and cannot touch bottom. Adults become afraid when nothing in our lives seems connected, when there is no apparent pattern to our stories.

The good news is that even before we experience God’s creative Word speaking a “Let there be…” into our lives and stories, God’s Wind sweeps over our deep waters, God’s Breath coaxes new life out of the darkness, God’s Spirit caresses our unborn, formless possibilities.

None of us is an abandoned child. God did not die in giving birth to us. While we await light, life, and order, we do not wait alone. The ruah, the Wind/Breath/Spirit of God is there, leaving room for us to grow into the name and to tell the story, ours and God’s. The Holy Spirit invites us to step outdoors and feel the breeze, to stop holding our breath, to put away our coats and scarves and feel her warm caress.

God in and around us; Holy Spirit. God for us; Jesus Christ. God over us; God the Father. This is the story God’s name tells. It is our story. It gives us our name.