The most exciting day of the school
year growing up was, of course, the last day. Everyone was excited, nobody
payed attention to anything, and once we got out the door and headed into
vacation we turned that part of brains that had been subjected to all that book-learnin’ clean off. In a way, this past Sunday, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity (commonly called Trinity Sunday) day, is like the last day of school but for churches. It’s the last major feast day we celebrate on Sunday morning until All Saints Day in November, and many of us headed out the door on Sunday and went straight into vacation, or at least they did in my church. Admittedly, when
church years are structured like academic years, this pretty much always
happens; it doesn’t happen in monasteries, for example. In some places that structure is so strong
that churches suspend some or all of their services for the entire summer. It’s not uncommon, then, to find folks on
Trinity Sunday sitting on pins and needles anticipating the dismissal like 10
years olds who can’t wait to hear the school bell ring them into the
summertime.
To be fair, though, we all need
rest. Our choirs, formation leaders, and clergy all need a chance to recoup. The extreme opposite of those churches that
suspend services in the summertime is one parish in which I served where the
priest wanted ALL programs to continue into the summer, for fear that folks
would think that we were being lazy "The
church does not take breaks," this priest said
Well, that’s both true and
untrue. It’s untrue because church folk,
especially folk working in churches like clergy and program directors, need to
honor the commandment to observe a sabbath rest because we’re usually bad at
it. But it is also true that the church does not take breaks insomuch as what
we are called to do in our baptism—break bread, pray, seek and serve Christ in
all persons, love our neighbor as ourselves, proclaim by word and action the
Good News of God, strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of
every human being—does not have an offseason.
The church is not a school where we fill our brains to the brim with
work and then take a long break just as we’re reaching our boiling-point, nor is
it a job that we begrudgingly come to week after week, waiting for vacation time to come and rescue us from the monotony. The church, instead, is the gathered body of
the faithful, saints and sinners of all sorts, who are engaged not so much in
work but in ministry, and ministry does not stop.
That's because ministry is about relationship. It’s about connecting with each other and
connecting each other to God. This past weekend was all about relationship at our church, Good Shepherd in Asheboro, NC. I got to connect
with several of our youth on Friday night at our annual lock-in, talking about how God is our anchor, about the abundance of God’s love for us, and about the
gratitude we feel for all God gives us, especially our relationships. And on Trinity Sunday we raised up the new folks in our midst, welcoming 30 folks to our community during the two morning liturgies and honoring those new connections with a light reception in their honor.
Building relationships and making
connections with one another and God is what we do each week when we gather in our places of worship, certainly, but it’s what we do when we go to the coffee shop or
brewery during the week. It’s what we do when we see
someone on the street hurting and feel compelled to help in some small
way. It’s what we do because it’s who
we are, and it’s who God is!
Christianity is unlike any other
religion—the anti-religion, as one theologian calls it—because it’s not
predicated on rules, dogma, or discipline. That's not what Jesus came to show us and not what the earliest followers of the Way were about. Christianity was not founded upon the idea that our goal was doing a
certain number of tasks, performing a required amount of work, and then calling
it a day, patting ourselves on the back in congratulations for what we
accomplished. No, Christianity was
founded upon the principle of transforming one’s life and the lives of others
through relationship. At its heart our faith is rooted in Jesus’ relationship
with the God whom he called Father and the Spirit of truth who came from God on
that day of Pentecost to fill the people with the fire of God’s love, and she
has never left since. God, you see, is
the very action of relationship; God is more of a verb than a noun. Remember the name God declare when speaking to Moses:
YAHWEH, the great I AM, THE ONE WHO IS BEING. Trinity
Sunday is the day that we remember that YAHWEH’s whole being is about
relationship with Godself in the dance between the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, which is why God creates us to be in relationship with one another and
with God. In many ways, Trinity Sunday
is the perfect high holy day to celebrate at this time of year.
For as we head to the
beach or the mountains and take our breaks from church programming, Trinity
Sunday launches us into our so-called Ordinary Time (as if there really is such a thing!), with relationship at the
forefront of our minds; authentic relationships with our sisters and brothers,
both newcomer and oldcomer, both inside our church buildings and outside among the Church in the world.
These relationships are grounded in those baptismal vows, which themselves are
grounded in our relationship with the great I AM. And that does not stop,
whether we take breaks in our church programming or not, whether we go out of
town in the summer or not, whether we understand the complexities of the
theology of the Holy Trinity or not.
What Trinity Sunday teaches us is not doctrinal, it’s relational: God in Trinity exists in the love expressed
between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we exist to ground the love we
have in that relationship which is the very foundation of all being. This relational ministry is the call of every Christian at all times and in all
places.
