Matthew 28: 1- 20
I have a question that is entirely reasonable to ask in church. And the question is this: do you know the difference between heaven and hell? Well, I recently heard that heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are English, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and everything is organized by the Swiss. Hell, on the other hand, is where the English are the cooks, the Germans are the police, the French are the mechanics, the Swiss are the lovers, and everything is organized by the Italians!
I mention this because that's about the image we have of today's feast of the Holy Trinity. Everything's backward, out of order, and unintelligible: three-in one, nature and person, Father, Son, and Spirit. What does it all mean and what does it really have to do with us? Like our story, it's a heavenly feast with a hellish twist. To answer that, I'd like to share with you three quick stories and then we'll see what they have in common that sheds light on the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
- The first story is this: Once there was an elderly man, and one evening he was taking his usual walk. He was enjoying the crisp night air and the wind blowing gently. But suddenly he heard a voice crying out, "Help me! Help me!" The man looked around and saw no one and so he continued his walk. Again he heard a tiny voice, "Help me, help me!" This time he looked down and he saw a small frog. He gently lifted up the frog and looked at it intently. The frog spoke, "I am really a very beautiful princess. If you will kiss me, I will turn back into a princess and I will hug you and kiss you and love you forever." The man thought for a moment, placed the frog in his top pocket, and continued walking. The little frog looked up out of the pocket and asked, "Why don't you kiss me?" The man responded. He said, "Frankly, at this stage of my life, I'd rather have a talking frog."
- Then there's this passage from Zorba the Greek. Zorba is speaking. He says, "One day when I was a child, an old man took me on his knee and placed his hand on my head as though he were giving me a blessing. 'Alexis,' he said, 'I'm going to tell you a secret. You're too sma1l to understand now, but you'll understand when you are bigger. Listen, little one. Neither the Seven stories of Heaven nor the seven stories of Earth are enough to contain God, but a person's heart can contain God. so, be careful, Alexis and my blessing be with you - never to wound another person's heart."'
- A final story, a true one, comes from a priest friend of mine who was summoned one day to the chancery and told, "Father, we are sending you to this old, inner city parish. There are some wonderful people there; yet they are old and the church and the parish have been in decline for the past 20 years. Just a handful of people left now, so they won't expect much ministry from you. Just go there and visit and do what you can." His heart sank. This is not what he wanted and he told the parish council when he got there - three elderly women - that he really wanted to work with young children and families. He told them, "I really prayed to God whether I should come here. How can I have a fruitful ministry here? But I'll give it a try." A few months later, he happened to be visiting the hospital and stopped in to visit a mother with her newborn son. She talked to him of the experience of childbirth. "But worst of all," said the young mother, "is that we had this baby all by ourselves." "What do you mean?" he asked. "Oh," she said, "our parents are way across the other side of the country and since this is Our first baby, it's a little scary for us. We have no one to ask what to do next. We have no grandparents Most of the people in our neighborhood are young couples like ourselves. I wish this baby had some grandparents." And suddenly, as you can guess, a light came on "Grandparents!" he thought, "My God, the parish is full of grandparents! The whole tiny congregation is grandparents." So he talked the congregation into visiting the home of a couple whose baby was born into the neighborhood Well, the baby visitors, as it Soon turned out, were great in evangelizing. The young couples were looking for somebody to be excited about the birth of their children. The church had a surplus of grandparents and the two got together and the church was reborn. Where once there was solitude, there was now community.
By the same token, think of the worst moments of your life: when you were rejected, when you were divorced, when you peered out the window watching couples hand in hand going out while you sat alone, when you were cut off from family and friends, when you ached for a hug and it was not forthcoming, when you were scared and wanted someone to hold you and no one was there for you, when you were betrayed by a friend, when you felt isolated. We don't even like to go to the movies or out to dinner by ourselves, do we? Why is solitary confinement such a horrible form of punishment?
You see what I'm saying? You see what the bottom line is? It's that we human beings are in desperate need of union - even promiscuous sex at bottom is such a misguided search-in such a need for togetherness, for communion, that our whole life is one large search for love. Our hearts are made for one another and for God. Rejection is such an intolerable hurt because we need desperately to be connected. But my question is why? Why this existential, driving need for union? Why do the young flock to malls and singles bars? Why those best moments when union occurs and the worst when it is absent? Why?
The answer, simply and profoundly, is in today's feast. We are made in the image and likeness of God and God is communion. That's it. God's image is writ large into our very natures, imprinted on our neurons, coded on our brain cells, and burned into our hearts. The feast of the Holy Trinity says that God is communion, is relationship, and therefore, so are we. God's own inner self is to "be with," to be in connection, to be family: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. what makes God God is intimate relationship and no wonder we can't help it if we have to be the same way. We have no choice. That's why the apostle says that God is Love and that we are most God-like when we are in love, give love, and receive love.
Every striving of our souls for union, every reach out for companionship, every urge for a hug and an embrace, every act of love gives indirect testimony to the Trinity. The Trinity says that God is community and so we seek. The Trinity says that God is relationship and so we search. The Trinity says that God is love and so we love. We can't help ourselves. We're made to that image and likeness. We mirror our origins. We are who we are because God is who God is.
So this is what we're celebrating today. In very simple terms, this profound feast tells us why we are what we are, why we are who we are, how we are who we are, and makes ever more real those famous words of St. Augustine, who knew a thing or two about love, "You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you." Indeed, the Trinity is a mystery all right, but it's a mystery about us too, a mystery of love and our quest for it, a mystery of the Triune community we shall both recognize and enjoy in heaven.
(From Storytelling the Word, pp. 253 - 256. Copyright 1996 by William J. Bausch. Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, CT. [This resource, as well as many others, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center. If you enjoyed this homily, you might consider purchasing the BAUSCH TREASURY, a complete set of his homiletic books, including his new ones The Yellow Brick Road, The Word In And Out Of Season and A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers, as well as all of his previous homiletic publications: