Who here would like life to be more heavenly? Everyone, I assume. Heavenly life, abundant life, is what we want for ourselves and everyone else.
Today, we celebrate the Trinity. Over the last 1600 years, lots of people have spent lots of time trying to explain and defend this teaching. Some reach for analogies, such as: the Trinity must be like H2O; it can appear as steam, water or ice. But theologians are quick to say, “No, no, no, that’s heresy!!! Because steam, water, and ice are different forms or modes of the same matter; this analogy doesn’t capture the distinct personhood of Father, Son & Holy Spirit.
I suspect many of you are feeling that such debates can’t get us any closer to experiencing Heaven on earth. But these fussy theologians may be doing as a key service. By shooting down every single effort to find a model for the Trinity in our experience, they may be helping us to see that God has given us the only model we need, and it’s a model that reveals exactly how we can experience Heaven on earth.
It’s right in the middle of today’s first lesson. It reads, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.’ ” There are some phenomenal revelations in this little sentence. Notice that this sentence supposes plurality and community within God, long before any talk of Jesus. [Let “us” make humankind in “our” image.] The Hebrew word translated as God is “Elohim,” a plural word. And yet it’s not a pantheon of gods bickering as we see in Greek or Roman myth. It’s a unified community. And just in case you are wondering what that looks like, this God decides to create a perfect image of itself. And that perfect image is not water/ice/steam; it’s not the shell, yoke, and white of an egg; it’s not even the peanut butter, jelly and bread of a peanut butter sandwich. The perfect image of God, plural and yet united, Triune and yet One, is …….. humankind, not each human, but all humankind, taken together.
Now, some of you are saying, “How can that be?” Human beings do wretched things. So, how can humankind be the image of God? These very questions may hold the key. They feature that in creating humankind, God showed something amazing about God’s self. What God showed is an overwhelming propensity to give. We couldn’t make wrong choices if God didn’t give us the ability to choose. Consider what God was releasing in giving us power to make choices. Other designs were possible. God could have created identical little worship-a-tons, little worship droids. But perfect automation would not have imaged the divine, and it would not reveal anything to us about Heavenly life. Imaging the core of divine life required a great display of generosity. The display continued. It continued when God gave up formlessness to be housed in the finite as Jesus. It continued when God gave up autonomy to work with us and within us by action of the Holy Spirit. Generosity is at the core of God, and that makes generosity the key to Heavenly life. We can turn that key, because God’s heart for generosity has been imaged in us.
I have seen recent evidence that this is so. A couple weeks ago, a story was running all through the media. Western Oregon and Central Washington were playing each other in a close softball game. A gal from Western Oregon hit her first ever home run. She rounded first base with such excitement that she tore her knee ligament and could not continue. The umpire ruled that her teammates could not help her. Then, something generous beyond imagining happened. Two players from the opposing team picked the gal up and carried her around the bases, allowing her to touch each so that her run would count. That run made the difference in the game.
What I find most meaningful about this story is not that it happened, not that two players on one team in one game extended such a generous gesture in the year 2008. What I find most meaningful is the feeling this story evokes in anyone who hears it. It evokes a wonderful joy and delight… better than any sports victory could give. That ecstasy and joy comes from the instinct that we are seeing life at its best. Victory taps our personal drive. Generosity taps nothing less than the image of God in us. When we tap the image of God in us, we experience Heaven on earth.
I see that happening more and more around this parish. It’s happening in our Thursday night dinners, to which we invite hungry members of the neighborhood to sit with us around a family table. It’s happening in our SnackPack outreach to families of children who attend Jed Smith school. Somehow these communal acts bring more joy to all involved than the individual act of privately writing a check. That communal God revealed in the Trinity and revealed in the creation of humankind seems to flourish within generous, communal acts. And I have good news: We are starting a new program to help all of us experience community with one another more fully. It is a new small group system called Kin Groups, and you can learn more about that from our coordinator, Corrine Bogié, after this service.
We have the key to making life more heavenly for ourselves and for others: a generous heart. Nothing more is needed, and nothing less will do.