Embodying God (by Danielle Beabout)

Imagine with me, if you will, a new mother, giving birth for the very first time.  She has the choice between two nurses to assist her during the delivery.  The first, a top of her class, newly minted young lady — a wonderful prospect, but someone with no children of her own; this will be the first live birth she’s assisting with.  The second,a nurse who has been working for fifteen years, who has three of her own kids.

If you were this new mother, which would you prefer?

I’d hazard a guess that most of us would choose the nurse who has had her own children, every time.  Even drawing to mind what words they may use to comfort her - no need to worry, the first might say; I know exactly how this is supposed to work.  People have been having children for centuries, and we know more now than we ever did before!

Versus the second - I’ve got you, mama.  I know, I know it hurts.  I’ll make sure the doctor  listens to what you want.  I know it’s overwhelming; I’m here for you; you’ll get through this, and remember — this isn’t for nothing.  You’re on the verge of new life.

As humans, we have a fairly logical preference towards trusting people who have experience with what we’re going through.  From what I have seen, that fact ony becomes emphasized when the thing we are going through is underscored by pain, or fear — exponentially so, when both are involved.

This, in my mind, bring a new kind of meaning to something Jesus says in this Gospel.  “All authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me,” he says.

An interesting Gospel, to be sure; fitting, for Trinity Sunday in our lectionary calendar.  A verse that provokes us to think about Jesus and what his authority is and does and means.  It certainly has fueled a great many sermons, a few of which may lean into an unearned tone of self assuredness for folks who thought they had just the way to understand the Trinity!  A new visual!  A new shorthand!  A new perfectly articulated metaphor!

Luckily for us all, I have no such delusions about being able to clearly and easily explain a doctrine we’ve held in confusion and awe and wonder for over a thousand years.  In fact, the idea of being able to explain the Trinity, like how a mechanic explains an engine, doesn’t really interest me.

What does interest me, is this:

Isn’t it so curious that Jesus’ proclamation of him having been given authority on Earth coincides with his living, dying, and living again through one of (if not the most) painful of deaths a human can experience?  His authority is intrinsically linked… to the fact he has experienced this? 

Over the time I’ve spent with Scripture, I have gleaned a notion — after Psalms about God collecting our tears in bottles; God being a parent to the orphan child; God, who knows the twists and turns of every human heart — and the best way I can draw these noticings together into one idea is to put it like this.

No one ever feels pain alone.  By God’s own nature of lovingly being with all that is, God is with us and has been with us, through it all.

But how are we to know that?

How are we to take this God that we learn about in Scripture — say, if we were average folks, among the disciples at this time in the Gospel.

Imagine hearing one of them speak:  We have these Scripture stories that are passed down, and they all say these really nice ideas about God caring about us; but right now, we’re living under Roman Imperial rule.  God can care about me all he wants — I’m worrying about paying off my debts before my kids grow up and all they know is the life of a wage slave — the payment for a life they will never get to live.

It’s a bit similar to how we feel about that A+, gold star, honor roll nurse, right?  Sounds great, but get out of my room.  Yeah, it’d be nice if that were true about God, if that was anything about how life worked — but until you’ve actually dealt with any of this, can you just leave me alone, please?

(How many folks do you think feel that way about God, if you really got them to speak honestly?  Even today, imagine hearing someone speak: All this about God loves is fine and dandy — I haven’t spoken to my parents in six years; or, I have a cancer treatment next week that I don’t know if my insurance will pay for; or, I’ve never felt like I’ve been really truly wanted in any room I’ve walked into.  How can you stand there and tell me God loves me and expect me to believe it when I feel so much pain?)

And then, our answer — for us now, and for the people at the time in Jerusalem — more than just our stories, we’ve got Jesus.  We see him know our pain — go from treating and healing and counseling us for it to feeling it, experiencing it, in some of the worst ways possible.  Nailed to a tree.  Left to hang like a grotesque decoration, a decree of power.  More a bag of meat than a human person.  (Even as the imperial authorities attempt to reduce him to this, he refuses, in the midst of great pain, to be convenient for them.)  This… this moment — and his rising from it in Easter season, which we have just passed — I think this is where he experienced being given authority in heaven, on earth.  Because with this moment, we can no longer deny that God — if we see God in Jesus — does experience our pain.  With us.  Authority given to him — not over us, but in our eyes. We now, in the human story — like the new mother with the second nurse — we can trust he understands what we feel, because he has felt pain, too. He has been there, too.  He has in this way earned an authority in our eyes he already had — the authority to give us hope, and have us recognize it.

When you learn about how people recover from really awful things, one of the first things that you learn is that humans begin to heal when they find meaning.

With Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are given a direct path to finding meaning for even our deepest, darkest pain — not because it makes it go away.  But instead because it shows us that we are not alone in it.  That we can live past it.  No, this pain does not mean God has abandoned me even when it feels that way.  He felt that way too, and it still wasn’t the end.

And then, in Pentecost, we are given something else, too.  More meaning — a course of action.  The Holy Spirit.  The self same God who promised not to abandon us here again, with this power of hope and healing — and with holy expectation.

Go.  Teach them as I have taught you.  Embody who God is and how God works as much as you can.  Help other people know they’re not in their pain alone.  You will be with them, and I will be with you.  Go.

We are, in implicit and explicit ways, called to enact the Trinity.  Tell the stories of our spiritual ancestors and how they saw and knew God.  Live into the healing, teaching, loving calling of Jesus.  And, by all means, spread hope far and wide, and help the hearts of our neighbors — baptizing them to hear, heal, and hope, all in turn.  That willing practice of relational love — of humbling ourselves to share our own burdens and help others to lift theirs — will grant us an understanding of the Trinity that goes deeper than any simple image of it.  Live.  Love.  Go.