Jesus said, “We speak of what we know, and testify to what we have seen.” (John 3:11)
Under the leadership of our dynamic and faithful presiding bishop, Episcopalians have been encouraged to embrace, not so much the Episcopal Church, but the Jesus Movement. Michael Curry has helped us again and again to turn our hearts to Jesus. This emphasis has done us no harm whatsoever, and I trust that it is actually doing us a lot of good. There is no place better to turn than to Jesus, and no one better to turn to than Jesus.
But what does it mean to turn to Jesus? It means that you learn about who Jesus was. And it means you learn about who Jesus is. You read the stories of Jesus’ life told in the Gospels. You digest the accounts of his ministry of teaching, of healing, and of miracle-working. You ponder his parables and try to incorporate their meaning into your life. Turning to Jesus means that you contemplate the facts and the meaning of his suffering, and his death, and his resurrection. It means that you recall the story of his ascension into heaven. Turning to Jesus means opening your heart and your mind to the mysteries of how God loves humankind, and accepting that these will always be mysteries. And, of course, turning to Jesus means that you try to figure out what it means to be a disciple two thousand years after all those stories took place. That’s the distinction between who Jesus was and who Jesus is.
It turns out that learning to be a disciple two thousand years after the death and resurrection of Jesus involves just about the same things that it involved two months after his death and resurrection: joining together with others who believe that God is still at work through the risen Christ, and forming a community to carry on in Christ’s Name. We call that community the Church.
A principle mission of the church is to repeat the stories of Jesus over and over again as faithfully as we possibly can, lest we and the rest of the world forget those stories, or misplace their meaning, or obscure their revelations. We repeat the stories of Jesus in text and in song. People like me are assigned to elaborate and elucidate the stories, so long as we stay faithful to their meaning. And we repeat these stories within the community of faith because we are not only interested in who Jesus was. But we are interested in who Jesus is. And these stories literally come alive within the community of faith.
We don’t just remember that Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. When we hear Jesus say, “You give them something to eat,” we hear him saying it to us, too.
We don’t just remember that Jesus said “This is my Body,” and “This is my Blood… Do this in remembrance of me.” We act as though he was talking to us, and we actually do it. And in the doing of it, we bask in the living Presence. Of Jesus
I’m aware that I often talk about Jesus as if he was someone I could take you to visit if only we had time and access to his distant and magnificent palace. I suspect that some people - many people, perhaps - find this way of speaking fanciful and maybe even delusional, and they conclude that faith in Jesus requires a suspension of disbelief that many modern Americans find ridiculous.
Since Jesus never wrote anything down, we cannot pretend that turning to him involves becoming students of his texts, which might at least add a pseudo-intellectual aspect to the enterprise. And even the texts we have that tell us about Jesus have complicated histories, part of which is lost, along with the originals.
Of course you know that Jesus does not live in a distant palace that we could visit if only we had time. Jesus sits on his throne in heaven. And the Jesus movement recognizes the need for little thrones for him to occupy here in this world: not only at altars, like the ones in this church, but also on what the great hymn writer Charles Wesley called “the mean altar[s] of [our] heart[s].”
And so, with our faithful and bold presiding bishop, we dare to speak of Jesus, and to promote the Jesus movement, which is a movement of peace, and love, and justice, and mercy.
For us, to speak of Jesus is to speak of what we know, of what we can know of God. But it is also to acknowledge that we leave much unsaid, since there is much that we do not know about God. But on this Sunday, we are called to speak of more than the Jesus movement, and we are called to unpack the bags that we carry with us as we go, even if, as a matter of course, we speak mostly of Jesus. On this Sunday (and of course on other Sundays, too, but preeminently on this Sunday), we speak of God in ways that Jesus spoke of God. We speak not only of the Son of God, but we speak of the Father, and of the Holy Spirit, too. And when we dare to speak of God in these ways, we often admit that we are speaking of things about which we do not know very much.
It’s hard for us to adhere to a religion that requires us to admit that there is so much we do not know. Yet, learning to speak of the Holy Trinity is learning to speak of what we do not and cannot know. This requires a humility that is very uncomfortable for us.
It also relies on a category of knowledge that is not much in favor these days: revelation. We can speak of things we cannot not know - that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - because Jesus speaks of what he knows.
And in conversations like the one he had with Nicodemus, Jesus reveals to us (as he revealed to Nicodemus) things we cannot otherwise know. Of course, even Nicodemus was confused by what Jesus said to him, “How can any be born after having grown old?” Nicodemus may have been the first Episcopalian - very uncertain about the idea of being born again.
And we are confused, too. And we hardly know what to make of Jesus when he says to Nicodemus, “We speak of what we know, and testify to what we have seen.” The use of the plural pronoun confuses us, the rest of what Jesus says in that conversation confuses us… no matter how you look at it, you can find reason to be confused by what Jesus says here. And if we are confused, we miss the point, that Jesus speaks of what he knows. But this is an important point not to miss.
Jesus speaks of what he knows. And there is no aspect of the mystery of God’s being that Jesus does not know, since he, himself, is of that mystery. Jesus reveals to those who seek him, that he is in eternal relationship with the Father and with the Spirit in ways that we can never fully know. Jesus shows us that he is the means of God’s self-disclosure - not only allowing us to know him - both who he was, and who he is - but also allowing us to glimpse his relationship with the Father, and to open ourselves to the gifts of the Spirit. And we have confidence that Jesus speaks of what he knows, and testifies to what he has seen.
Involving ourselves in the Jesus movement does not, it turns out, lead us away from a fuller, and more complete image of God, since Jesus speaks of what he knows. And what Jesus knows is this: that he and the Father are one, and that the Spirit, who is also one with them, leads us into all truth.
So, even on Trinity Sunday, it’s a good idea to turn to Jesus! When we turn to Jesus and learn who Jesus was and who Jesus is, we will learn that he speaks of what he knows and that he testifies to what he has seen. And Jesus knows that God is Father, Son, and Spirit: Holy Trinity, One God. Without Jesus, I doubt we could ever know this unknowable truth of God’s being - it’s just too hard for us! This impossibility of knowing what Jesus knows is part of why this day is so daunting for the preacher. How can we speak of what we do not know? But it is not actually my job to do that - to speak of what I do not know - rather, it is my job to help you hear Jesus speak of what he knows.
Everybody knows that it’s easier to sing about God than it is to explain God. That’s’ why it’s so difficult to try to get through today without singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy, merciful and mighty…. God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” But if I could sing with you this morning, I would actually want to sing another hymn, less well known, with words written by a 17th century English clergyman that asks the question, “How shall I sing that majesty?”
How, indeed, to sing and speak of the things we cannot know, except to turn to Jesus and let him speak of what he knows. But sing, we do, even silently in our hearts, confident in the revelation we have been given in and through and by Jesus. And the hymn that asked the question, concludes with this wonderful verse:
How great a being, Lord, is thine,
Which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.
(John Mason)
A sea without a shore. A sun without a sphere.
Holy, holy, holy, indeed, art thou, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Thy time is now and ever more. Thy place is everywhere.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
30 May 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
