May 26, 2024: Holy One, Holy Three

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 6: 1-8
Gospel: John 3: 1-17

Growing up Catholic, I enjoyed, and sometimes still enjoy, the ritual of always reminding myself of the Trinity by crossing myself “In the name of the Father (on the forehead), and of the Son (at the chest or heart) and of the Holy Spirit (touching each shoulder). In fact, it took many years of being a Protestant to break the habit of genuflecting and performing the sign of the cross as I entered a pew or crossed the altar in church. But then, what would be wrong with continuing to do that? Absolutely nothing! Whatever rituals, practices, or thoughts that bring us individually closer to God should be honored. There is no right or wrong here; the practice of our faith is individual as is our relationship with God even though we also collectively share our connection to God through worship together here.

The practice of crossing oneself comes out of early Christianity. 

Athanasius of Alexandria (269–373 A.D.) said, “By the signing of the holy and life-giving cross, devils and various scourges are driven away. For it is without price and without cost and praises him who can say it. The holy fathers have, by their words, transmitted to us, and even to the unbelieving heretics, how the two raised fingers and the single hand reveal Christ our God in His dual nature but single substance. The right hand proclaims His immeasurable strength, His sitting on the right hand of the Father, and His coming down unto us from Heaven. Again, by the movement of the hands to our right the enemies of God will be driven out, as the Lord triumphs over the Devil with His inconquerable power, rendering him dismal and weak.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem (386 A.D.) in his Catechetical Lectures stated, “Let us then not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings and in our goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are traveling, and when we are at rest” (Catecheses, 13).  

So the signing of the cross, invoking God the Parent, God the Son, and God with us as the Holy Spirit, offers us protection according to Athanasius and marks us as Christians according to St. Cyril, reminding us that Christ died for us on the cross. I think we Protestants could all agree to those meanings as well and I sometimes wonder why we do not keep up that tradition. Is it just that we want to differentiate ourselves from the Catholics? Maybe, but I personally believe that whatever practices bring us closer to God should be followed without worrying about the labels, so I sometimes still use the sign of the cross in my prayer practice. I particularly like the reminder of God as not the Holy One but the Holy Three in this ritual. However, I think that no longer doing this several times every Sunday upon entering church has actually made me think about the meaning more. 

As I touch my forehead, I think of God, the Parent/Creator of not just the planet but of all creation: the landscape, plants, animals, people and the very air we breathe. For those of you who are parents, or even just know parents, you know the challenges of parenting: educating your children intellectually and morally, protecting and providing for them, worrying about them, and then sending them off on their own praying that you gave them a good foundation they can build on in their own lives and for their own children as that cycle continues. But it is not just the people God has to worry about but the planet and, frankly, what the people have done to it. But just as parents have to let their kids go and hope and pray for the best, celebrate their successes, and mourn their failures with them, so too does God do that with all of us. Except God has a huge number and diversity of children, thus a lot more to worry about!

I think about the fact that we touch our heads for God the Parent. While I am guessing that particularly for Early Christians, this primarily refers to God the Creator or Parent as the CEO of the Trinity, being the first, it also points towards our brains. Maybe this is God the Mastermind of the diverse creation of our planet, in fact, the mastermind of our very bodies with the brain as our central processing unit. Think about the complexity of our brains and the interworking of the cerebrum that controls our movements and temperature; the brainstem which facilitates more movement, hearing, vision, tears, chewing and facial expressions, heartbeat, breathing, and blood flow; then there’s the cerebellum which coordinates voluntary muscle movement, posture, balance and equilibrium. Inside the cerebrum are the lobes which control decision-making, sense of smell, speech, memory, vision, sense of touch, and much more. One can see why God the Parent has the head portion!

I particularly think of God the Creator when I look at Creation. Sitting on my porch looking at the iris and lupine blooming, the azalea blooms fading away, I think of the Creator who made such delicate beauty and balance in the world. Taking a hike up a mountain, stopping to watch the water cascading down a waterfall, to look at the verdant greens of spring sprinkled with white and purple wildflowers and to hear the birds singing and the squirrels chittering, I find myself thanking the Creator for the literal beauty of the earth and my ability to walk in it, see it and take it all in. I also find myself praying to God as Earth’s mother that we, her children, can learn to do a better job of caring for this planet and all of the creatures on it. 

When I move my hand to my heart, and say “of the Son,” I invariably think of the heart and Love. In our John scripture today we heard the ever-familiar verse John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” God the Parent, gave us God’s only Son, knowing that while on earth that Son would suffer but believing that we, God’s human children, were worth it. So Jesus by virtue of being sent here is the gift of Love. But with Jesus, it’s not just a title, Jesus was and is the embodiment of Love in the active verb form. Jesus actively showed and shows love to ALL people, especially those that others did not love or chose to marginalize from taxpayers to lepers to prostitutes as well as anyone else who had been othered by society, even supposed enemies. Jesus, Love, invited them in, ate with them, stayed in their homes, taught them, healed them, and forgave them. 

Of course we touch our hearts when we say “of the Son.” Jesus, as the human form of God, led by example. While we cannot do what God the Creator did, we can follow Christ’s model about how to treat people: with loving kindness, patience, and respect. If we can do this, even in challenging situations, we are teaching others this model as well. That is what being a Christian really means.

Then we come to the Holy Spirit who gets not one but two touches: one on each shoulder, completing the vision of the cross. Even though this completes the vision of the cross, it makes sense, also, that it is on each shoulder as a reminder that it is the Holy Spirit who is with us, on each side of us, around us, in the very air we breathe. 

Jesus told Nicodemus in our John scripture today, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” We are all born by the water of the birth canal but then we or our parents, have the choice of Baptism, another birth of water: an official birth or welcoming into God’s family. Yet, this alone, Jesus says, is not enough. We must also be born of the Spirit - the Holy Spirit. I see this as the true acceptance of the triune God - belief is the ticket to the Spirit. It involves opening our eyes, ears, hearts: all of our senses to God with us - to the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. When we believe and pause, listening with our hearts, we can feel the Holy Spirit’s presence. It might be that still small voice urging you on in a difficult decision, it might be that feeling that we can accept something challenging and be ok, it is often, at least for me, a comforting, reassuring presence. Maybe another reason that we touch each shoulder to that, beyond completing the image of the cross, is that the Holy Spirit is like God’s arms on earth - reaching out to us, possibly metaphorically patting us on the shoulder or even giving us a hug when we need it.

Of course, we have to be born of the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Being born of the Spirit is truly the acceptance of the Triune God. It completes not only the cross, but the connection of our very bodies to the Holy Three. We accept God the Creator with our minds, we embody Jesus’s life and love with our hearts, and we show our birth of the Spirit, by reaching out with our own arms to follow Christ’s model in living a life of loving kindness towards all people. In doing this, feeling this balance of devotion in mind, heart, and action, we reveal ourselves as Christian. In accepting our Parent God of Creation, the Son who is Love, and recognizing and listening for the Holy Spirit’s support and guidance in our lives, we can get through all of the challenges that life invariably will send our way. We can feel a bit of that Kingdom of Heaven, right here on earth. It’s not so much a place but a state of mind and heart, that the Holy Spirit leads us to if we let that Spirit blow through us and into us. 
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It is like our Peace Song reminds us: When I breathe in that Holy Spirit, I breathe in peace, and when I breathe out, I breathe out Christ’s love.  Please join me in this breath exercise: Breathe In. Breathe Out. Amen.

Pastor Michelle Fountain

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