Finally Shall Come the Poet

— A Sermon by Gary L. Bagley —

~~~ Trinity Sunday ~~~

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8:1-9

Understanding the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of God—and the Trinity has been a challenge for Christianity for a long time. Understanding what has been happening to the Church-at-large during the last 50 years has been a divisive challenge, as well. The late author, Phyllis Tickle, addressed both of these issues in her last book—The Age of the Spirit: How the Ghost of an Ancient Controversy is Shaping the Church.

The things we don’t understand and especially the things we misunderstand limit our ability to live more fully. My apologies, up front, for a sermon today that embraces what the psalmist calls “deep calling unto deep” and being so complicated. I want to honor both the profundity and simplicity of the Spirit of God today on this Trinity Sunday.

“Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music,” Angela Monet has said. During the eleven o’clock serving of communion last Sunday, the piano and violin duet, “O Magnum Mysterium,” was so powerful for me that I struggled serving the bread and offering the words “The Bread of Life” as emotions and spirit soared within during the Lauridsen piece.

“The age of the spirit” is the period of time in which the Church has been living since about 1950, so says Harvey Cox (retired Harvard Divinity School professor) in his last book, The Future of Faith. Phyllis Tickle has labeled this period as “The Great Emergence.” All of us have been aware of how much the Christian Church has change during the last 50 or so years—the wide variety of worship styles, charismatic movement, contemporary worship, theology, significant drop in church attendance overall, and attitudes towards religion in general.

Today, we find ourselves on Trinity Sunday in the ecclesiastical calendar—the Sunday after Pentecost—raising again the difficulty of understanding the nature of God and specifically the personality of God. “…finally shall come the poet” to make sense of that which theology and science can’t describe, to borrow a phrase of Walt Whitman.

Alfred Tennyson expressed this dilemma in his simple poem:

Harvey Cox’s 2009 book, The Future of Faith, was slightly preceded and followed by Phyllis Tickle’s trilogy on “Emergence Christianity.” Cox’s simple three-point history of Christianity is:

• The Age of Faith from Jesus’s ministry up to Christianity become the state religion of Rome in the early 4^th century
• The Age of Belief from 325 C.E. or so up to the Great or Protestant Reformation
• The Age of the Spirit from about 1950 through the present

Tickle’s 2008 book, The Great Emergence, in a simple four-point outline of Christianity, labeling those four segments of the 2,000 years into:

• The Great Transformation—Jesus up to about 500 C.E.
• The Great Decline and Fall—decline and fall of the Roman Empire (the Dark Ages) up to about the 11^th century
• The Great Schism—from about the 11^th with a severance of East from West in all parts of life including orthodox Christianity resulting in the Roman Catholic Church of the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church
• The Great Reformation or the Protestant Reformation— from the mid-1500s to the mid-late 1900s
• The Great Emergence—from about 1950 forward

Both Cox and Tickle say we are living in the age of the Spirit. The Church-at-large has moved from the “what do you believe?” “what’s the difference in Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists” mantra to the unspoken “what has God been doing in your life recently?” one.

Contrary to the notion that God’s Spirit did not exist until the Day of Pentecost, today’s Old Testament scriptures of Genesis and the Psalm speak of the uniqueness and unity of God that we have come to define as the Trinity. The unread gospel for today, John 16:12 and 13 says:

I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle them now. But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. 

The Genesis 1 creation story, the seven-day creation story, speaks of the Spirit of God—the wind of God—sweeping over the face of the waters as creation began in this poetical, symbolic story. (The “Adam and Eve” older story of the two Genesis creation stories begins in the second chapter, verse four.)

The advent of Christ began the “following the Way of Jesus” movement (phrase that Acts uses) that the world had such great difficulty understanding. People followed “the Way” by faith for the first 300 years. Despite the Roman government executing in around 33 C.E., under Emperor Constantine the Great Christianity became the state religion—an institutional religion—with all its mandates of conformed beliefs. While the Great Reformation (or Protestant Reformation) created a freedom the institutional church, it gave birth to the eventual battle over biblical interpretation that began about 1900. But for the past fifty to seventy or so years, the Church has started moving away from its rigid emphases on beliefs and denominational differences toward a unity of faith and a following of the Spirit.

One of Walt Whitman poems reminds us:

After the seas are all cross’d,

After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,

After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,

Finally shall come the poet …

…the very Spirit of God itself, the very “Spirit of Truth” itself, as the Gospel of John tells us, “to guide us into all the truth there is.”

On February 28, 2008, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Lorin Maazel performed in Pyongyang, North Korea at the invitation of the North Korean government. It was the first significant cultural exchange from the United States since the end of the Korean War. The program included the national anthem of North Korea our own “Star Spangled Banner,” Wagner’s Prelude to Act III of “Lohengrin,” Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” No. 9, a Bizet and a Bernstein piece, and Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.”

As Maazel introduced this piece, he remarked, “Someday a composer may write a work entitled “Americans in Pyongyang.” The audience got his joke and laughed. It was a pivotal moment for the conductor and the orchestra.

But it wasn’t until the encore that the ice really broke. The orchestra played ”Arirang,” a famous and favorite folk song for all Koreans. The folk song is the story of a man and a woman separated by circumstances beyond their control, a musical metaphor, perhaps, for Korean reunification. Tears filled the eyes of the audience and orchestra. The performance was being broadcast live via all of North and South Korea. The audience stood and applauded for five minutes. Neither wanted the night to end.

“…finally shall come the poet…”—the artists, the musicians, the gifted creative human beings, the very Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth—to make sense of the reality that is holding the world back.

So, may it be. So, may it be forever. AMEN

~~~~~~~~~~

Genesis 1:1-2:4a (read only the first 5 verses and summarize the rest)

1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

This first story begins with the creation of Light in the midst of deep darkness with the Spirit of God (the wind of God) sweeping over the face of the waters…and its separation forming night and day. That was the first day.

The second day, the atmosphere above the Earth was created, and God called everything above it the Sky.

On the third day, land was created to separate the sea and the oceans. Plants and trees bearing fruit and seeds were formed on the land.

The sun, moon, and the stars evolved on the fourth day of God’s creation, as told by this Priestly tradition.

On the fifth day, God began mammal and reptile life, starting with great sea monsters…dinosaurs and ancient birds of which the pelican and the ivory-bill woodpecker remind us.

The sixth day continued the mammal creation with things like cattle and mice, deer and pigs, dogs and cats, finally creating a higher form of life with thought patterns and emotions, spirits and wills that could reflect in human form the image of the Creator. And to this form of creation—people—God gave the responsibility of care for the earth and everything that lived upon it. And that was the end of day six.

After each day of creating, God saw it, was pleased with it, and said that it was “good.”

God blessed the seventh day, making it holy, and rested from all the work he had done. “These are the generations—“seven days,” millions of years—of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”

This is the systematic story as carried in oral tradition for thousands of years before finally being written down…with each day changing and developing as God’s creation continued.

1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

 Psalm 8:1-9

1O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.

2Out of the mouths of babes and infants

you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,

to silence the enemy and the avenger.

3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

4what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

5Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

6You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet,

7all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

8the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

9O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

~~~~~~~~~~

¹ Wikipedia, “2008 New York Philharmonic visit to North Korea.”

² CNN.com, “Notes from North Korea,” May 11, 2008: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0805/11/siu.01.html

³ From Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a.