“We got this baby! Keep going!”

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Trinity Sunday, 2021; preached by the Rev. Dina van Klaveren

Let us today express gratitude to God for those in our community who have just graduated, or are about to graduate. I want to say to each of you: Trust God and do your part. Remain steadfast in faith and worship, and trust God to save this beautiful, yet troubled, world.

There is a beautiful, life-changing prayer on page 836 of the Book of Common Prayer. Lets pray it for our graduates, and for all of us who are gradually transitioning from whatever was to whatever will be next:

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love. We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for the loving care which surrounds us on every side. We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us. We thank you also for those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone. Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know God and make God known; and through God, at all times and in all places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

Pray it every day and see how you are changed by it. A posture of thanksgiving to God changes how we see the world around us, in a good and healthy way. There are a few lines that I think are especially appropriate for our graduates:

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.

Graduates- you delight us! Who you are, the tasks you have completed, your accomplishments (and how you have done them) delight us as your faith community. Although we have one another in community, life can still be lonely at times. We feel alone when we struggle. We feel alone when we are making a decision. We feel alone as we move in new directions. And yet, we can never be truly alone. As alone as we may feel ourselves to be, the presence of God never leaves us- not even in death. God has gifted us with God’s own presence and the presence of a community. Graduates- wherever life takes you, or wherever you take life, look for a spiritual community. Find a place to learn and worship and serve with others.

We need one other. That’s why Jesus spends time teaching us about how to love our neighbor, how to give and receive care, how to share meals and lift one another up. We need one another. And, we need God. We relate to one another best when we acknowledge that we are all created by God. When we have the humility to see ourselves as God sees us- beautiful created beings made by God in the image of God.

What is the image of God? 

I’m not always sure how to answer this question, and I’m glad that our Christian tradition offers us some guidance. For about 2000 years, Christians have described God as three in one. One God, in three distinctive persons - yet still one.  We use imaginative metaphors to get at the qualities of God we want to understand better. Using our imaginations, let’s understand God, often referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be a designer, a project manager, and a coach.

God the designer, who scribbled out the architecture of life itself. Life is beautiful, and good, and balanced. Magnolias in bloom, cicadas in song, an enfolding embrace, fragrant tomato plants set into the soil, a pie fresh from the oven. Everywhere we sense life’s beauty - and the beauty of being fully alive in it.

God the project manager, who brought love into being, who took on human love and managed a way of love for all of creation to follow. He loved us even though we had trouble treating him with love. He continues to love us, incarnated in every loving interaction we experience. We are a part of the love project because he first managed that love into our lives.

God the coach, whose voice grows hoarse because she is encouraging on the sidelines, screaming with wild enthusiasm for humanity to work together, to play as a team, to give it everything we got. Yesterday I watched a high school track athlete get tangled up on a hurdle and fall down- then get back up, and keep running. That athlete has it right- you fall, you get up, and you keep going and growing. Perhaps God the coach is most proud of us when we keep going despite how we get tangled up on life’s hurdles.

God is three in one- designer, project manager, coach- 

This metaphor of life and love and growth, swirling together.

God is in perfect balance. Even though God does not always do what you or I would have God do- God is in perfect balance, and God has power. God is power- the power designing life into being, making the project of love happen, coaching humanity as it grows.

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God’s power will save the world.

God loves this world, and God will act to save it.

As humans created by God, we remain steadfast in faith and worship, and we trust that God’s salvation will come about. We play a part in it, yet we do not control it. We spend our lives learning the ways we are called to participate in God’s saving action in the world, and trust one another and God to do the parts we cannot do. We partner with God - God the designer, God the project manager, God the coach-  to save the world. How? We remain steadfast in faith & worship. We do not give up on God’s project to save the world. We are God’s steadfast partners, steady and unwavering in support of how God acts to save the world.

If this past year has taught us anything, it is that our steadiness comes from a combination of factors. The interplay of many factors in our lives draw us onto steady footing. Like many fibers twisted together into strands that are then twisted into a thick rope, we hang on to a thick rope of faith to steady ourselves as we scale the rocky heights. Our engagement with God, and the ways we seek to understand God at work, are important factors in how steady we are. When we are steady, when we have a good hold on that rope connecting us to the powerful presence of God, we can reach out a hand to those around us who start to slip, who become unsteady.

Graduates and everyone else, you have made it through a very strange 14 months. Give thanks to the three-in-one God whose every fiber draws you into life and love and growth. Embrace the journey ahead as we trust the three-in-one God to breathe life into being again and again, to love us and teach us to love, to yell from the sidelines those words we all need to hear:

“We got this, baby! Keep going! I’m so proud of you!”