Over. With. In. A Sermon for Trinity Sunday

 

                                               A Trinity of Trillium: Photo Credit - Rich Hanlon

Read me! Matthew 28:16-20

In honor of my son asking the age old question over his algebra homework, “When are we ever going to use this stuff in the real world,” I would like us all to return to our fifth grade English class. Remember? Mrs. Dowling. She had short red hair and glasses, and sometimes, when the kids would throw the erasers and break up the chalk into tiny little pieces, her stutter would start up as she struggled to get the words out. And you are small for your age, curiously small, and you don’t want to give up believing in Santa Claus, even though all the kids have told you how dumb you are. Your mom sends you to school every morning with bows in your hair, which you immediately yank from your braids as soon as you cross the street. Anyway, you’re sitting next to Jason, who picks his nose and eats the boogers, and Patrick, who has the strangest, most wrinkly hands that make you cringe when you have to hold them to say the Our Father. And Mrs. Dowling comes to the front of the class, where there is a big table set up for science experiments or art projects, group work or geography lessons, but today, it’s empty. There’s nothing there. No paints. No protractors. No giant atlas or shared microscopes. It’s just a table. Nothing else.

“Today we are going to learn about prepositions,” Mrs. Dowling announces. “Get out your grammar books.” And we all sigh. Nothing is more boring than grammar. Nothing can be more tedious than learning about these linking words that are neither noun nor verb, adjective nor adverb. They’re just the glue that holds the more important words together. They’re the lost words, the words you’re not allowed to end a sentence with. 

“A preposition,” Mrs. Dowling continues above the sighs and the groans, “is a word that shows relationship. It is a word that expresses relation to another word or element in the clause. Now. Repeat that back to me class, please.” And so you all drone together, “A preposition is a word that expresses relation to another word or element in the clause.” “Very good, class,” says Mrs. Dowling. “Now to make this a little bit clearer, we will use this table to illustrate. A preposition is any word that can show relationship to the table. For instance, if I go under the table, under is a preposition. If I stand by the table, by is a preposition. I can be on the table, beside the table, beyond the table, in the table, through the table, and even from the table. On, beside, beyond, in, through and from are all prepositions. These are words that don’t really have meaning on their own unless you attach them to something else. Above, across, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, by, down, from, in, into, near, of, off, on, to, toward, under, upon, with and within, these are all prepositions. You will need to memorize these for a quiz tomorrow. Now. Let me show you how to diagram these prepositions.” And you all sigh again.

The Gospel of John is known for all of Jesus’s “I am” statements. They’re meant to remind us of that moment with Moses and the burning bush, when he asks God who God is, and God simply responds with “I am.” That’s it, that’s all Moses gets. “I am.” So Jesus comes along and gives us a little bit more to hold on to. “I am the bread of life,” he tells us. “I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life,” and on and on he goes. But my favorite “I am” statement, which scholars would probably say doesn’t even count, comes from our reading today from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is surrounded by what’s left of his followers after a brutal death and a mysterious resurrection, and they’ve climbed a mountain in Gentile Galilee, far away from their Jewish comfort zones. And Jesus has some last words. Jesus gives them a homework assignment, and then he says this, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And there it is. My favorite I Am statement. I am with you. I am with.

Jesus is a preposition.

Jesus is that thing that shows relationship. That thing that connects.

"I am with,” he says. With. A preposition.

Jesus is with.

And our homework has everything to do with that with. Jesus’s last homework assignment is for us to do what he does. For us to be with.

Go be with.

Go make with.

Go baptize with.

Go teach with.

And remember, I am with.

Jesus - I. Am. With.

I used to hate thinking about the trinity. How could it be that there are three persons up there, but they’re really one God. As if there are these different entities up there that somehow merge but not really but also all the way? As if there’s a table, and a chair, and a bowl of, I don’t know, popcorn or something, somewhere “out there” or “up there” but certainly not here that is also some sort of table-chair-popcorn-bowl conglomeration. They’re all separate things, but they’re also one thing, and well, if you just don’t buy it then there’s something seriously wrong with your faith. Maybe you just need to work a little harder to better believe in the oneness and the separateness of this whole God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, Table/Chair/Popcorn bowl trinity thing. 

But what if we don’t look at God as some sort of noun - some sort of thing - out there, that if we just bent our thinking enough and believed hard enough, we’d know God?

But what if God isn’t a noun at all? Or what if God isn’t just a noun? What if God is a preposition?

Jesus says so. He says, “I am with.” 

Go back to fifth grade, because Jesus says that he’s a preposition.

So of course, if Jesus is a preposition, then so is the Father, so is the Holy Spirit. They’re all connected in this web of relationship, this web of prepositions, where the one needs the others in order to be.

God the Father is the one with authority and power over us all.

God the Spirit is the one who is the very breath in us all.

God the Son is the one who is walking with us in all this messy, confusing, brutal, beautiful humanity stuff.

Do all of this in the name of 

the Father - the one who is over all

And the Son - the one who is with all

And the Holy Spirit - the one who is in all.

In the name of the one God who is over, with, and in us all.

The trinity - Over, With, and In.

We’ve got to do our homework in the name of the Over, the With, and the In.

God is a preposition.

Guys, if we want to know God, we’ve got to go back to fifth grade English class. 

If we want to find God, we’ve got to diagram some sentences.

If we want to do what God calls us to do, we’ve got to take a look at some prepositions. 

We’ve got to look at what completes a relationship, we’ve got to go back to that table and take a look at all the ways that we can be in relationship with that table. 

But this is where it gets tricky, because we want God to be the table. That thing that is hard and sure and measurable. That thing that can be controlled and known and built and understood. But God isn’t the table. God’s the preposition. God’s the relationship to the table. The besides, the beyond, the under and the next to. God’s the in and the above and the between and the through. 

God is the with. God is with. With.

But if that’s too hard to grasp, it’s ok. We’ve got tables and chairs and Mrs. Dowlings and trees and birds and grocery carts and partners and friends and children and donuts and pizza to be with. We’ve got frustration and joy and peace and love and anger and grief to be with. We’ve got Jasons and Patricks and gentiles and jews and prisoners and the sick and the orphaned to be with. We are never not with. With is all around. So is in and through and next to and beyond and near and from. What we call the “Great Commission,” this final set of instructions before Jesus physically departs from the earth, is simply to do our fifth grade prepositions homework. Go be with. And in. And about. And over. And through. 

Go be with the hungry.

Go be with the lost.

Go be with the sinners and the prisoners and the tax collectors and the self righteous. 

Go be with the poor and the wandering.

Go be with the guy down the street who doesn’t look like you, doesn’t vote like you, doesn’t see the world like you. Go be with him.

When are we ever going to use any of this stuff? All the time. Everywhere. Study the algebra, recite the prepositions and memorize the periodic table of elements.   Wander the mall and serve at the food pantry. Sit with the lonely and the lost. Be with the kids who throw the erasers and crumble up the chalk and eat their boogers and have wrinkled hands. Be with your fifth grade self in all her insecurity. With is everywhere.

It’s all with.  Because Jesus is with. 

God is a preposition.

Now Go. Be with.

Thanks be to God.