God's Inviting You to Dance | Curate Tashara Angelle

Show Notes

Curate Tashara Angelle June 4, 2023 We’re so glad you’re here! This is a community for everyone and all of life’s questions. This is a place where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you. If you would like to connect click here: bit.ly/3RiftL1

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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.

Life Together In The Goodness Of God

Today is Trinity Sunday. For those of you who don't know, it's a day that many denominations in the Western Church celebrate as a feast day in honor of the Holy Trinity. And I get the opportunity to share with you a little bit about the doctrine of the Trinity, which also happens to be one of the most confusing doctrines in all of Christianity. Yay! But in all seriousness, I think that what's more important than being able to completely understand every single part about the doctrine of the Trinity is understanding its relevance to our everyday lives and our Christian walk. Particularly, I want to focus on how it relates to the great commission from Jesus, which we see in our Gospel reading for today. When I was studying this, I was really questioning how does the doctrine of the Trinity and the great commission, like, how are they related? So, like, let's backtrack this a little bit, because some of you might be asking, like, what is the doctrine of the Trinity? So the Trinity is this Christian doctrine that says that there is one God who eternally exists in three distinct persons, right? The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. So the confusing part about all this is that no amount of mathematical exploration can help us understand how one equals three or how three equals one, right? Like, there's no logical way to get there. And Christians, of course, have struggled with this for centuries. I mean, that's why we have the Nicene Creed, which we repeat every Sunday. The fact is that the Trinity is a mystery. So I've been reading this book about these huge theological concepts called Holding Faith. It's by Dr. Cynthia Rigby. She's a theologian and a seminary professor. And she says this, to remember God is triune is then to remember God is mysterious or beyond our knowing. So actually, our inability to solve this puzzle of the Trinity reminds us that we can never fully know everything there is to know about God. St. Augustine says this, he says, if you understand God, what you understand isn't God. And believe it or not, that's actually a good thing, because it leaves room for God to reveal more of himself through us, through humanity, through his creation, right? And though we don't individually know everything, we all know something about God, right? We each know the sum of God, something about God that he reveals specifically to us individually. And then all these different revelations of who God is come together as we commune with each other to help us as a church better understand God, right? The key word here being better understand, because like, to be clear, we still can't fully understand him. And yes, though God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, he's always doing a new thing. He's always revealing more of himself to us. And we see some of this creative power and this revelation in our scripture reading from Genesis in the creation account. You just heard it. I'm just going to read a little portion of it, just the first part. Genesis one and three says, 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. And God called the light day, and he called the darkness night. And then it kind of goes on. And God says, let there be a dome in the midst of the waters. And then so on and so on. So in reading this passage, you can kind of pick up a sort of rhythm, right? In this creation narrative, God creates, and then he separates, and he makes space to create something new, right? And then he creates, and then he separates, and he makes space to do something new. And maybe I've just been watching a few too many period dramas, i.e. Bridgerton, Queen Charlotte, but it almost feels kind of like a dance to me, right? Like a waltz, like this separating, creating, separating, and creating. And there actually may be a reason for this. There's a kind of a fancy theological word, check, got one in, to describe the communion of the Trinity. It's perichoresis, right? So perichoresis is a word from the Greek, which the root means rotation, or to go around, and sometimes to dance. So it's used to demonstrate the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, who are distinct as three, but they never fully separate. They mutually indwell one another. The word is supposed to give us a sense of like circling, or God kind of dancing with his own self as Father, Son, and Spirit. And when placed in the context of Genesis, it's actually pretty cool imagining the three persons of the Trinity kind of circling around in this sort of dance of creation, right? Some scholars also translate this word perichoresis as to make room for. And we do see in the creation narrative, God separating and making space for something new. He does so until he eventually consults with the us, right? The us, commonly believed to be the other members of the Trinity, to make humans in his image. So God and three persons made room for humanity to come and be a part of this Trinitarian dance, of this mutual indwelling through the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. So now, because of Christ, all of us who desire to can be a part of this holy dance with the triune God. And y'all, that is a really powerful revelation, right? No wonder the psalmist in our reading today says, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them. Like it should give us some sort of sense or some pause as we think about how amazingly powerful God's love for humanity is, and how much he desires fellowship with each and every one of us. And not just the us here in this building, or even the us as Christians, right? God desires fellowship with everyone else too, even those outside of these four walls, and even those outside of the walls we've placed around ourselves and we've placed around our hearts. Those walls that we think make this club more exclusive, that make us more cool, right? Designed to keep out the people who we don't really think deserve the invitation to dance. Absolutely, God desires communion with those folks too. And this is where our gospel reading for today comes into play, right? Matthew 28 19, we find the great commission. If you've been in any sort of evangelical church, you know about the great commission, right? Jesus says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and the holy spirit. There's the trinity, right? All nations, all people. And God has given us the beautiful opportunity to join him in this work and invite those people to the dance. So Dr. Rigby, who I quoted earlier, she put this beautifully when she describes what the reality of God's perichoresis looks like in our actual lives. She says, it looks like fewer boundaries, more connections, fewer I can't imagine, and more I'm really going to try to imagine. It looks like a less polarized world characterized not only by everyone feeling like they belong and where everyone who comes is included, but even where those who are not there are missed. A world where those who are not there are missed. And that's a different way of thinking about it, isn't it? It seems like a big jump to go from I don't really know we should let these people come in to like I am there's a void. I'm feeling a void because there's somebody missing in a space that's made in a place where this room has been made specifically for them. The thing is that sometimes including people means contracting a bit ourselves to make room for them. I mean Jesus knew this. He was in the form of God, part of this three-part three-person trinity, but he took on the form of a servant to bring salvation to the world. He contracted. So it might cost us something, at least temporarily, but how can we make room for others to come to this table? How can we better do this work of the Great Commission? Maybe it means opening your home or maybe it means something harder like opening your heart. For you that might look like finally accepting like Father Sean preached last week that God is pouring out his spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy. And if you're one of those daughters out there or the other all flesh that has felt excluded from this work, your task might be pushing back those thoughts of insufficiency and boldly stepping into the work that God has called you to do without reservation. And maybe for you it means having a conversation with someone that you don't agree with, like just to hear their story. That can be a hard thing, but like guess what, y'all? God knows that. He knows it's hard. That's why you don't have to do it by yourself. You have the power of the trinity with you. You are part of this communal dance with the creator of the universe, the savior of the world, the spirit, the same spirit who breathe life over the face of the waters and brought order to chaos. That lives in you. 2nd Corinthians 4 puts it this way, we have this treasure and earthen vessels that the excellency of power might be of God and not of us. And we always skip over that first part. We go to the second part because we want to talk about humility and how everything that we have is from God. And God knows that y'all, we know that, but we completely skip the first part. We have this treasure. We have this treasure. God knows that you're just an earthen vessel, but still he placed that treasure, the good news in us to share with everyone who would like a space in the community of God. Through Jesus, we have the power to jump over those walls, those divisions set up to exclude and pull people out of that exclusion and into their place of belonging into the kingdom of God, into this communal dance. We get to do that, y'all. That's the great commission. And that is a big deal. Like, how amazing God must think you are that he gave you that job, that he gave me that job. One commentary says of Genesis chapter 1 that the let us make part, it implicitly extends to human beings. For they, we are created in the image of the one who chooses to create in a way that shares power with others. God shares his power with us. So yes, opening our circle a little and including the people we don't always want to include sometimes takes heartwork on our part, but you have the power of God and the nearness of the Trinity encircling you. And maybe you're here today and you're not feeling that nearness, right? That nearness of God, that closeness or that proximity, and you for sure don't feel like you're dancing with the Holy Trinity. You might actually feel the desire to change or to do something or you're struggling to reconcile the new thing with who you were or what you believed or did before. You might be feeling some anxiety from this struggle between these warring ideas and maybe you're just waiting for God to answer a question or give direction and he just hasn't done that yet. And for you, God does not feel close at all. So years ago when I was coaching high school track, I used to coach. The coaches would often get together and since most of them are from small town Texas, we would go two-stepping or country dancing. I mean, I'm from Texas, so I know my way around just a little bit, but I am by no means a superstar unless I have a strong lead. So one night when my husband and I, he knows I'm about to tell the story, were just dating, we were dancing. We went dancing with one of those friends. And just so you know, my husband can dance to almost anything, right? But country music is not one of those things, right? So we were stumbling around a bit until I kind of gave up and I was like, all right, I'm going to stay here. And then another guy came up and asked me to dance. Now this was a pretty popular spot and I'd been there like several times before. So I knew that this guy was a great dancer and I knew I was a much better dancer if I had a strong lead. So I said yes. And I ended up dancing with him a big chunk of the night. My husband was not happy about that at the time, but don't worry guys, it's fine. We're married now. I think it's fine. I just wanted to dance with the guy who knew what he was doing on this country music dance floor. So anyway, while dancing the two step or any other ballroom type dance, sometimes the lead will kind of step back and push the follower away while still holding on to just one hand to kind of create or open up some space between them. Now me as a not super experienced dancer, didn't always know what would happen next. And then some anxiety would creep in, right? I start thinking, okay, what is this guy doing? Am I about to be embarrassed? What's gonna happen? Like, what if I fall right here? But after I realized that what they were doing was opening up space because they were about to do something really cool, show me something new. A new spin, a new flip, or reveal a part of the two step or dance skills that I hadn't seen before. And sometimes it was something that I was actually going to be a part in creating. But whoever I was dancing with, though they would step back and pull away from a minute, for a minute, they never let go of my hand and always pulled me back in to keep dancing. I thought about that, that time I spent dancing when I was reading this creation story, thinking about how the triune God dances around to separate and make room to create something new. The NRSV Bible commentary says of Genesis 1, that the initial separation of light and darkness creates this theme of creation by separation, creation by separation. So when thinking about where you might be right now or, you know, where I have been before, maybe that separation or that distance you feel is really just God contracting, stepping back and making space to create something new or to reveal some new side of himself that you've never seen before. And even better is knowing that though you might be struggling because we are made in his image, just like God makes space not just for humanity but for new things, new ideas, or ways of thinking, so can you. But we have to open up, right? Back to St. Augustine, he says in his book, City of God, God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them. You have to open your hands. You have to open your heart. Allow the space. Don't rush to fill it with other things. Just wait for God to do a new thing right there. And you don't have to be 100% okay with it. I mean, it might be causing some doubt, some confusion, and I get that, and that's okay for right now. But if there's nothing else to know in our gospel for today, I want this to stick with you. First of all, in Matthew 28 verse 17, he says, when they saw him, they worshiped but some doubted. The same disciples that worshiped were also doubting. They held both doubt and worship in the same space, and they worshiped while holding those doubts. And then this next part is really important. Jesus says to disciples after commissioning them, remember I'm with you always. Remember. Now why would he tell them to remember? Because he knew that in their walk, throughout their walk, when they're trying to do this work of the great commission, there would be times when they would feel alone. And even though he was present with them right now, whenever there's a little space between them, the disciples would need to be reminded, just as you and I need to be reminded today, that no matter what it feels like, Jesus is with you always. And just like in my two-step experience, though God may step back for a moment, and it feels like we've been abandoned or neglected, he never lets go of our hands. He always pulls us back in to keep dancing. And then this last part is for those of you today who might, who've always kind of felt on the outside of all this, like your whole lives, like maybe you've never felt like you totally fit into this church or this Jesus thing, or maybe you were raised a Christian, but all the rules and regulations you were told to follow were a bit much or they excluded you, and you left. I really feel like this doctrine of the Trinity, this communion of three distinct persons dancing as one, has something to tell you. You don't have to be perfect or fit some mold to join in this communion with the triune God. Dr. Rigby says in her book that the beauty and mystery of the Trinity teaches us that unity and distinction can coexist together, that the Trinity does not necessarily support the type of unity that requires our complete assimilation, but it values us as unique individuals. It's three distinct individuals communing as one. God doesn't need us to conform completely. Just as he created distinct plants, distinct trees, after their own kind, he created distinct humans. You can come as you are. And if you hear nothing else from this sermon, please hear this. No matter who you are or what you have done, no matter how distant you feel or that you think you are from God, when the enemy of this world tells you that you don't count, that you don't matter, let these promises anchor you. You are created in the image of the triune God. God loves you. God calls you his own. God is with you. God is for you. God will never leave you or forsake you. And God is inviting you to the dance always. Now let's take a minute to just meditate on the unconditional love of God and his desire for everyone to join his table through Jesus Christ as we prepare our hearts for communion.