The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
For almost two thousand years, these words – words which serve as the closing verses in the second letter to the Corinthians – have also served as the concluding words to countless Christian worship services. These words of blessing – or what is often referred to in the church as the “Benediction??? conclude our times of worship in exactly the same way that the service begins – with a Word from God drawn from the Word of God in Scripture, in what we usually refer to as the Call to Worship. We are called into worship, we are blessed and guided by God, and then we are sent out into the world that God loves with a word of blessing.
In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the Sunday immediately following Pentecost is called Trinity Sunday. And with good reason – our faith in the God who is our Creator, who walked among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and who continues to be with us by the power of the Holy Spirit – is summed up and finds fulfillment in this wondrous mystery that we know as the “trinity???.
And a mystery it is. We all know the quick formula – Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer; Maker, Word and Spirit; three-in-one and one-in-three. Most of us know some of the ways that people have tried to find metaphors to parallel our understanding of the Trinity – as a three-leafed clover, in which each of the petals is not complete in itself, but the whole clover is not complete without all of its parts; or the image of an egg, which has three parts – a yolk, a shell and a yolk which can be separated but which are not a complete egg without the other parts; or even water, which can be experienced as a solid, a liquid or a gas, but whose molecules are always the same.
Different metaphors, different explanations, different attempts to define a great and wondrous mystery.
But even though this word, Trinity, and the concept of a Trinitarian understanding of God rests at the very heart of solid Christian theology and spirituality, it is interesting for us to remember that the word Trinity is never actually used in the Bible.
It is, instead, in texts such as the one that is suggested for this particular Sunday in the church year, from 2 Corinthians, that serves as the basis and foundation for our understanding of the Trinity.
This is not, of course, the only passage in the Bible that points us toward this way of understanding God, but it is worthwhile, on this particular Trinity Sunday, to pay specific attention to the attributes that this passage envisions within the mystery of the God before whom we bow in worship.
That is, it is worthwhile to ponder the grace, the love and the communion that we are invited to experience in God.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
To break this blessing down into its three parts can be helpful to remind ourselves what we are actually saying.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ….grace is a central concept in Christian theology, and it, too, is a word that we bandy about rather frequently. God of grace, and God of glory; Amazing grace, how sweet the sound; we know the songs – but how often do we pause long enough to ponder what we actually mean by “grace????
Grace is never fully defineable, but it essentially means that a person is being treated in a way that they do not entirely merit or deserve. That is, if a person acts in a particular decent way, and they are treated decently in return, we do not really consider it grace – it is simply reciprocity, a return for the goodness that they have shown. A person who is rewarded for something that they have worked hard to achieve is not being treated with grace – rather, they are receiving the benefit for the actions that they have performed.
Grace, by contrast, is when goodness, dignity, kindness, patience, generosity, compassion, love are extended to those who do not really deserve to be treated in such a way. When we speak of a person acting with grace, we are speaking of a person who is, in one way or another, responding to another not because of, but rather in spite of what the person has done or how they have acted.
For the writer of 2 Corinthians – and for all of us – to speak of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ reminds us of the incredible number of stories of people that Jesus interacted with, but who had done nothing to deserve the gifts and power that he was using on their behalf. The poor, the lame, the excluded, the lepers, the condemned, the sick – all of whom neither had the power, nor the ability, to cure or heal or restore themselves. But they looked to Christ, they reached out to him, they called out to him – and he chose to use his power to help them, he chose to demonstrate his love for them, he chose to extend grace to them.
And it was not only those who were struggling in such ways who received his grace. Rather, it was also those who treated him terribly – right to the very moment of his death, as he cried out for the forgiveness of those who were nailing him to a piece of wood, that they would be forgiven for their actions. They were not acting towards him with compassion, with kindness, with decency – but he still prayed for them. If that is not the definition of grace – praying for the forgiveness of those who are nailing your hands and feet to a piece of wood – well, I don’t know what is.
There is an old saying that is ambiguous about whether it is a blessing or a curse – “may you get whatever you deserve.??? But that is not a prayer for grace. By contrast, the words of 2 Corinthian – the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you – is a prayer that we and those with whom we interact would not be treated as we deserve, or in light of whatever good that we might have done to merit blessing – but rather that we and those with whom we interact would be blessed by God in spite of how we have acted, in spite of what we have done. Perhaps the better blessing is not “may you get whatever you deserve??? – but rather, “may the grace of the one who loves you enough to suffer and die for you be with you.???
Grace is love for the undeserving, the messed up, the imperfect, the sinful, the broken.
People like you and me.
And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And the love of God. This second part of this wondrous blessing is equally worthy of our reflections. But it only starts to sink in when we remember the entire story of the Bible– for in so doing, we are reminded that the love of God is the love of a God who created, liberated, guided, inspired, corrected, protected, challenged, comforted, lived, suffered, died, triumphed – and did it all for love. Those four little words in this famous blessing – “the love of God??? – sums all of that wondrous and incredible story. To wish such a blessing on another person says a lot. It is saying that your deepest wish is that the person to whom you are speaking may experience the creative, life-giving, liberating, challenging, comforting, protective, joyful presence of the One whose very nature, whose very essence is love.
And in this life, it is hard to imagine a better wish for another person.
May the love of God be with you.
And the communion of the Holy Spirit.
For us as Christians, references to communion inevitably and invariably inspire thoughts about the sacrament that rests at the heart of Christian spirituality. We use the word “communion??? to refer to our times of gathering together at the Lord’s table to break bread and share a cup and remember what Christ accomplished for us, and for this world, on the cross of Calvary.
But there can be times when it is good to hear this word, communion, apart from the celebration of the sacrament. Etymologically, the word points towards the idea of being drawn together, with others, as one or in union with others. In English, the words common, and community, are derived from the same root.
Which is a fascinating dimension of this blessing, entirely aside from the sacramental acts that we use this word to describe. Our blessing is that the person to whom we are speaking, and in fact all of us will be drawn together, that we would be embraced in the community of the Spirit, that we would be together as one.
And not simply together as one with each other – together as one with God’s Spirit.
Which is, in fact, the promise of the Gospel – not simply that we are loved and forgiven, but that we can be drawn into the embrace of God, that our lives can be at one, be at peace, be in harmony with the One who is love and the One who loves us infinitely and eternally.
We spend a great deal of our lives running from that embrace, or seeking substitutes for it. But the way of faith is glimpsed in this three-fold blessing – that there is a grace that is extended to all of us, regardless of how undeserving that we are; that there is a love that is creative and life-giving offered to us; and that that grace and that love can enfold us, draw us together with one another and with God.
And that is all pretty good news.
But it is also challenging good news. Because the Bible also asks us to use that vision to shape and inform and transform the ways that we deal with other people.
And so, just before I draw to a conclusion, I would invite you to ponder this beautiful, three-fold, Trinitarian blessing not only in relation to your own life, but in relation to the life of someone that you know – and not necessarily someone that you love.
Who, in your life, needs to have grace extended to them, in spite of the fact that they do not deserve it?
Who, in your life – and it might or might not be the same person – needs to know the blessing of the love of God – the blessing of God’s creative, life-giving, powerful compassion in a particularly significant way?
Who, in your life, needs to come to a deeper experience of the communion, the embrace, the drawing together, the journey back into unity and into community?
And here is the challenge of the Gospel — what can you do to allow those people to know that grace, that love, that communion?
Of course, we cannot extend to others that we which have not received ourselves. And so, I would invite you to hear these words for one final time – not as some words drawn from the pages of some ancient biblical text, nor as some empty, ritualized, half-mumbled incantation at the end of a worship service. Instead, hear them and experience them and receive them as God’s loving, inspiring, renewing, encouraging Word to you, right here and right now.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
And the love of God,
And the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
Amen.
