Letting the Trinity Explain Us

Trinity Sunday, Year C; John 16:12-15; St. Paul’s, Smithfield 5/22/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Letting the Trinity Explain Us”

The other day I came across an interesting quote by a Presbyterian minister and author.  I can’t even tell you the name of the work from which the quote is taken – it wasn’t cited.  But I found it an interesting commentary on the Trinity.

William Dixon Gray writes, “Rather than explaining the Trinity, let the Trinity explain us.  We are, for instance, always changing from what we are to what we are becoming.

Everything is in this process; being is always becoming. …

The Trinity does not allow things to be static.  Whatever is static dies.  God is active within the divine being.  A static God would soon be lost.  God is active, and we must be [active] too” (Synthesis Commentary, Year C).

Trinity Sunday is a reminder that God is somehow above and beyond all things (metaphorically speaking), while at the same time intimately bound to and fully present in our here and now.  It is our way of saying God is always more – always more than we are ready, willing, or able to speak or understand. 

Consider how we meet God in today’s lessons.  Proverbs gives us an incredibly rich, poetic vision of a God experienced through the witness of Holy Wisdom, who for over two thousand years has been understood by many as an emanation of the Divine feminine, and who from the early first century was understood to be an expression of Jesus.  She is beyond time or space, seen in majesty and awe – present from the very beginnings of creation.  Here is the Wisdom of God, at the same time both infinitely beyond and yet so tantalizingly present, rejoicing and delighting in God, rejoicing and delighting in the whole of creation, and in particular, rejoicing in the human race.

           

Or take the passage from Romans: finding ourselves at peace with God through the gift of faith in Christ Jesus – we are given endurance and hope through the gift of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives.  God working within us to change us from what we are into what we are becoming – the very hope and presence of God’s love in this world – God working within us to change us more and more into the presence of Christ in this world.

Consider Jesus – the face of God – the hands of God – the humanness of God – with us – in us!  Each Gospel writer gives us a particular glimpse of this person Jesus.  Today’s glimpse comes from the Gospel of John.  As cosmic and utterly beyond as the Gospel sounds at its beginning (In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God), the evangelist brings us down to earth almost immediately (And the Word became flesh – the Word became human – put on human skin.  The Word became one like you and me – and lived among us). Doesn’t John’s description of the Incarnation sound like an echo of our passage from Proverbs – and an echo from the very first words of our holy scriptures as found in the opening words of Genesis? 

The Jesus of John’s Gospel is about freedom and life, and about the Divine Friendship of God.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus calls his followers “friends” and invites them into the incredibly dynamic relationship that is God: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (John 15:15 and 17:23).  Imagine what our world would be like if we actually lived like we believed that – if we lived like we believed the very God who spangled the heavens with stars loves us enough to take on human flesh and become one with us – and then fills us with Holy Spirit that we might better know and live out that oneness.  “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one!”  As commentator Susanna Metz reminds us, “There is love within the Trinity that binds it together. That Love reaches out to gather into Itself each and every one of us. What else do we need to know?” she asks (Synthesis Today for May 20, 2016).

And in John’s Gospel we begin to see the presence of the Holy Spirit poured out for us as a reminder of God’s intimate presence and transforming power in our lives.  This is no new naming of God’s presence in the world – though perhaps it’s a more particular and expansive experience and understanding of God’s Spirit.  The Spirit of God – Ruach – moved over the face of the deep at Creation.  The Spirit of God rested upon prophets, judges, kings, and followers of Jesus – women and men alike – throughout the history of our faith.  Holy Spirit – the very presence of God – the very mind of Christ – enfolding us in God’s love, infusing us with Jesus’ wisdom, and empowering us to become something beyond our wildest imaginings.

           

As we listen to our lessons today we hear the faith expression of communities across the ages.  And truth be told, rather than identifying and defining a doctrine of Trinity, these lessons say something to us about how God meets us and invites us into an ongoing relationship that has existed from before the dawn of time.  As author and priest Martin Smith puts it, “The ‘personal’ God of Christian experience is not an omnipotent Individual, but a communion of self-giving love” (The Word is Very Near You, p 26).  Holy Trinity is not so much about figuring out God as it is about God figuring out us, and inviting us “to participate in the [ongoing] relationships of intimacy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit…[joining] an eternal dance already in full swing, and we are caught up into it” (ibid, p 28).  As we enter into the mystery that is the Holy Trinity we allow “ourselves to join in the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the Persons of the Trinity” (ibid).      

It has been said of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth century English mystic, that she “never approached the demonstration of God’s existence or the meaning of the Trinity in structured argument like the other great theologians of her age.  Yet in her visions and writings,” it has been said, “she came as close as anyone to understanding the God of love – the God of the Trinity.  Toward the end of her life, she penned this short but profound exchange: ‘Would you know your Lord’s meaning?’ she asks.  ‘Learn it well.  Love was his meaning.  Who showed it to you?  Love.  What did he show you?  Love.  Why did he show it?  For love’” (Frank Hegendus, citation lost). 

I don’t know about you, but I need a God who is both beyond me and this world and yet intimately connected at the same time.  I need a God who can call me beyond the mean-spirited pettiness that often infects my soul, and yet who enfolds me like a loving parent and shows me the meaning of love.    

If God can’t move us beyond ourselves – if God can’t move this world beyond an obsession with itself – what good is that?  If God can’t somehow touch the most inner core of our being, and teach us what it means to be loved and to love, what’s the whole point of believing?  When we can sift through the ancient cultural and contextual understandings of God in the Bible that reflect the harsh realities of ancient life – or we can sift through the fearful, exclusionary anger and hate that often passes for the Gospel in so many places today – we find ourselves standing with Dame Julian of Norwich and a God whose ultimate meaning is love – moving us to love this world – moving us to love the people of this world – moving us to love ourselves, our neighbors, and even the stranger living among us – with the very same love that God holds for us.

           

And in those blessed moments, when we can embrace a God who is both beyond us and yet somehow mysteriously within us – a God who is more than we can ever imagine and who strives within us to make us more than we can ever imagine – we will find that we have stopped trying to explain the Trinity.  We have begun to let the Trinity explain us.  Amen.

 

Embodying God

Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27; St. Paul’s, 5/15/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Embodying God”

Have you ever wondered what must be going through the mind of a comfortable, sleepy – or perhaps not so sleepy – infant like Mia, for instance, the moment that first scoop of cool water is poured across her forehead?  Bishops, priests, parents and godparents who are standing close by always get to see the startled look that jumps out at us in that moment.  Oh, older children, youth, and adults such as Josh, today, can be prepared for the sudden feel of water across the brow – but infants?  Not so much.    Yet even if we can’t recall that experience for ourselves, we have all experienced things that catch us by surprise – things that catch us up short and capture our attention – sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not. 

There are other things that can capture our attention.  Wind can grab our attention pretty quickly, can’t it?  Anyone who has sat through a tropical storm or a hurricane can attest to that –

I missed Fran here in the Triangle, but sat through Floyd years ago.  And I still recall the Palm Sunday tornados a few years back.  The sound of rushing wind can bring us up short – can catch our attention in painful ways that cause us to stop and look at our lives in a different way.  The people of Fort McMurray, Canada can attest to the shock of the massive wildfire that has destroyed nearly two thousand homes and has caused nearly one hundred thousand people to flee in its path. 

But as people of faith we have another experience of wind that can catch us up short – that can grab our attention – that can cause us to stop and look at our lives and at the world in a different way – that speak to us of the presence of God in our lives and in the life of this world.  The earliest stories of our faith used words like Ruach or Pneuma to describe the tangible presence of God in the world. 

God’s Spirit – in the Hebrew, God’s Ruach – moves over the face of the waters at the dawn of creation (Genesis 1).  The wind or breath of God hovers over creation as a mother or father hovers over their infant.  In the story from Acts God’s Spirit – in the Greek, God’s Pneuma – rushes in upon the Apostles and early followers of Jesus, like a roaring wind and flames of fire – the wind or breath of God – rushing upon a rag-tag bunch of disciples from out in the sticks of Galilee and empowers them to proclaim the Good News of God’s love for the world. 

The story from Acts is more assertive, more aggressive story of the Spirit’s outpouring than the gentler, quieter story from John’s Gospel which we read on other occasions.  In John's Gospel we have an image of Jesus breathing upon his followers in the Upper Room: Receive the Holy Spirit! (John 20)  Yet the charged presence of God – of Ruach – of Pneuma – of Spirit – is present in all three stories – present in life-changing – present in world-changing ways!

           

The stories surrounding the Day of Pentecost speak to us of wind and fire, of breath and presence.  These stories evoke images from the dawn of creation.  They evoke memories of the Baptist’s promise to the first followers of Jesus, “I baptize you with water, but one will come after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire!” (Matt. 3.11)  And they tell us some pretty important things about life as followers of the Risen Christ – things that should catch us up short – should grab our attention and make us look at life a bit differently than before.

First of all, while the events of that Pentecost Day evoke memories and images of both Israel’s and the Apostles’ past relationship with God, Pentecost is more about reminding us how God is with us in the very present moments of our lives.  Pentecost isn’t about God’s Spirit popping in for a few brief moments in history, scorching the hair of our spiritual mothers and fathers, then zipping on out of there on the tail end of some holy high pressure system.  “The Greek word kathiz, translated ‘rested on each of them’ in the NRSV (speaking about the tongues of fire), can also be translated ‘to sojourn with or settle down with” (Kari Jo Verhulst, Sojourners, Preaching the Word).  Bidden or not bidden, God is present. 

Pentecost is a reminder that God is present among us in the person of God’s Holy Spirit – the One Who Sojourns With Us or the One Who Settles Down with Us – to re-evoke the mystery of God in the person and work of Jesus.  Pentecost is a reminder that we can stand at what spiritual director, priest and author Martin Smith refers to as the “white-hot core experience of God” made known to us through Jesus.  The question we face at Pentecost – and every other day as well – is this: How will we let the Spirit of God invite us into that mystery that is God?  And then, if we find a way to re-evoke that “white-hot core experience of God” in our lives, what will we do with it?  How do we move from being imitators of an ancient faith to being Christ in this world? 

Being caught up in the Spirit can be as wondrously comforting as the experience of St. Julian of Norwich who reminded us, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” as reassuring as having a God we can call “Abba,” (Romans 8:15),  or as breathtaking and hope-filled as John’s vision of the New Jerusalem descending to earth. 

Being caught up in the Spirit can be as shocking as cold water poured over our foreheads at the Baptismal font, or as sweet as the smell of the chrism marking the sign of the cross on our foreheads.  Being caught up in the Spirit can be as sharp as the sound of the Priest’s Host cracking at the fraction, or the tart taste of wine on the tongue.  Being caught up in the Spirit can be cutting sharp and jarring – as painful as knife against skin – as God shakes us from our complacency and calls us into the world to love and serve our neighbor – perhaps that’s the reason early Christians proclaimed the Word of God to be sharper than any two-edged sword!

Pentecost is a celebration of the Spirit of God coming among us today – to shake us up – to stir our hearts – to move our spirits – to challenge our minds – to wake us up and send us out.  Pentecost tells us that God is already upon us and within us.  By the Holy Spirit we stand in the presence of God always – whether we realize it or not.  Pentecost tells us we are already en-God-ed – that is, we are already embodied in God – and our worship today is meant as an invitation – not to get something we need and don’t have; rather, it’s an invitation to recognize what we already know deep-down inside of us, and what we already have within us – the Living Presence of God and Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit of God – and we’re sent out to help the world know this to be true (Smith).

Pentecost is about how we embody Christ – about how we embody Christ who is made known to us not only in the breaking of the bread every Sunday – but in the gift of the Holy Spirit given to us in baptism as well.  Pentecost is about how Mia and Josh will embody God in this place, and especially when they are carried or step out through those red doors.  Pentecost is about how we – who have renewed our own Baptismal Covenant this morning – will embody God in the world around us as we live out our lives in between Sunday mornings in this holy place. 

The life of faith is about being aroused to God – a courageous awakening – strong and forceful – falling in love with God so hard that it makes our hearts ache and our spirits yearn to be enfolded by God and become the presence of God for one another (Smith).  Pentecost reminds us that God yearns within each of us to bring about something glorious for this world – something earth-shaking and life-changing – something that awakens the world to the kingdom of heaven now – sending us out to renew the face of the earth!

A New Day Dawning

 

Easter 7C; John 17:20-26; St. Paul’s Smithfield, NC; 5/08/2016

Jim Melnyk: “A New Day Dawning”

Over the centuries there have been many depictions on the ascension of Jesus – whether in paintings, icons, or stained glass.  Most usually have a few angels scattered about, along with a few puffy white clouds, for effect.  Some show the full figure of Jesus floating above the earth and some even show nothing but his ankles poking from the clouds.

One Sunday following the Feast of the Ascension a Sunday School teacher was talking about the lessons with his class.  They were talking not just about the day’s lessons, but about the story of Jesus ascending to heaven – a story usually told on the Thursday before.  A youngster in his class raised her hand.  “Teacher,” she asked, “what would have happened if the disciples had grabbed hold of Jesus’ feet when he ascended?”  “That’s a very good question,” the teacher reportedly told the youngster.  “Why don’t we save that one for you to ask the Rector?”

Now I realize our Gospel for today isn’t about the Ascension – which we celebrated at noon this past Thursday.  But as I thought about today’s Gospel this old story came back to me.  Mostly because it’s difficult to not have Ascension Day on the mind as a preacher at this time of the season, but also because the Gospel of the day invites us into a between time – a time between Easter Day, the Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  It’s hard to imagine the Disciples listening to Jesus speak the words of what has been called his Priestly High Prayer in that Upper Room in Jerusalem – with all that talk about leaving his friends behind and going to be with God – and not wonder if at least a couple of them were thinking the same thing that youngster in Sunday School was thinking, “what if we just grab hold of him by the ankles and keep him here with us?”

Isn’t that part of our struggle of faith?  Knowing that we now share in an experience of God’s Holy Spirit – which is both theologically ethereal and experientially vague at times – rather than having flesh and blood Jesus physically among us to answer our all our questions?  What do we do next, Jesus? How do we experience the Risen Christ and find ourselves at one with one another? How do we experience the presence of God in our lives – how do we experience the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives – in ways that are tangible, life-changing, transformational, and real – and once experienced, keep that reality with us?  Perhaps the Priestly High Prayer of Jesus in John’s Gospel is meant to give us a clue.

Jesus’ prayer begins with a desire that Jesus’ life and death would glorify God, and that his disciples would find both protection and unity in God.  His prayer is on behalf of his disciples and friends to be sure – but the prayer is also offered “on behalf of those who will believe in [Jesus] through [his disciples’] word” – and that’s all of us down through the ages (17:20).

Beyond that, Jesus prays that his disciples will become a community bound together in the love of God – that the unity Jesus shares with Abba, the Father, will be known to them – and known to us – as well.  Jesus prays that his glory will be their glory – will be our glory – his gift to them and to us as well.  And Jesus affirms that he will continue to be present in the lives of his disciples just as God is present with and in Jesus – that through Jesus, and through the Holy Spirit he speaks about earlier in the Gospel – we “may become completely one,” so that the world will know the love of God (v. 23).

We don’t have to metaphorically grab Jesus by the ankles at the Ascension because in the deepest meaning of presence, Jesus never leaves.  The Advocate – the Holy Spirit binds us together with the love of God made known in the Risen Christ. 

Long ago – too long ago for us to remember exactly when, a rabbi asked his disciples, “When can you tell that the night has ended and a new day has dawned?”  One disciple asked, “Is it when you can look off into the distance and see a tree and know if it’s an olive tree or a fig tree?”  “No,” replied the rabbi.  Another disciple asked, “Is it when you can look in the distance and see an animal and know if it’s a sheep or a dog?”  Again the rabbi replied, “No, that’s not correct.”  “Then tell us plainly,” begged his disciples, “When can you tell that the night has ended and a new day has dawned?”  The rabbi replied, “When you can look into the eyes of the one standing beside you and recognize that person as your sister or brother, the new day has dawned.  Until you can do that it is still night.”  There’s a bit of what Bishop Desmond Tutu calls “Ubuntu theology” at work there – meaning our humanity is made real in the oneness that comes when we clearly see and acknowledge the fullness of humanity in others.

Orthodox priest, Kallistos Ware put it another way: “The whole person is a person who is on the one side open to God, and on the other side open to other human persons” (Synthesis Today, May 6, 2016). Our humanity is fulfilled in and through relationships with one another, as well as our relationship with God.

The Jesus we meet in John’s Gospel distills everything down to the unity of his followers bound by the immeasurable love God has for creation.  “For God so loved the world” – the world – that God gave us God’s only begotten Son – God’s beloved – for the life of the world.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (15:12).

One argument, then, might be that the way we show ourselves to be completely one with each other and with God is how we love one another.  It certainly isn’t about how we agree or disagree with one another.  People of faith from the beginning of time have disagreed – sometimes rather vehemently and even violently – and often go their separate ways – yet somehow the Gospel continues to go on.

Jesus prayed, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22-23).

So, as one Biblical scholar wrote years ago, “if anyone asks you what the Ascension is about, it is not about the mysterious disappearance of Jesus into the heavens, ankles and all; [it’s] about the evolving responsibility upon us for being Jesus in the world.  We are Christ-bearers in the world” (quoted in Synthesis, 5/5/2016).  The Christ of God in Jesus becomes Christ of God in the community of faith – and we become Christ in and for the world.  “God in us as God is in Jesus, Jesus in us as Jesus is in God, that we all may be one – [so] that we may be in the world as Jesus was in the world” (The Very Rev. Todd Donatelli, The Cathedral of All Souls).

No one needed to grab Jesus by the ankles that Ascension Day so long ago – because through the gift of the Holy Spirit Jesus has never left us alone – we were not left behind – nor shall we ever be left behind.  Neither did Jesus define how we are to love one another beyond the self-giving sacrificial love of one who is willing to lay down one’s life for the other. 

When we can look one another in the eye – when we can look both our neighbor and the stranger in the eye, even with all our diversity – even with all our differences – whether they are differences of race, or creed, or color, whether differences of gender, or social standing, or orientation – even differences of political persuasion in the midst of an election cycle fraught with cynicism and bickering – when we can look one another in the eye and see our sister or brother looking back at us, then a new day has dawned, and we, as the Body of Christ, are one.

Tornado Dreams - Tornado God

Easter 6C - John 14:23-29 - St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 5/01/2016

Jim Melnyk: “Tornado Dreams - Tornado God”

Sometimes, in her dreams, the young woman is visited by tornadoes: Whirling and chaotic, spinning and screaming, overturning and scattering, dark and boiling.  Tornado dreams.  Unsettling dreams.  Nerve-racking dreams.  Dreams that for the longest time frighten her. 

Soon, it seems, the tornadoes visit every night.  Not just one tornado – and not even two, but her dreams are filled with something like schools of tornadoes, sweeping all around.  At first she thinks in her dreams that she will be destroyed by their terrifying force.  But then she begins to notice that the tornadoes can never quite reach her in her dreams.  She finds herself in a wonderfully made glass dome with the tornadoes constantly bouncing off the curve of the dome and heading off in some new direction away. 

Then one day the young woman brings up the tornado dreams with her spiritual director –a priest with a great deal of Jungian training.  The director explains that however counter-intuitive it might seem – however illogical it may seem, tornado dreams are often messengers of change rather than harbingers of danger.  The more they look at the young woman’s life, the more the dreams begin to make sense – unsettling as they are.  She soon finds herself in a new town and a new job, and within the next year in a new marriage and a new home.  Suddenly the tornado dreams shed new light.

Now don’t get me wrong – I imagine the first reaction to tornado dreams for any of us – even knowing what the wise spiritual director shared – would probably be a rather anxious, “Good grief, what now!”  While such dreams may not signal imminent physical danger to the dreamer they do often promise the sort of changes that can seem overwhelmingly chaotic at first – and who likes change anyway?  The challenge with tornado dreams is to look for and sense the promise that waits within or behind their swirling turbulence.

I wonder if Jesus and his disciples ever experienced tornado dreams.  Maybe their dreams would be of sandstorms and dust-devils racing through the outlying wilderness of Judea.  Our gospel stories in the final weeks of Easter throw us back in time to the night before Jesus’ death.  Huddled together in the Upper Room, Jesus and his disciples break bread together.  Jesus washes their feet, and offers a long, hopefully comforting prayer for those whom he’ll soon leave behind.  It is a time of tremendous change.  It’s a storm-tossed moment in all their lives.  By now Jesus must surely understand his time of death is near.  The disciples, having had an on-the-job crash course in prophetic preaching, must fear the worst as well.  Will the authorities take Jesus?  Will they be arrested too?  What will tomorrow bring?  Their hearts are troubled, and Jesus seeks to offer hope.  I wonder if Jesus and his disciples ever experienced tornado dreams.

Jesus makes three promises to his disciples in today’s portion from John’s gospel. 

First, Jesus promises their inclusion in the fullness of God’s love.  “My Father will love them,” says Jesus, “and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  And like the disciples, we who follow Christ have our home in God as well.

Second, Jesus also offers the promise of God’s peace in their hearts.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.”  These words seem so simple, yet they are words that come out of the depth of Jesus’ relationship with God – that arise from his intimate knowledge of God’s love – and from the deep love Jesus holds for each of his friends.  This is shalom: the promising wholeness of God’s healing and life-giving presence in their lives - in our lives.  And so as simple as are the words, they are far from simplistic – they carry with them the full weight of God’s presence and love.

And finally, Jesus promises the gift of the Advocate – the Holy Spirit – the power of God to lead us into the love of God, and the power to surround us and fill us with the peace of God.  The Holy Spirit – counselor, helper, advocate, comforter, and guide – the One who walks beside us – the One who remains with us as Emmanuel – as God with us – the One who teaches us wisdom – who opens our hearts – who leads us along the way – the One who gives us the mind of Christ and the heart of God.

The Holy Spirit – given to the disciples in a closed room behind locked doors so long ago – and given to each of us in our Baptisms and strengthened each time we come together to pray and make Eucharist.  The Holy Spirit who comes with both wind and fire – who transforms our hearts and who sends us in so many new directions – the Holy Spirit – our own Tornado God who gives us dreams to dream, ministry to carry out, life to live, and the heart and soul to follow Jesus.

And let me tell you something, my friends.  If we come to church – if we go into your closet at home to pray – if we seek the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives we are opening ourselves to that Tornado God and all that comes from such invitations to and from the Holy One! And the more any of us open ourselves to God – the more the winds will blow and the wilder the ride will be.  Because the promises Jesus makes in today’s lesson are promises that we will find our home in the fullness of God’s love, and in the fullness of God’s work in this world.

The love of God that Jesus promises will enfold us is the same love the world fears – because it is a love that stands with the broken-hearted and offers comfort in its truest form and the truest definition of comfort – that offers strength and compassion to all who are in need.  It’s an active, “love me, love my world” sort of love.

The peace of God that Jesus promises is a peace that comes from doing the work of God in a world that doesn’t want that work to be done.  Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I am a man of peace.  I believe in peace.  But I do not want peace that you find in stone; I do not want peace that you find in the grave; but I do want the peace which you find embedded in the human breast, which is exposed to the arrows of the whole world, but which is protected from harm by the power of Almighty God” (Synthesis Comm., emphasis mine).

The promise of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives is the most challenging promise of all – because the Holy Spirit is Jesus’ presence in our lives at its most dangerous best.  The Holy Spirit’s rushing wind blows away any images of sweet Jesus, meek and mild; and would sweep us away into the storm clouds of God’s transforming love if we would only let it do so.  The work of God’s Holy Spirit will always be unsettling – and Scripture bears this out.

Abram: pulled from his home and family and sent to the middle of nowhere.  Moses: driven into the desert with a pack of former slaves tagging behind – all of them grumbling all the way.  “The Spirit is fire and flame, a restless wind, a turbulent sea, an Upsetter, a Supplanter. [It’s] forever choosing...Isaac over Esau, Joseph over the older brothers, the prodigal son over the dutiful brother, the Samaritan heretic over the Jewish priests and Levites...a woman with an alabaster jar of ointment over the elegant leaders of Jerusalem, [Lydia, a gentile woman and follower of God over the leaders of the city,] Magdalene over the Twelve to announce the Resurrection...befuddled [fisher folk and tax collectors to proclaim the gospel,] an enemy of the church – [Saul of Tarsus] – to become [Paul - our patron saint], the apostle to the Gentiles” (Anthony T. Padovano, quoted in Synthesis).

I wonder did they all have tornado dreams?  Or were they just touched by, surrounded by, enfolded within the wild winds of the Tornado God – the God who calls each of us by name and calls each of us to new life and to the service of the Good News of God’s love?  “I never said that you would not be tempest tossed, work-weary or discomforted,” God once said in a vision to St. Julian of Norwich, “only that you shall not be overcome.”

And that, my friends if we let it, will be enough.