Trinity and a Harvest Festival

This sermon can be listened to here

 Gate Pa – 19th June 2022, 13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Readings:
First Reading:             Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm:                         Psalm 100
Second Reading:        Gal 3:23-29                
Gospel:                        Luke 8:26-39                         

What I want to say:
Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. One Sunday a year to think about the Trinity, and then put it back on the shelf for another year. One important aspect of The trinity is the relationship between the three persons – a relationship of mutuality, care, generosity. This is where we meet God, and are invited to live this out in our relationships. How then does this help us celebrate harvest festival?

What I want to happen:

What ways are we being invited to live in ways that allow creation and all involved in the harvest to thrive?

The Sermon

     1.     Introduction:

Harvest festivals have been around for along time. Our reading from Deuteronomy is all about where they come from. Initially this was a time for gratitude to God. Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudati Si invites us to say grace before every meal to be grateful for all those involved in bring this good to our place, including the plants and animals.

Harvest festivals are a time of celebrating. Around Aotearoa NZ there are a number of harvest festivals

-         Celebrate and enjoy fruits of harvests

o   Eating produce

o   Drinking the wines, beers and ciders

o   enjoy good music

o   taking in the country vibe

o   They provide opportunities to learn more about way food grown, particularly living sustainably.

So I wonder why we are having harvest festival?

What are we doing today?

     2.     Matariki

Our harvest festival comes during Matariki – the Māori new year. There are a number of traditional aspects Matariki that are important for Māori. For ngā iwi o Tauranga Moana, one of these was that appearance of that vast cluster of stars in dawn sky it was the sign that time prepare land for kumara planting so that there might be a harvest. A good harvest doesn’t just happen. It relies on good soil and well tended land. This land we live in, and this planet we live on are central to idea of harvest.

Matariki and Harvest Festival give us opportunity to remember that this land, this planet are God’s greatest gifts to us and we are invited to live gratefully. And we are invited to remember that absolutely central to our ongoing ability to live here is the need for us to care for land. Our place our relationship with this land as a central concern, not just Matariki, but all year around. 

     3.     Trinity

Last week spent time thinking about the Trinity. We watched a great video with Patrick using all kinds of bad analogies to explain the Trinity. I’ve included his last statement in pew sheet.

It often feels like we do the Trinity one Sunday a year and then we can get back to not worrying about it for rest of time. But I wonder how our understanding of the Trinity affects how we celebrate Harvest Festival.

As I was thinking about all this I wondered if one of the problems with the analogies we use to describe the trinity is that we then miss one of the points of the Trinity. For example, one of the analogies used is that the Trinity is like water, that can be ice, water or steam – which is modalism, and was condemned as a heresy at the first council of Constantinople in 381. One of the problems with this is that it can leave God our there, beyond us with little impact on our lives. God is out there and we just get on with living our lives knowing that God is watching us at a distance, as Bette Midler says. God is God, the boss of all; and we are down we are doing what we should, or not.

That affects how we see God, how we see each other, and how we see this world

For many people, one of strengths of traditional Trinitarian theology is that it invites us to think of God in terms of relationship between the three persons

-         Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

-         Source of All Being, Eternal Word and Holy Spirit

-         Lover, Beloved, Love Between

ð What kind of words might we use to describe the relationship within God?

     4.     Ubuntu

In this icon of the Trinity, which come from Africa, is the word “ubuntu”. I had to look it up. Wikipedia tells me that this is the Bantu (the large family of languages spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central, Southern, and Southeast Africa) term meaning "humanity". It is sometimes translated as "I am because we are" (also "I am because you are"),^[2] 

South African writer, Barbara Nussbaum says, “Ubuntu is the capacity in African culture to express compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building and maintaining community with justice and mutual caring.”

So we might say that this icon gives expression to the compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity which eternally exists in the heart of and between the person of the Trinity building and maintaining community within the Trinity of justice and mutual caring. Ubuntu then flows out from heart of trinity creating relationships of compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity building and maintaining community of justice and mutual caring between people, and between people and creation.

When we experience these kinds of relationships, God is present, Inviting us into the heart of God, and inviting us to live in ways that spread divine love in the world. God is not out there. God is not removed from our everyday life. God is present in the Trinity in the everydayness of our lives. God is present in our relationship with each other and with this world.

     5.     Murray Bodo

I have in past talked about Murray Bodo – Franciscan Friar and writer/story teller. He writes from a deeply trinitarian place. He says that St Francis shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society and inner peace. He goes on to describe inner peace as awareness that God is, and that God dwells in all creation.

Later talks about creation place of trinitarian relating rather than hierarchical relating. Creation is where laws are based on relationship not on ownership, nurturing rather than overpowering and subduing. We might say that creation is where ubuntu is at work.

This world is created by and out of God Lover, Beloved and Love Between. This world is held in this relationship of mutuality, compassion, completeness; ubuntu!

     6.     Harvest

We come to this harvest festival with an attitude of gratitude
-      God’s goodness and generosity
-      For creation which provides this food that sustains us
-      All those involved bringing this food to our plate
          o   Farmers and growers
               §  Many of whom are poorly paid
               §  Especially overseas
          o   Those involved in transport
               §  In this country and overseas
               §  Think for those work in seafarers
          o   Those involved in working in shops we buy from
               §  Not always paid well
-      All whom carried on over last two years to ensure we have food we needed.

I wonder then how we live with ubuntu to all these people, especially those who are treated very badly to bring us this food. How do we live in ways that does not add to the poverty of this world and all who live on it?

How do we live in ways that honour our relationships with all these people, so that they might thrive, so that this world might thrive?