IN THE STILLNESS, IN THE MOTION

Today things shift.

Things shift for Rev. Stefani as she goes from Reno to San Francisco

         and from parish ministry to diocesan ministry,

         which  is a decidedly strange new world.

The peculiarities of diocesan ministry will make

         Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley look like Main Street, Mayberry.

Things shift for this congregation

         as you begin a thoughtful process of self-examination

         and discernment of your mission, which will culminate

                  in the call of a clergy leader for your next stage of life.

From Heraclius to Buddha to the author of Ecclesiastes,

wise people have seen it.

Things shift. They change. They open from the familiar to the unfamiliar,

         from the known to the unknown.

And it’s all happening on Trinity Sunday.

So what’s God got to do with it?

Where is God in this new adventure?

What is God up to?

Implicit in those questions is a more basic one:

What do we mean by God?

If God is the source, the destiny, the purpose,

         the essence, and the foundation of everything,

         then what we believe about God should inform

         how we see and experience all life situations.

If our ideas about God do not affect how we deal

         with our life challenges, then what good are they?

So what do we believe God is like?

We can’t tie God down with definitions.

So we use metaphors. They don’t define God or explain God.

They are poetry suggesting a truth beyond words.

They don’t grasp God. They just point in God’s direction.

Our main metaphor for God is the Trinity,

a network of sacred interpersonal relationship.

This God image suggests a multitude of truths.

To flesh out those truths, the metaphor of the Trinity

         spawns other metaphors.

The very first one, dating all the way back to the 4^th century,

when the Doctrine of the Trinity was brand new,

is the cosmic circle dance.

What does it mean to say the essence, the core of reality,

         is a circle dance?

It means is that there are two things in God

-- stillness and motion.

Not one or the other but both – stillness and motion.

A circle dance needs both.

It needs a stable center.

We call it the still point.

The second thing a circle dance needs is motion,

         the dancers hand in hand moving to the music.

In his classic poem, The Four Quartets, Anglican poet T. S. Eliot

         painted a portrait of God by describing the relationship

                  between the still point and the motion.

                  At the still point of the turning world . . .

                  at the still point, there the dance is. . .

                  Except for the point, the still point,

                  There would be no dance,

                  And there is only the dance.

There is a lot of movement in the world.

There is a lot of movement in our lives.

Things are constantly changing.

That is life.

Without change, there is no life.

That’s what Eliot means when he says, “There is only the dance.”

But the change happens around a certain stillness.

So what does our belief about God tell us about change?

It happens. It keeps things interesting.

Today is the first chapter of a Lord of the Rings adventure

         for Rev. Stefani and for Trinity.

The Holy Spirit Gandalf is calling you

out of your respective hobbit holes

         into the unknown future.

Change happens and God is in the change.

Our lives are in motion and God is the motion.

But there is also in God a serene center.

For sailors in olden days, I would have called this part of God

         our North Star, our azimuth, our point of orientation.

Today a better metaphor might be our Global Positioning System, GPS.

A GPS works with 24 satellites whose orbits are coordinated

to create a constant field of overage.

Though each satellite individually is moving,

         together they create a motionless, comprehensive field of vision,

 a kind of all embracing stillness,

 so wherever we go,

         this satellite network can tell us where we are. 

Faith is trusting our spiritual GPS, our Godly Positioning System.

God knows where we are.

God knows our direction even when we do not.

Faith is trusting that God is always God,

that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,

and that in him there is no shadow of turning,

we trust in God’s eternal faithfulness – which is our still point.

Stefani, as you drive to San Francisco,

God will be with you through every mile.

And when you get to San Francisco,

you will find God was already there waiting for you.

Trinity, as you take each step in your discernment process,

God will be with you.

And when you reach the next stage of your mission,

you will find God already there waiting for you.

God is faithful. God is always and God is everywhere

in the motion and in the stillness.

That’s what sets us free to move about.

It is, as Paul said, “God in whom we live and move and have our being.”

“Whither shall I flee from thy Spirit O Lord?” the Psalmist asked.

“Whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up to heaven, thou art there.
If I make my bed in hell, thou art there also.

If I take the wings of the morning

         and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there thy hand shall lead me

         and thy right hand hold me fast.”

That’s the God part of this situation.

But we also need to consider the human part.

Fortunately, it’s easy because since we are made in the image of God.

Thanks to the innate godliness of ours souls,

         the human part is parallel to the God part.

It works like this:

In order to survive, every organism has to do two things.

First, it has to change.

It has to adapt to the shifting circumstances.

This is a very different world from the one most of us grew up in.

And the world is going to be even more different in the future.

We have to change or die.

The Church has to change or die.

It has changed many times before.

To keep changing is the only way we can remain true

to our firmly fixed tradition of constantly changing.

Richard Hooker, the 16^th century theologian who first said,

Anglicans are guided by Tradition

said Tradition is not a fixed position but a trajectory of motion.

Tradition is not a position to defend but a path of constant change.

That’s Richard Hooker, court theologian to Elizabeth I, 16^th Century.

The capacity to change, to adapt, is essential

to the survival of any individual and any specie.

The second thing an organism has to do is resist change.

It has to hold fast to its core identity, its core values.

Without maintaining that stable core identity,

we fall apart and perish.

That’s true in biology and it’s true in business.

Business leadership guru, Jim Collins,

 in his book, Good To Great, says

a company has to do two things to succeed.

It has to adapt to new market circumstances

and it has to keep faith with its core values.

So, if you find yourself resisting change right now

-- and I know you are because some of you have told me --

if you find yourself resisting change right now, that’s good.

If you find yourself a little excited, a bit eager to see

what the new day may hold, that’s good too.

And if you find yourself vacillating back and forth

between excitement and dread,

         that’s perfect.

We need both.

We need the still point. We need the swirling dance.

And that’s what we are going to do.

We will dance. We will move about. We will change.

But we will move around the still point of our identity,

our core values, our faith in the Serene Center.

Stefani in San Francisco will still be Stefani.

And Trinity, a few years from now,

will still be Trinity.

You will do some new things.

You will let go of some old things.

You will keep doing most of the old things,

some of them in slightly different ways.

But you will still be Trinity.

And God will still be God, forever and ever.

                                                               Amen.