Friends,

According to the traditions of the Church calendar, this coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, a day I love because I love the Trinity. Not only is the Trinity comprised of “The Three Men I Admire Most” (to quote a song), but the doctrine of the Trinity is a belief that connects Christians to the divine mystery of God.

Or at least the Trinity has the potential to connect people to God’s mystery. The Trinity is also a matter of theological orthodoxy, which means that over the years a lot of folks have become overly attached to their beliefs about God being at the same time one and three. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

The Trinity is an idea that makes no sense. God cannot be one and three any more than a circle can be a square. Yet for at least 1700 years, most Christians have affirmed this logical impossibility as a core belief, which is wonderful. Our faith is built on something that cannot be explained. It’s a mystery, which is something that should prevent us from taking ourselves or our religion too seriously.

When it comes to religion, not taking one’s self too seriously is a moral virtue. As far as I know, no one has ever committed acts of terror or violence in God’s name after saying, “My beliefs about God are an illogical mystery.”

So I say, “Three cheers for the Trinity!” I believe in celebrating those beliefs that must be imagined rather than explained. May such beliefs keep us humble and peaceable and filled with joy.

So friends,

            The Creator who brought order out of chaos,

                        give peace to you.

            The Savior who stilled the raging storm,

                        give peace to you

            The Spirit who broods on the deeps,

                        give peace to you.

And in all things may the Trinity mystery instruct your faith so that yours is a religion of joyful and humble good will.

God’s Peace,

Ben

Friends,

Back in March, my friend Geoff Browning paid a visit to MPC to preach and to talk to us about what it might look like for our congregation to consider self-identifying as a “Peace Church”, a designation that would recognize our congregation’s historic commitment to peacemaking, and opposition to America’s various and ongoing wars. A peace church designation might also allow the young people of the church to register as pacifists and opt out of a possible draft.

The process of becoming a peace church involves a lot of conversations. We have to discern if we, as a congregation, really do oppose war and, if so, on what terms. We need to explore historical expressions of Christian pacifism and decide if they give voice to our beliefs. If they don’t, we need to talk about new ways of expressing our opposition to violence.

After our conversations, we may decide not to self-designate as a peace church. But it seems to me that the conversation is important, and for that reason I’d like to invite you to join me and the Social Justice and Peacemaking Committee in a conversation about what it might look like for us to be a peace church. We will be meeting on Tuesday, May 24th at 7PM in the Thornhill room. I hope you can join us for this important conversation.

God’s Peace,

Ben

Friends,

As a rule I don’t do much to promote the celebration of Mothers’ Day in the Church, because I am mindful of the loneliness and sadness such celebrations cause those who do not have children, or who have difficult and dysfunctional relationships with their mothers.

I am aware, however, that Mother’s Day began not as a way to sell greeting cards (as is commonly assumed) but as an attempt to get mothers organized around working for peace. The idea was that for women the experience of motherhood might create a bond of solidarity that could transcend national aggression and lead to peace.

The suggestion that motherhood leads inevitably to nonviolence is a bit sentimental. Having two children did nothing to prevent Margaret Thatcher from leading the UK into the Falklands War; nor did motherhood prevent at least four US Senators (Feinstein, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Clinton) from voting to authorize the United States’ invasion of Iraq. Still, I tend to hope that empathy born of shared human experiences can lead us–regardless of gender or family situation–to seek peace, and for that reason I applaud the aspirations of Mothers’ Day’s founders.

In honor of Mothers’ Day’s original intent–and keenly aware that motherhood isn’t the only pathway into an experience of the kind of empathy and human connection that leads to peace–I’ll leave you with this statement from Another Mother for Peace, which my late aunt, the actor Donna Reed, helped write and promote during the Vietnam War:

I join with my sisters in every land in The Pax Materna—
A permanent declaration of peace
That transcends our ideological differences                                             
In the nuclear shadow, war is obsolete                                                                       
I will no longer suffer it in silence
Nor sustain it by complicity.
They shall not send my son
To fight another mother’s son                                                       
For now, forever, there is no mother  
Who is an enemy to another mother.

God’s Peace to you,

Ben

Friends,

Here’s a confession. It’s not always easy to think of something pithy and spiritually moving and—well—pastoral in my “Pastor’s Pen” spot. Sometimes my mind goes blank, and sometimes it’s too full of different ideas competing for space on the page.

The latter issue seems to have been the problem for me this week, and every time I thought maybe I was distilling my thoughts on, say, the nature of “Truth” or the importance of Surprise in the spiritual life, the phone would ring or I’d start jonesing for a cappuccino, or I’d get distracted by the need to push paper around on my desk, or my mind would wander off into how I might use John Calvin’s commentary on the sixteenth chapter of Book of Acts for my sermon next Sunday (spoiler alert: Calvin’s commentary on Acts 16 speaks of the importance of surprise in the spiritual life; listen for it on Sunday).

I was starting to despair: what if I never got my good, solid, pastoral, spiritually-minded, serenity-imparting, God-revealing column for the Contact? Then I realized that the Divine is as alive in the enjoyment of a cappuccino as She is in high minded thoughts about theological trivialities, and the ability to God in the act of doing paperwork or in conversations with friends, is an important part of the spiritual life.

So, in the end, a column about my writers’ block is really a column about God, or at least it can be, provided I’m willing to find God in the various distractions of a slow day in the office.

God’s Peace,

Ben