"Praising the Triune God" Trinity Sunday--San Williams
Scriptures: Psalm 8
Sister Joan Chittister recently asked Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, “What really interests you most about the spiritual life?” After a pause, Williams replied: “I find myself coming back again and again to the meaning of 'alleluia.' " Now I don’t know why Williams was most interested in the meaning of “alleluia,” of praise. As the much beleaguered Archbishop of a deeply divided and conflicted global church, perhaps he’s taken to heart the lines of poet W.H. Auden: “In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start. In the prison of his days, teach the free man how to praise.” Well, in Psalm 8 David bursts forth in praise as he gazes up at the vast splendor of the creation: “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” On this Trinity Sunday, let’s come back again to the meaning of “alleluia.” Let’s join the Archbishop in contemplating the meaning of praise.
To begin, we probably need to expand the way we think about praise. Praise is not simply what we do when we sing “Holy, Holy Holy,” or lift our voices in the Doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Praise isn’t even restricted to times of worship, or defined by a momentary outburst. Rather the meaning of praise is much more expansive than that; it takes in the whole of life. “What is the chief end of life?” asks the Westminster catechism. The answer? “To glorify God and enjoy God forever.” In the 6th Century, Saint Benedict crafted a rule aimed at helping the monks live balanced lives in service to God. The first Benedictine rule is simply this: “Live this life and do whatever is done in a spirit of Thanksgiving.” Surely the deepest desire of our hearts is the one suggested by the poet: Teach us how to praise.
Now, admittedly praise is problematic. It's hard and often counter-intuitive. A popular hymn describes us as being lost in wonder, love and praise, but today we are as likely to be lost in nagging sense of human insignificance and futility. Even David, when he glanced at the canopy of stars overhead, wondered how God could be mindful of something as small as a human being. Of course, David’s understanding of the universe was a tiny fraction of what we know of it today.
Author Annie Dillard pondered the immensities of creation in an article in Harper’s magazine. She tossed out head-spinning numbers to convey how infinitesimal we are in the immensity of the cosmos. For example, ten years ago we thought there were two galaxies for each person alive. Now, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we have revised our figures, and scientists estimate there are nine galaxies for every human alive on the face of the earth. Each galaxy harbors an average of 100 billion suns. In our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there are sixty-nine suns for each person alive. Given the magnitude of the cosmos, how, we ask with the Psalmist, can an individual possibly count?
This morning, as we baptized Sarah Anne, we boldly declared that she is significant—a beloved child of God who is claimed by God and who belongs to God. Yet Sarah Anne is only one of almost 6 billion people now living. Every four days, a million more humans arrive on the planet than the number who die. The sheer numbers of people, not to mention the vastness of the universe, may give us, as it did Teilhard de Chardin, the sense of being “an atom lost in the universe.” Thus, for many today our alleluias are silenced—sung, as it were, into a vast cosmic indifference.
Of course, Psalm 8 counters such suspicions of human insignificance with an affirmation that we human beings have been made a little lower than God, crowned with glory and honor and given dominion over all the other living creatures—all sheep and oxen, beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fish of the seas, and whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Yet instead of lifting our hearts in praise for the wonderful status God has conferred upon humankind, this knowledge is more likely to fill our hearts with sadness and maybe guilt. How can our hearts sing for joy when human mismanagement is endangering the birds of the air and the fish of the sea? Today we can’t hear the Psalmists' poetic words about sea life passing along the paths of the sea, without picturing them swimming through miles and miles of spilled oil.
Sure, it’s tempting to blame BP, big oil, or governmental regulators for this tragedy, and certainly they all share the blame. But in truth, we can only blame ourselves. Oil is being drilled in ever more risky environments only because we are addicted to it. As environmentalist Bill McKibben said, “The needle BP stuck into the bottom of the sea flows straight into our veins.” We’ve all heard sad stories of children addicted to drugs who will steal from their own parents if that’s what it takes to buy the drugs to which they are addicted. Similarly, we are willing to rape and destroy the very environment in which we live in order to support our addiction to oil and the consumptive lifestyle it enables. Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and poet, is a voice crying in the wilderness. Berry writes: “In the name of more we destroy for coal the mountain and its forest and so choose the insatiable flame over the green leaf that, within our care, would return to us unendingly until the end of time.” Truly, it’s hard to sing to God for the wonders of creation when so much of creation is suffering in the name of human thirst for more.
And sadly we Christians have not been much help. We are yet to answer fully the charge leveled by Ludwig Feuerbach in 1957, when he wrote, “Nature and the world seem to have no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul.” Feuerbach’s charge is not completely true, nor does it describe this congregation, but we can’t deny that too often the biblical notion of dominion has been twisted by human pride to mean human domination over nature and the animal world. In our anthropomorphic arrogance, we’ve accepted the false premise that God created animals and nature solely to serve the interests of human beings. To the extent that we’ve misunderstood our place and role in creation, we’ve lost the ability to be instruments of God’s praise.
So let’s begin to regain our place in creation. On this Trinity Sunday, we can follow the lead of St. Patrick and bind ourselves to the Holy Trinity. When our lives are joined to the life of God’s overflowing love, alleluias can be heard once again. Bound to the Trinity, we now see creation not through an arrogant human eye, but, as theologian Sallie McFague reminds us, through a loving eye. Seen through loving eyes, we realize that creation does not exist simply to serve human ends, but to serve God’s good pleasure. Seen through loving eyes, “made in the image of God” doesn’t give us humans an elevated status and certainly not an excuse to exploit. Rather, it means we have been honored with a unique role within creation. As one theologian said, “God simply chooses humans for the task of acting as God’s deputies amidst God’s good creation.” We are to live as an image of God’s rule. And we learn about how God rules from the person of Jesus Christ, the true image of God. Jesus rules not by hubris, power or domination, but by humility, love and service. By water and the Holy Spirit we are united with Christ and joined to his ministry of love, peace and justice—drawn with all creation toward God’s Peaceable Kingdom.
Friends, praise does not come easily. The meaning of “Alleluia” can be lost in a sense of human insignificance and futility; it can be snuffed out by the scope of suffering both human and nonhuman. But then, as the old spiritual has it, “the Holy Spirit revivew my soul again.” The Spirit invites us to join in the dance of the triune God, to sing of God’s love for all that God has made, and to work with our brother Christ for the redemption of the cosmos. Yes, it’s the triune God who teaches us how to praise: “O Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is this name in all the earth.”