Let's Go

Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2021

Let's go Phil!  Let’s go Phil!  Let’s go Phil!
 
This was a constant refrain chanted last Sunday, as Phil Mickelson hung on to win the Professional Golfers’ Association Championship, earning him the record for being the oldest golfer ever to win a major tournament.  If you are not a golf fan, I get it.  It is a sport of privilege, it can be nap inducing to watch, and it is maddeningly difficult.  My focus here is not talk about golf, though I can talk about golf a lot.  My focus here is on an unexpected human moment, a seemingly random encounter, a relatively little thing that really stuck out last Sunday afternoon on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, South Carolina; a moment that made a difference, and given my proclivity to watch for such things, a Holy Spirit moment.
 
Phil Mickelson has not been universally beloved.  He emerged on the professional golf scene thirty years ago.  He was kind of bratty, mouthy, and very, very talented.  Even Phil admits that he is best taken in small doses.  On his way to winning 45 professional golf tournaments,  and amassing a large fortune, life happened. Phil’s wife, Amy, nearly died giving birth to one of their three children.  Then she battled breast cancer.  Phil dropped out of the tour to care for her.  He gained weight and got arthritis.  Together, Phil and Amy established a foundation that funds cancer research and helps at risk youth gain access to a quality education.  All the while, Tiger Woods was roaring through tournaments and swallowing up victory after victory.  Phil was on his way to becoming a has been.
 
To his credit, he made some changes.  He worked hard, tuned up his body, and his game.  He brought his brother along to be his caddy.  Even so, the sport favors those with younger backs and much greater flexibility.  This year, Phil had not finished in the top 20 even once and his ranking fell to 115th in the world.  Last week, he came out strong and had the three-day lead going into Sunday on a kill-you-to-death long and windy course.  The big question was could he hold on to the lead, handle the pressure, and finish strong.
 
On hole number one, he dropped two strokes, and out of the lead.  Heads were shaking.  It looked like he was crumbling.  On hole number five, he landed in a sand trap: another bad omen.  But then, he made an impossible looking shot, punching out to within inches from the hole.  He made the putt, and took the lead.  As he walked to hole number six, he walked by a wheel chair bound fan with cerebral palsy who was cheering “Let’s go Phil!”  Phil stopped, walked back, talked with the young man for a full minute, and handed him the lucky ball he had just put in the hole, thanking him for the support.
 
From that point, Phil Mickelson never wavered.  He was strong and confident.  And I have to think that his softness in taking a moment to serve someone else reminded him what it was all about.  The older Phil knows failure, and disease, and difficulty.  He knows that success in not all about him.  He was joking around with his brother, the caddy, whose wife was texting them both advice.
 
That happened on Pentecost when church people celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Phil proclaims Christian faith and speaks openly about it.  I know nothing of his heart, but I know what we saw between holes five and six.  It was a little moment and a footnote in the bigger story, but that stuff really matters.
 
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday.  It is the only day we give to a doctrine.  It is the bane of preachers everywhere as they try to unpack or explain an enormous mystery of the Godhead.  Like the Sunday after Easter, it is often handed off to an associate or a seminarian.  Properly approached, Trinity Sunday is not a day for explanation at all.  It is a day for observation.  God shows up as creator, as Jesus, and as the Holy Spirit: all one God, all kinds of expressions.
 
Back in Isaiah’s day, they did not have the witness of Jesus, but the prophet was not short on God encounters.  In today’s reading, we hear of a wild and fantastic experience in the Temple as Isaiah meets some six-winged seraphs who touch his lips with live incense coals.  Holy, holy, holy is about all he can say about that until God’s question thunders in the Temple as he says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  Wait.  Who will go for us?  Us?  We are part of this?  Holy, holy, holy indeed.  Without hesitation, Isaiah says “Here am I; send me!”
 
After that, the rest of the lessons are interesting and puzzling.  Romans delivers the word that we are all adopted as God’s family.  Jesus plays linguistic ping pong with Nicodemus talking about being born anew.  That gives born-again fanatics lots of talking points.  But essentially, that is all mystery, better experienced than explained. The Isaiah lesson – though - that one is the one that rings in our ears.  It has all of the mystery, but the clear invitation to be sent into this world to go with and for God.
 
For all of the theologizing and systematizing and liturgizing, we might get caught up in some intellectual spin cycle of trying to figure everything out, trying to create a construct that makes sense, and trying to out holy those who have not digest Augustine’s or Aquinas’s theology whole.  It can be daunting to contemplate the big things and the big words and bigness of God’s love for each and every one.  We can’t find God through more self-actualization, more deep breathing yoga, or some big plan to fix all that is broken in this world.  We cannot really find God at all.  The Word of today is that God finds us.  God has finds us in making us so intricately wonderful and creative. God finds us in the person and work of a self-emptying love as Jesus.  God finds us in the mischievous and persistent Spirit that blows through all kinds of material moments – in bread and wine and hymns and prayers, but also in a meals dropped at the front door, the silence of listening to someone’s grief or anxiety, and the simple moments of saying thank you, I am with you, and I love you.
 
It was not about the golf ball last Sunday.  It was about reconnecting to the ground of belonging and being grateful.  It was a moment that got swept away in the roar of the crowd and big excitement - but not for that guy in the wheel chair, and not for Phil either.
As we go into our world to pick up the pieces of what got really broken and disjointed since last March, and we are relearning how to be together, we have an amazing chance to do so with intention, with sharpened attention, and with a pure love of the little things, that are not little after all.
 
Who will go for us?  Send me.  Send us.  We have hearts to love and hands to serve.  Let’s go Emmanuel!  Let’s go God’s beloved people!  Let’s go!  Amen.