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The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas

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​Sermon Blog
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A reasonable facsimile of what was preached on Sunday: always a reflection on the Word, but never the final word.

The Trinity and Whack a Mole

6/15/2022

 
​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Trinity Sunday
June 12, 2022
 
About once a decade, I go to an arcade.  Perhaps, I go because I have acquired too much money, or I have enjoyed way too much peace and quiet, or I crave the smell of bubble gum, popcorn, and sweaty adolescents. Even so, I was a child once, and I have children, so experiencing an arcade once a decade is about right.  After all, who does not love an old-fashioned game of Ms. Pac Man now and again.  I first played that game in a certain establishment on the Corner when visiting my brother in his first year at UVA.  My college was not so sophisticated as to have such modern electronic enticements.
 
There is a certain arcade game that I have only witnessed others playing called Whack a Mole.  The premise is rather simple.  There are six holes on a board.  The player wields a large rubber mallet, and when a stuffed mole head pops up, the player is to whack said mole head so that it retreats back to its lair.  It starts out simple enough, but as time passes the moles pop out of the holes in more rapid succession, testing the players whack ability.  Drummers play this game well, but inevitably, no mortal can whack all of the moles in increasingly rapid succession and the game is over.  It is great fun to watch, but rather pointless to play.  This is the nature of arcade games, designed to amp-up the endorphins with a siren call to stuff another quarter in the slot and give it a go.
 
The term Whack a Mole has entered popular relational and corporate consultant vocabularies as the game stands as a great metaphor for life.  No sooner have we solved one pesky problem; another one arises.  And sometimes even before one problem is sufficiently whacked, another one rears its pesky head.  This raises the question in my mind about the myth of restorative violence.  Hardly any problem that I can identify is resolved with a good mallet whack, and what do we have against little stuffed mole heads anyway.  I fear this is a dark commentary, but maybe I need to let that go.  Sometimes we just want to whack something.  This is why we play sports.
 
In the stately arcade that is the Church year, we have walked through, and past, Holy Week and Easter, taken a lively spin through Pentecost, and today, we reach Trinity Sunday: a whole Sunday dedicated to a theological concept, a foundation of doctrinal construction, the subject of many a Church council, a liberating and creative vision and understanding of God that is utterly incomprehensible, inspiring incomplete metaphors, and defying all logical explanation.  Welcome my friends, to theological whack a mole.
 
The Creator is, even in the beginning.  Jesus is as Creator is, even in the beginning.  The Holy Spirit is, even in the beginning.  God is one.  Creation happens using nothing to make everything.  Start the clock of time.  Jesus, who is Creator and is Spirit, enters time and place in creation, participates in the cycle of life and death, but does not die.  Creator/Jesus/Spirit cannot die.  But Jesus is fully human even though fully One too. Jesus is overheard praying to Creator, and seen teaming up with Holy Spirit, but they are never separate.  They always have been One, even as they tag team in moving the world around, talking to themselves.  The Three are one, but two of them take male pronouns (he) and one uses the feminine pronoun (she).  They are never inanimate, so they are never it.  If we isolate any one of these assertions, it only raises other questions about all of the others.  Welcome to Theological Whack a Mole.
 
For Trinity Sunday, the Collect of the day, the Canticle, the Epistle, and the Gospel are mercifully brief, but oh so gymnastic in their expression.  This is one instance where Holy Scripture reveals its limitations in giving language to Divine experience.  Apparently, the Church is ever too restless in its attempt to explain mystery.  Officially, we have been arguing about how all of this works since the year 325.  In reality, we have always wrestled with trying to make The Great One squeeze in shoe that is too small, and cannot be large enough.
 
This is not to say that the Trinity is not worth observing, naming, or celebrating.  In fact, doing so is good for us in order to realize, experience, and remember that whatever our concept of the Divine is, it is way too small, and we are way too limited in trying to get out heads around a matter of the heart, soul, and infinity.
 
Perhaps Trinitarian consideration, we can learn a thing or two from Whack a Mole.   First, what we see is never all there is.  As one expression of God emerges in our view, there are always others that will surface.  What we see and name comes and goes.  Sometimes, more than one expression of God surfaces even if we are focused on one in particular mole.  It is good to bring friends into the game because we can never see the whole board.  Finally, like the game, there is no winning.  We cannot get it right, hold it all in perfect tension, but unlike the game, time is just a mortal boundary.  This game is never over.  Rather than take up our mallets of particularity and closely held dogma, it is well that we just look, listen, and feel as much or more than we think.
 
Thus, me standing here trying to express, explain, or enlighten our understanding, is a fools errand.  In deference to the mystery, perhaps it is best to shelve our proverbial mallets and be quiet:  look out the windows, look at each other, listen for silence, feel the air, and know that the One is here, now, and always.  Game on.  …… Amen.

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    The Rev. John Thomas is Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood

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WELCOME
This is the table, not of the Church but of Jesus Christ. It is made ready for those who love God and who want to love God more.
So come, you who have much faith and you who have little, You who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.
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Adapted from The Iona Community, Iona Abbey Worship Book, (Glasgow, UK: Wild Goose Publications, 2001), 53.

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7599 Rockfish Gap (Rt. 250 West) | P.O. Box 38 | Greenwood, VA 22943
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