FCC Winchester

Good morning! It’s wonderful to be here with all of you on this lovely, less smokey, day.
I chose this particular Sunday to preach because we had tickets to Hootie and the
Blowfish last night, and I knew we’d be in town. Really, it was Hootie without the
Blowfish, because it was just Darius Rucker. Any Hootie fans here? He was great! His
music has shifted away from pop rock to Christian and Gospel.

Anyway, what I didn’t know, and happily discovered, is that one of the lectionary choices
for today is a favorite of mine: Jacob’s Ladder. That was some kind of sign I figured, so I
chose it to focus on. The full story of Jacob’s life as laid out in the Book of Genesis is
richly complex with themes of greed and deception, divine election, struggles with God,
betrayal and forgiveness, spiritual transformation, and ultimately Jacob’s ascendance as
the foundational patriarch of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. And then, get this, he lives to
147 years old! There must be a million sermons written about the various aspects of his
life. Mercifully for you, I will focus just on his dream about the ladder.

In my office, I have this bookmark hanging up [show to congregation]. You may even recognize it. Last spring, Fred Greene’s family created and gave out bookmarks at his memorial service at the church. There are two sides to the bookmark. The back is a poem by Mary Oliver called “In Blackwater Woods.” The front is a picture of Fred with his name, the day he was born, the day he died, a message from his family, and a quote from the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The quote reads, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” I have this bookmark next to my mirror in my office. I don’t pass it every time I’m in my office, but I pass it often enough to have memorized the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s words: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” Fred was such a beautiful embodiment of kindness. The photo on his bookmark even embodies his compassionate, loving, and attentive presence–it’s somewhat amazing and surprising that a 2D, flat image could convey so much personality and so much warmth. 

“And surely I am with you always til the end of the age.” That’s how the Gospel of Matthew ends his account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. And what we call today - Trinity Sunday - is a kind of culmination of a liturgical cycle of the church that I want to trace out for you for a moment cause it frames the year differently from our secular calendar. So it all began on Nov 30, 2025 at the start of Advent when we began preparing for what was to come, for who was to come which was God in the form of a baby which we celebrated with the feast of Christmas and then there were the 12 days of Christmas which culminated in Epiphany this revealing more fully of who Jesus was which cam I might add by way of foreigners from a strange land, the Magi, and through the weeks of epiphany we had scriptures that continued to reveal at deeper and deeper levels who this babe, this son, this person Jesus really was, i.e. the Holy One of God, the Christ and at just about the moment when we’ve come alongside Jesus as the Great teacher and healer, he’s transfigured and glorified on the mountaintop and then boom Lent arrived, February 18, 2026, on Ash Wednesday and suddenly there’s talk about ashes and death and the stripping away of all that glory as the scriptures moved us toward his impending suffering and death. He is scapegoated by the religious leaders and the civic authorities and the people go along as we witness his murder and his death on Good Friday followed thankfully gloriously by his resurrection on Easter, April 5th this year. Then our scriptures take us through the 40 days of his resurrection appearances before his Ascension and 10 days later Pentecost which we celebrated last Sunday when the Holy Spirit comes down and infuses the people and births the church, that’s where the body went. And it is from that narrative we receive the notion of God as one yes but also 3 somehow, that God is Father Above and God is Son among us and God is also manifest as Spirit within us and around us which brings us to today, Trinity Sunday. That’s the essential story, that’s what it’s all about.