Rebecca Beal
St. Luke’s, Scranton
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven
and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant
that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work
within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him
be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:14-21
On this Eve of Trinity Sunday I remember another Trinity Sunday, 2004, at the American Cathedral in Paris. It was June 4, and not only Trinity Sunday, but also the sixtieth anniversary of the Invasion of Normandy. All of France seemed to be celebrating; that afternoon armies would parade along the Champs-Élysées, with jets flying above and visiting dignitaries in the stands. The President of France would speak. I went to the American Cathedral expecting to hear a sermon reflecting on the American and French sacrifices made so many years before.
To my surprise, nothing of that history entered the cathedral—instead, the music, liturgy, and especially the sermon pondered and celebrated the doctrine of the Trinity. I don’t remember the sermon’s text, but today’s reading from Ephesians might well have played a part. On June 4, 2004, that sanctuary, that Holy Place, opened into a broader history, a longer time, a higher knowledge, and a deeper experience than any celebrated outside its doors.
And so does our reading from Ephesians.
It does not spell out the nature of this Godhead. Instead, it gathers us into a prayer to this God, this mysterious one whose spirit somehow strengthens ours; whose Christ, sent from God’s heart to ours, lives among us even as we are ever more deeply rooted in love. God’s fullness of love, God’s glory, and God’s power, somehow, also becomes ours; God’s work, and God’s completion of that work, ours.
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