A few months ago I posted some thoughts inspired by my learning why it is that most plants on Earth are green, or have green leaves. I explained that green leaves, on a planet that orbits a green star, would seem surprising to a person who was thinking about designing an efficient system for creating food and energy for plants on Earth. As I explain in this sermon, the reason that plants have choosen this strategy seems to be that it allows them to flourish in the widest possible variety of settings and situations.

I’ve been thinking about how we as an Episcopal Church, part of the messy Anglican Communion, are inheritors of a similar sort of situation. Our tradition was born of conflict and war; it is, at its heart, a compromise that prioritizes continuing relationship with people we disagree with over clarity and singular vision.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is a stubborn insistence that the God we worship is a relationship of persons who are also a single being. It’s illogical and hard to understand. Many groups who follow Jesus’ teachings have, over the years, decided that it was easier to jettison this idea in one way or another. Apparently the question is still a live one in the Evangelical fellowships here in the United States. It’s a settled doctrine in Anglicanism though. And our common life, living into hard fought relationship is essentially our way of expressing, in our common life, the experience of the Triune God. It’s messy and complicated. It’s inefficient and crazy-making. But it’s the best choice we can make compared to all the others…

The direct link to the video of the sermon is found here.